Don’t we all love the buying experience on Amazon and other eCommerce websites which is instantaneous, offers lot of choices, and almost zero friction. However, buying even basic items at our workplace is usually frustrating.
You must have found yourself struggling with limited visibility into preferred or contracted suppliers, contract utilization status, budgeting issues, and multiple requirements for sourcing low dollar items or services. It is usually time consuming, require multiple approvals and follow ups. The tools that you use often have poor user experience (UX) and plagued with broken processes.
Challenges in Streamlining Procurement Process
Beyond the poor experience that a business user (requisitioner) faces, the Category manager or the Buyer in the procurement core team also face multiple challenges like:
- They receive a very large volumes of non catalogue requisitions
- Which require multiple (tactical) verifications
- They have to match the Purchase Requisition with the underlying contracts and quotations
- This can further lead to missed opportunities in discounts & rebates
Such a broken procurement process also impact the procurement KPIs across multiple fronts like:
- Lack of pricing compliance
- Over or under utilization of contracts and budgets,
- Increased efforts and cycle time to validate and fix requisition issues, and
- Increased efforts for buyers to process 3 bids and a buy for low value requests.
If these problems sound familiar to you, then this blog is intended to share some insights on how an integrated Source to Pay platform combined with autonomous quick sourcing technologies can help streamline your procurement processes.
Overcome the Challenges in Streamlining Procurement Process
procurement management software offer businesses solutions to these problems. These procurement solutions are designed to give procurement teams better visibility into their procurement processes, eliminate manual paperwork, streamline the procurement process and improve user experience (UX).
An integrated S2P platform can provide instant visibility into all your contracted suppliers, allowing you to track contracts more efficiently. This will help ensure that you are taking full advantage of negotiated pricing while also helping you avoid overspending. Additionally, the eProcurement integrated software will store all contracts in one place so they are easily accessible when needed.
Touchless Purchase Order (PO) generation further helps streamline the procurement process by reducing manual work involved in the ordering process. Automated purchase orders are created quickly based on predetermined criteria such as preferred suppliers or contracts already negotiated. This eliminates the need to manually create POs each time an order needs to be placed.
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Zycus’ Merlin AI powered Buyer smart desks can also be used for validations on requisitions before orders are dispatched. Merlin Buyer Smart Desk uses AI technology to analyze data from past orders as well as current market conditions in order to determine optimal pricing options for each order. The Merlin Buyer Smart Desk automates 6 core process which are typically manual and highly labor intensive.
- Automated Buyer verification
- Best Supplier recommendations
- Chart of Accounts verification
- SOW (scope of work) verification
- Quote matching according to service-level agreements (SLAs)
- Cost booking validation to relevant GL.
All these recommendations are provided instantly which allows buyers more time in their day-to-day operations while still ensuring accuracy in their decisions related to procurement processes.
Finally, Autonomous Quick Sourcing Technologies (AQST) help automate routine purchasing tasks such as ordering office supplies or setting up travel arrangements without any human intervention required at all.
The Buyer Smart Desk cuts the PR to PO cycle time by 55% to 60%
Autonomous Quick Source uses algorithms that analyze past purchasing history in order to make informed decisions about what should be ordered when it comes time for a new purchase order – again eliminating manual effort required by buyers thus making the entire process much faster and efficient than before.
The Merlin AI Autonomous Quick source impacts 3 key back end process:
Auto-addition of supplier
Merlin AI recommends and internally ranks suppliers based on likelihood score which is dependent on other sub metrics that justify how relevant a given supplier is.
Quote extractions and Modifications
Auto extracted quote information with summary view as also detailed view of quote information and extracted quote. There is also inbuilt provision to modify extracted value when needed.
Supplier Bid comparisons and Analysis
AQS automates bid comparison and ranking of suppliers so that Buyer can award the contract to the best supplier quote. AQ further helps flip the awarded event back to purchase requisition
Conclusion
Streamlining your procurement processes is essential when it comes down increasing efficiency within your organization’s operations. An integrated S2P platform combined with autonomous quick sourcing technologies is the perfect solution for tackling common procurement issues like those listed above – providing instant visibility into contracted suppliers, touchless PO generation based on predefined criteria, Merlin AI powered buyer smart desk that performs validations on requisitions, and automated routine purchasing tasks without any human intervention required at all! All these benefits result in improved pricing compliance while also reducing cycle time and effort spent on processing orders making it easier than ever before for businesses everywhere!
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Book a demo today to learn more about our integrated source-to-pay platform and quick sourcing technology and how it can help your business.
