Wednesday, September 21, 2011

E-procurement - Changing The Purchasing Strategy


In a competitive and globalized business environment, corporate sectors and business houses need to be abreast with new technological developments as well as manage reduction of operational costs while meeting the organizational goals and objectives. The advent of technological invasion into the marketplace, have created e-markets in every business sector. This has paved way for a faster connectivity between B2B and B2C exchanges.

The benefit of online purchasing not only showcases the cost savings but also improves the way companies operate. It helps them to deal with a chosen few suppliers with better buying strategy as well as slash down the administration costs. Today’s technological business world has turned to an electronic procurement system between business-to-business or business to consumer and even business to government. The electronic procurement system or e-procurement as it is called involves purchase and sale of products, supplies and services through the various networking systems such as electronic data interchange & Internet.

E-procurement does not mean just online purchasing decisions. It involves connecting the suppliers and employees of the organizations into the purchasing network companies that embarking on e-procurement buying programmes, will be able to aggregate purchasing across multiple departments or divisions without removing individual control, reduce rogue buying, can get the best price and quality products from a wide range of suppliers. For the suppliers, e-procurement is a boon because they can be very proactive in their business proceedings.

Although e-procurement is still in its infancy, some companies have made impressive savings through radical streamlining of their buying activities. E-procurement actually automates the purchasing and procurement process of a company and integrates the buyers and suppliers through relevant IT systems, which together forms a value network for the company. The automation of the end-to-end procurement workflow has taken over the traditional purchase order software. It helps to improve the organizational efficiency and control over the procurement activities and need not worry about post award management.

The advent of cloud computing concepts and using the cloud process for e-procurement has automated the procurement process further. The management of agreements & contracts, price list verification, product comparisons, article selection has not only become simplified but also speedy. The post award management is highly configurable, with detailed reports, order confirmation, and other display of procurement transactions. The cloud process verifies the accuracy of electronic invoices and article level matching of the relevant contract, ending with the automatic accounting from backend financial systems.

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