The role of procurement has been changing over the last few years, developing into a much more strategic part of a company. That is in part recognition of the increasingly substantial amounts of funds necessary for organizational purchases, and with this shift in understanding of function has come a need for improved processes and which has resulted in a growing move towards digital processing. Often decentralized and highly Paper-intensive, conventional requisition and order processing can be costly and ineffective. For many procurement or finance chiefs it is now a significant priority to supply a solution to increase efficiency and reduce the cost burden.
Among the main points to Emerge last week from an informal meeting of ministers of the EU Competitiveness Council Internal Market and Industry was that modernizing public management across Europe was critical to boosting competitiveness – with particular emphasis placed on the importance of moving to digital processing for public procurement. The meeting in Vilnius 22-23 July was chaired by Lithuania’s Minister of Economy, Evaldas Gustas, who states that automating procurement process, could ‘increase gains’. In addition, he explained, End-to-end e-procurement can maximize the efficiency of public expenditure and become a new source of economic growth.
In April 2012 that the EU declared In Delivering savings for Europe: moving to complete e-procurement for most public purchases by 2016 that Increasing using e-procurement in Europe can create substantial savings for European taxpayers… E-procurement may also take part in providing new sources of economic growth and jobs. The European Commission has adopted a communication setting out a strategy to make the usage of e-procurement the rule in the EU by mid-2016.The EU reported in the time That public entities that had already moved to e-procurement estimated savings of 5-20 percent on procurement processing costs, and the ministers in the Vilnius meeting concluded that EU member states should be invited to move to e-procurement
Investing in an automated solution streamlines procure to pay process.
Purchase requests are made Easier with user friendly online input which could include automated population of known fields and preferred supplier choice option/enforcement. Multi-level authorization enhances management, while audit trail and historic information ease identification of problem areas. Moving to an electronic Solution gives a company the advantages of centralization, while at exactly the exact same time allowing for individual company requirements to be fulfilled – for example for particular avenues for purchase type, business area or seller to be defined – and there’s now no additional need for re-typing info. Additionally, the business gains in the reduction in costs associated with moving away from a paper based system – for processing, stationery, postage, storage.