Top 5 Objectives of Procurement and eSourcing

When you choose to switch from trying to source products without any automation and opt instead for procurement sourcing software, you’ll find that eSourcing will bring you to a whole new level when it comes to procurement sourcing management. You’ll realize that procurement and eSourcing go hand in hand, and you’ll wonder how you managed before without some automation.

However, there is still a learning curve for procurement sourcing processes, and understanding the objectives of eSourcing is important, particularly if you want to impact your bottom line positively.

 

Procurement and eSourcing: What Are the Objectives of Procurement Management?

 

It’s never a bad idea to review the procurement management process and ensure that everything is running smoothly before adding procurement sourcing to the mix. Generally speaking, your procurement management objectives should read something like:

    • Support operations. This includes buying goods and services, sourcing the right products, and delivering on time.
    • Manage procurement effectively. This consists of all levels of the procurement management process flow, including selection and evaluation of suppliers, review of all work across your organization, and management of internal operations.
    • Support organizational objectives. As a manager, it’s always important to be a team player and be collaborative. Ethics in procurement management includes fairness to your suppliers but to your own team as well.
    • Manage Risk. It’s important to consider the inherent risk with any supplier relationship and, you don’t want to increase the risk to your organization with any new supplier introduced in the sourcing process
    • Always keeping KPIs in mind. 

 

Procurement and eSourcing: What Are the Objectives of eSourcing?

 

When it comes to procurement and eSourcing, there are five main objectives that eSourcing can deliver  for your organization. Of course, you need the correct procurement sourcing systems and software to help you accomplish these goals, but finding the right tools and features shouldn’t be difficult once you’ve seen a few demos. Goals of eSourcing include:

  1. Increasing efficiency. eSourcing enables you to grow your supplier pool, which means you can communicate with and use more suppliers. With eAuction tools such as SoftAuctions and reverse auctions, you can increase competition without using more manpower.
  2. Increasing overall ROI. With your team doing less manual tasks, they can devote more time to other collaborative tasks. This also adds to efficiency and frees up the team to collaborate earlier in the process with your key stakeholders. 
  3. Being transparent. Procurement and eSourcing software keep things transparent for both sides—your suppliers—which adds to trust and professionalism. 
  4. Being compliant. Using software, where you can go back and track everything you’ve done, makes everything simple should you have to go back and go through an audit in the future or find an event run by a departed team member. 
  5. Keeping information centralized. Your entire procurement process will be so much easier with everything centrally located. This also adds to collaboration and team efficiency, not to mention easing the pain if any team members leave your department.

 

Procurement and eSourcing: What Should I Look for in eSourcing Software?

 

It’s advantageous to keep an eye on current trends in strategic procurement management, but you also know best what will work for your company. Generally, the best in eSourcing software will have:

  • RFx capabilities
  • Ability to convert or easily ingest spreadsheet data
  • eAuction capabilities
  • Templates or copy capabilities
  • Intuitive workflow and dashboard
  • Side-by-side comparisons
  • Cross-functional team scoring
  • Award or scenario-based optimization

Of course, there will likely be other features you want for procurement and eSourcing software, but these are some of the general must-haves. 

Image of a long road for an article about Top 5 Objectives of Procurement and eSourcing.

To find out more about procurement and eSourcing software, or if you’d like to schedule a demo, contact us EC Sourcing Group today at 973-936-9672. We want you to reimagine the way you think about procurement.