How to Create a Purchase Requisition Workflow

There is nearly an endless number of ways to accomplish any single task or activity. Understanding this is helpful in approaching building your organization’s core practices, which is to say, the unique ways in which your particular business approaches any single situation or decision-making process. 

The result is a beautiful tapestry of businesses and organizations operating within the same industry with slightly varied processes and procedures. Procurement is a great example of this in a field, as nearly every procurement solution is going to be unique from every other. That’s why it is important to configure your workflow within the organization. This article is going to cover the process of creating a purchase requisition workflow. 

The procurement field is full of a whole spectrum of processes and procedures that, when compiled, make up the organization’s purchasing, sourcing, and inventory-practices. One of the most important and fundamental activities in procurement is the purchase requisition. A purchase requisition truly starts with an internal department member. 

The Purchase Requisition Process

The purchase requisition process, as mentioned above, begins internally with a department. That’s because the process for purchase requisition is truly a tool for employees of an organization to communicate their internal needs with department managers and decision-makers. This information is then moved forward through the proper channels and yields in the successful acquisition of the required information, goods or services.

The process can then even envelop the accounting and financing aspects that are associated with the acquisition of the requested goods or services. Therefore, creating a strong purchase requisition workflow begins with understanding how to best and most efficiently track internal department needs. 

It’s important to note that, more often than not, purchase requisitions are going to be for consumable goods or services that are used by staff and employees. This is important because many procurement activities are actually related more closely to the products, goods, and services that the company is actually producing itself. Understanding that the purchase requisitions mostly pertain to internal needs provides a useful angle for procurement teams to take toward purchase requisitions from the start. 

A purchase requisition workflow should benefit the employees of the business and the organization itself. In other words, this means prioritizing efficiency within the purchase requisition workflow. One way to do this is by investing in purchase requisition software, which is now considered as a purchase requisition best practice anyway. This type of software is extremely powerful for organizations and provides a myriad of insights into the way that your business makes purchase requisition lines and uses sourced goods and services internally. 

One such tactic that purchase requisition software brings to your business is the ability to begin predictive purchasing. This is the practice of anticipating purchase requisitions and internal department needs on a regular and recurring basis. Therefore, minimizing the number of one-time purchases that your organization and procurement team are making, and helping to grow savings at the same time. 

By anticipating needs, the procurement team is able to review and approve purchases in advance and work them into the budget. Rather than making special exceptions on a high percentage of purchases which then saps into overall internal savings. 

Optimizing the Purchase Requisition Workflow

In order to get the most out of your purchase requisition workflow, your team needs to integrate it into the rest of the procurement lifecycle. As mentioned above, procurement is a vast field full of a variety of systems, processes, and procedures, so that all of these should be interwoven and integrated in order to ensure an optimal life cycle of procurement.

It is essential to understand where your requisition workflow fits into the rest of your organization’s life cycle of procurement. This is usually the final step in developing a unique and individualized purchase requisition workflow for your business.

Every organization is going to have a slightly different procurement strategy. The components of that individual strategy may very well vary as well. There are a number of constants in the procurement sector: streamlining the purchase requisition workflow to optimize internal efficiency, and internal communication efforts are one of them.

Looking at internal procurement as an extension of your company’s communication efforts may help in adjusting to this perspective. Keeping internal communication clear and concise aids in avoiding misunderstandings. Similarly, having a streamlined purchase requisition workflow that is supported by procurement software ensures an optimized procurement workflow.

Wrapping Up on Purchase Order Requisition Workflows 

Building a purchase order requisition workflow that’s unique to your business and your company’s procurement needs is sure to boost internal operations and make for a smoother internal procurement process. Utilize purchase order requisition software to integrate the process into the rest of your procurement lifecycle, ultimately optimizing the entire chain as a whole. 

For more information on the purchase order requisition workflow, or more ideas on how to optimize your procurement team, visit ProcurePort today. ProcurePort is the internet’s premier source for everything procurement – from knowledge and information to software and tech and everything in between.