Are you a procurement leader?
Struggling to mitigate the high costs and complexity of processes caused by supply chain disruptions? If the answer is YES, please read on…!
Such risks as extreme weather, economic uncertainties, global pandemic, etc., have proven to be absolute threats to procurement and your supply chain. But the good news is, there are short-term tactical and long-term strategic solutions available!
We’ll share some tips on how procurement leaders have prepared in advance to move forward working through the pandemic challenges using next-gen tools like approval routing & workflows, automation, AI, and analytics.
The goal is to help leverage these tools to engineer continuous improvement, get real-time visibility and tracking on corporate purchasing, stem maverick spend, improve process controls for internal and remote employees, eliminate paper forms and redundant data entry, and scale business growth. Let’s get started….!
Actionable Tips to Protect Against Supply Chain Disruption
- Build Strategic Relationships with Cross-Functional Stakeholders and Suppliers
We’ve all heard the proverbial saying – no man is an island – and it couldn’t be more relevant in this context. We hear and see every day that the supply chain has been hit extremely hard by the global pandemic. It’s critical for procurement leaders to optimize their relationships with cross-sectional stakeholders and suppliers to alleviate the bottlenecks, streamline business processes, increase global purchasing visibility to remote users and adapt quickly to the ‘new’ procurement landscape.
That means:
- Creating a communication and collaboration platform to enable an effortless exchange of information internally and externally. This helps cut costs, eliminates errors, and facilitates cost-sharing on matters of security and logistics.
- Keeping your suppliers on their toes with your customer demand cycles, purchasing behaviors, and market forecasts
- Discussing the possibility of securing significant bulk discounts for your niche products
- Developing and protecting your company’s competitive advantage by enhancing customer experience, running promotions, rewarding logistics providers, etc.
- Create a Real-Time Spend Visibility and Reporting Framework
Another way to weather the process inefficiencies and increased costs of supply chain disruption is by focusing more on ‘real-time’ spend visibility and reporting. But how do you enhance efficiency and save as much time as possible to focus on more critical business needs?
That’s where data-driven approval routing and workflow software comes into play. It enables you to create and alert a list of Approvers based on the data associated with a specific Process Request; in this case purchase requisitions, and then performs an Action upon final approval of that Request. This enables elements like visibility, auditability, and accuracy possible in just a few clicks.
And the reward? You’ll be able to:
- Identify cost-saving opportunities. Eliminate manual, inefficient, redundant, and error-prone tasks as you track the purchasing process and spend.
- Informed strategic sourcing decisions. Workflow software provides data-driven insights that guide accurate sourcing decision-making. This is possible through in-depth analysis of the competition, customers, and distribution channels, among other factors influencing procurement decisions.
- Improve supplier risk management. In a Gartner survey, only 21% of respondents admitted having a highly resilient network to overcome supply chain disruptions. That’s a worrying proportion, considering how common supply chain risks are and how devastating they can be. But the good news is, you can leverage real-time analytics and reporting to:
- Identify and document the risks
- Develop an integrated supplier database
- Segment suppliers into distinct risk categories
- Develop a risk management framework
- Leverage predictive intelligence to identify potential risks before they cause a disruption
- Keep supplier risk assessment a continuous process
Achieve More with Results-Proven Procurement Solutions
Supply chain disruptions are here to stay. And sometimes, there’s only so much we can do to stop frustrating risks like extreme weather and economic uncertainties. But does that mean you should just sit back and wait for your fate? Downright, NO!
You want to move proactively and plan ahead of potential supply chain disruptions by identifying alternative sourcing strategies, exploring new markets, improving internal and external processes and communication, and map out other shipping routes in case the current ones get destroyed by natural disasters, etc.
You also want to invest in next-gen procurement solutions like a purchase requisition management system that automates the process of creating supplier requisitions, submitting them for approval, and increasing visibility, auditability, and process controls. This enables the proactive management of spending, boosts the user experience and corporate compliance, and saves valuable time, among many other benefits.
ISS Group offers seamless Business Process Improvement (BPI) solutions to organizations using the QAD ERP system to ensure continuity, efficiency and accuracy from corporate and remote locations. Our solutions significantly enhance QAD by automating business processes utilizing innovative ‘Data-Driven’ Approval Routing and Workflow technology. Please contact us for a more comprehensive review of the best-in-class business process improvement and procurement solutions and a custom demo!
