ERP for procurement
For procurement teams or those in the organization with responsibility for purchasing of goods and services; the ability to easily do business with suppliers is of paramount importance; and ERP Supplier Relationship Management functionality helps you do this as well as seamlessly integrate with the rest of the business (e.g. Accounts Payable for processing supplier invoices) to ensure the supply chain runs smoothly.
Mastering procurement with ERP
Procurement functionality within an ERP system review should include:
- Supplier management from sourcing, qualification, purchasing through to evaluation. Where is the vendor data held on the ERP, how easily can you search for their catalog, their contract and their billing details? Look at processes, automated workflows and reporting that will capture and surface key data for monitoring rather than manual exercises of vendor evaluation.
- Tender management – how does the ERP help streamline this often time consuming process, with requirement matching, approvals workflows, document management and scoring against criteria?
- With internal teams and with suppliers to effectively align planning, negotiations and execution of purchased goods being delivered on time. An ERP by its nature is a single database where cross-functional teams operate, but what tools are natively integrated with the ERP for secure team messaging, document updates, and approvals?
- Spend control and discount management – how does the ERP manage approved spend limits on a daily basis without interrupting the momentum of the supply chain? Business policies, approval limits can be set and enforced through automated approval workflows that can either be set at blocking or warning.
- Purchase process integration – how streamlined is the process from approved requisition to purchase order creation to delivery through to payment? The ERP should offer seamless integration between for example, procurement, inventory and finance (AP) teams to facilitate this without double admin, manual intervention or delays.
