Doesn’t automation seem to becoming a big part of our every day business operations? Social media, email marketing, and customer services all seem to have at least some automation to them. This helps to free up precious time to allow us and our teams to become more efficient.
The same can be said about purchasing processes. Automation can make significant contributions to procurement. And in the end, you’ll get exactly what you want: more time to spend on managing and growing your business.
This is a view shared by many in procurement. Recent surveys have found that 83% of procurement leaders have identified automation as key to the future. But uptake is slow. Only 5% of those in the surveys stated they had highly optimized their purchasing processes.
How Does Automation Work In The Purchasing Process?
The processes in purchasing are often huge. There’s the management of large number of documents, keeping an eye on stock, dealing with suppliers and other elements. With so many significant elements to control, there’s always a high chance that human error will cause issues in your business.
So what is the solution? Automating the process is the key to minimizing business waste.
Purchasing is counted as everything from monitoring your stock levels for materials, usage rates and how long it can take stock to arrive, to considering when to make purchases. It also includes supplier management and documentation monitoring. But this complex set of processes for procurement and purchasing can take hours of your time right?
Not with automation.
Automation software allows this process to take moments. Automation is the ordering of supplies needed for your business with limited (if any) human input. Because automated software can’t be distracted or change without your permission, ordering is never missed and mistakes are minimized.
How Does Automating The Purchasing Process Help Your Business?
There are numerous benefits for automating your purchasing processes. Some of these are obvious, but some of them you might not have realized.
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Efficiency
The most obvious is efficiency of your business. How many hours do you spend making purchasing decisions? Could that time be put to better use? Automation takes the work away from your team, freeing them up for more complex tasks. So, business productivity increases, and therefore, the value of your company can also increase.
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Control
Procurement software helps business leaders, like you, to have higher control on the purchasing process. Automation software has great reporting tools that offer increased visibility on all aspects of the process. Therefore, issues such as high costs, long waiting times and wastage can be identified quickly.
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Better Budgeting
With access to every document available at an instant, you can better analyze expenses. This allows you to create better budgeting, and helps you look for ways to cut costs, so you can grow profits without selling more.
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Inventory Management
This is probably one of the best advantages of purchasing automation. Your software can monitor stock levels and automatically re-order items when stock levels reach a certain threshold. This level can be identified by you. This helps you reduce wastage by not having too much stock, or too little stock, at any one time, so you could require less warehousing space.
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Better Supplier Management
Another key advantage is managing your suppliers. How hard is it for you to remember the contact details and key information about all your suppliers? With potentially dozens of them, it’s probably a headache. Automatic purchasing software can help you manage your suppliers by identifying issues. It can also help you streamline your suppliers so you have fewer of them by identifying overlaps.
Are You Ready To Improve Your Supply Management?
Automating your purchasing processes can be a great help to your business. It helps you be more efficient and spend more of your valuable time on projects and work that is more complex. This helps your business and profit margins grow.
What problems have you had manually ordering supplies? Could automation help you avoid these issues?
Let us know in the comments below, or contact us for more information.