What Are the Benefits of Procurement Software?

Before the Internet, procurement was a tedious process. It consisted of phone calls, face-to-face meetings, and endless paper trails and filing. Naturally, this slows down the process of the entire supply chain. However, eProcurement (which essentially refers to selling and buying services and goods on the internet) came along and streamlined the whole process. eSourcing in procurement leads to further procurement optimization. Read on to learn about the benefits of procurement software and having a procurement spend analysis dashboard.

Your Procurement Dashboard, Explained

You want your procurement spend analysis dashboard to have robust features that help you, not hinder you, regarding eSourcing and other processes. Your procurement spend analysis dashboard should provide you with visibility to everything that you are managing. All contracts, projects, spend, key suppliers, and the like. Some people might refer to this as a procurement cockpit. Tools such as automation, artificial intelligence, and advanced spend analytics speed up the procurement process. But, what features should you look for in procurement spend analysis dashboard?

Your Procurement Dashboard: Features to Look For

Every company’s needs will be slightly different. Procurement for government projects, for example, will look different than the transportation industry. However, the general concepts and features that you need in procurement spend analysis dashboards remain very similar. Some of the features to look for when you’re shopping a procurement spend analysis dashboard include:

When you’re considering eProcurement software, you also want to ensure that the software interface is intuitive and easy to use. The transparency aspects of your procurement spend analysis dashboard and software aid collaboration with both your team and your suppliers. However, if the software is difficult to use and not everyone is on the same page, using eProcurement software to streamline your process may be a bit difficult. This is one of the procurement risks that you may take.

Top Benefits of Using eProcurement Software

The benefits of procurement software are many. One of the benefits of having a procurement spend analysis dashboard is finding rogue spend, controlling spend, and having access to analytical reports that you hadn’t had before.

Seeing exactly where money is going (and why) is imperative to tighten your budget and make your process more seamless. Some of the many benefits of eProcurement software include:

    • Better spend management. Analytics help you make better decisions.
    • Automation of tasks and approvals. This helps to eliminate paperwork as well as the labor associated with it.
    • Real-time spend visibility. This allows you to make quick decisions, should you need to.
    • Faster turnaround time for stakeholders. The right eProcurement software provides many improvements in the area of efficiency.
    • Happier stakeholders. Faster turnaround time means happier stakeholders!
    • Access to self-service procurement status for stakeholders. The right software has everyone on the same page.
    • All procurement data and tasks in one place. Having a centralized repository is essential for efficiency.

In short, the benefits of eProcurement software equates to you saving time and money, while also building better relationships with your stakeholders and suppliers.Image of a cartoon woman with an inquisitive face for an article about “What are the benefits of procurement software?”.

If you’d like to hear more about procurement spend analysis dashboards and how they work, or you would like to schedule a demo, contact EC Sourcing Group today at 973-936-9672. We want to help you reimagine the way you think about procurement.