Save Time on Sourcing to Save Money

Time is money, including when it comes to procurement. The more time that needs to be spent on sourcing products and services for your company — including finding and on-boarding suppliers, along with choosing specific offerings — the more costs your business can incur. These costs stretch across areas such as:

• StaffingIf employees spend significant time on sourcing products and services, they may not have enough time to handle other areas of procurement and finance, like risk management and compliance. Thus, you may have to hire more employees or contractors to help out.
• Customer ExperienceA long procurement process can lead to delays that ultimately affect your customers. Suppose you need to switch suppliers for customer-facing products due to a vendor being unable to fulfill their commitment. If finding the new supplier takes a while, that can cause delays for customers to receive their products. As such, your company might face increased costs, e.g., paying for priority shipping, discounting customers’ orders, or having to increase marketing spend due to customer attrition.
• Employee ExperienceSimilar to how slow sourcing can affect customer experience, it can also drag down employee experience. Employees might grow frustrated with lengthy processes, which can ultimately decrease their productivity and cause turnover.
  
  Time-intensive sourcing can also cause employees to take shortcuts. For example, if comparing product costs across vendors is a complex, lengthy process, employees might try to save time by skipping these comparisons. As a result, even though they save time, they could be more likely to choose more expensive products and services, rather than finding the lowest-cost option.

To reduce these types of issues, finance and procurement teams should aim to streamline sourcing to save both time and money. How so? By leveraging technology and setting up processes that allow for easy cost comparisons and simple switching between vendors.

Save Time With Technology

Using e-procurement software helps companies streamline sourcing by centralizing and automating more of the procurement process. By making a purchase through an e-procurement platform, an employee already has access to approved suppliers, rather than needing to find vendors on their own and go through an approval/onboarding process. E-procurement software can also automate areas such as approval workflows and use predictive analytics to suggest low-cost, high-quality purchases.

In addition to automating the purchasing process, e-procurement software can help by automating areas like the payment process. Saving time managing invoices and POs means you don’t necessarily have to increase AP staff as your purchasing grows. Plus, with the whole procure-to-pay process housed within one system, finance and procurement staff can maintain strong spend visibility. This visibility then helps save money by allowing staff to identify issues like duplicate purchases or certain departments busting budgets.

Save Time With New Procurement Processes

In addition to saving time using technology, companies can also free up resources by implementing new procurement processes.

For one, working with an outsourcing partner can help companies in areas like the RFQ process. Instead of needing to adjust staffing levels up and down depending on your supply chain needs, an outsourcing partner can help you quickly source new suppliers on an on-demand basis. GoProcure’s Buyer’s Desk, for example, can provide you with easy access to a large pool of high-quality suppliers, and we can help you choose the right one for your budget.

Companies can also save time by implementing new procurement processes like providing employees with corporate credit cards. By requiring those to be used for purchases, finance and procurement teams can save time on reimbursement requests and more easily capture spend data.

Start Saving Time to Save Money

Instead of slowing down employees, frustrating customers and increasing overall costs, companies can focus on streamlining sourcing to save both time and money. The investment in new technology and processes can quickly lead to more efficiency to the benefit of your bottom line.

Want to learn more about how leveraging technology and working with procurement partners can help reduce costs? Request a free consultation with our product experts today.