Unveiling the Power of ProcureTech: Busting Myths and Building a Business Case

Procurement professionals often find themselves bogged down by manual processes, administrative burdens, stakeholder requests, and unreliable reporting and data. These challenges divert focus from the strategic work procurement professionals are there to do.

Procurement is tasked with obtaining the goods and services an organisation needs to support daily operations, including sourcing, negotiating terms, purchasing items, receiving and inspecting goods as necessary and keeping records of all the steps in the process.

But additionally, Procurement manages organisational risk associated with spend, key supplier relationships and contracts. And increasingly, Procurement is becoming the function driving ESG engagement and requirements.

Yet, in some instances procurement continues to be viewed as an operational part of a business rather than a strategic function with real potential to positively impact an organisation.

These challenges are common within procurement, and without the right pathway they will continue to cause issues for procurement and their organisations. In this article we look at how ProcureTech can alleviate some key challenges and how you can get stakeholder buy-in by debunking a few common misconceptions about smart procurement platforms.

When building a business case for anything that requires ongoing budget, like new technology, a common question from decision makers is who will be impacted by the change. In a post-covid world organisations are dealing with tighter purse strings, but a bigger appetite for positive change.

Whether you have a decentralised or centre-led procurement function the reality is that many organisations will benefit from implementing a fit-for-purpose ProcureTech platform. But another reality is that stakeholders outside of procurement may not realise the organisation-wide benefits to this type of software.

So, who does benefit from ProcureTech?

At a high level ProcureTech is designed to increase compliance, value and efficiency while reducing risk on purchasing across entire organisations. This sounds procurement-centric at face value, but what does it mean when we drill deeper?

As an example, let’s look at efficiency gains through technology. An ongoing challenge for procurement professionals is having time taken from their day-to-day to answer administrative or process questions from other departments. Marketing, Events, Engineering and Facilities Management are ongoing offenders in organisations, spending many hours each week bypassing policy documents and sense-checking buying decisions with Procurement directly.

But, in this scenario, it’s not just Procurement who are losing valuable time each week, it’s the departments who are engaging Procurement too. If Marketing spend ten hours a week running queries by Procurement, an organisation has essentially lost 20 hours that could have been spent elsewhere. If you apply this theory to all areas of the business, you paint a picture of how impactful a smart procurement platform can be for overall efficiency.

Hear from ProcureTech users: Read how our clients Cenitex transitioned seamlessly from a centralised to centre-led procurement model by implementing VendorPanel.

General Manager of Procurement, Tim Jones noted that “implementing a system that enabled non-Procurement staff to compliantly source and evaluate quotes helped free up significant Procurement resources for more strategic projects.”

Debunked: VendorPanel users, who often sit outside Procurement, report an average time saving of 4.5 hours per RFx across sourcing activity done through the platform – freeing up time for more strategic projects and planning.

And time savings is just one example of how ProcureTech benefits departments outside of Procurement, with cost-avoidance, increased compliance and improved reporting and data also ranking highly on organisation’s priorities.

We can all agree that setting impactful ESG targets as an organisations has many benefits for communities, the environment and the business itself. ESG requirements in procurement drive responsible sourcing, risk management, stakeholder trust, innovation, and long-term value while contributing positively to society and the environment.

ESG requirements in procurement and across wider organisational objectives are also becoming increasingly mandated by governments, executive boards and industry bodies. Organisations need to be conscious of who they are engaging with and how that could impact their reputation.

As an example, a procurement professional may be tasked with inviting suppliers who have a Modern Slavery Statement, are Indigenous owned or are a Carbon Neutral business. But with these increasing mandates, has the process for finding the right suppliers become any easier? And how do you accurately report on this?

Seemingly not, as according to KPMG the two biggest barriers organisations face when it comes to prioritising ESG are time and data integrity. Currently your Procurement team or Buyers may have to trawl through pages of Google search results to find the suppliers with the right credentials, and then comes the challenge of validating the accuracy of the data.

But ESG responsibilities extend beyond procurement; they encompass the entire organisation's ethical and sustainable practices. It's about doing the right thing across all business functions. And although the right ProcureTech solution can transform this process, we need to remind Executives and Senior Leadership that the reputational and financial risk that comes with unethical sourcing will impact the wider organisation.

What’s the solution?

VendorPanel has formed a pioneering partnership with givvable, an award-winning platform that uses AI to validate supplier sustainability credentials. This integrated solution enables buyers to source goods and services from suppliers with strong ESG credentials, at the point of purchase.

givvable is an Australian technology company designed to help organisation's discover opportunities in their supply chain to validate and accelerate their sustainability targets. They are a data aggregator that leverages AI and data models to source and categorise over 1,500 ESG credentials.

Users of VendorPanel’s Go to Market module can filter and select suppliers that have some of these validated credentials, categorised under six key ESG themes: community, social, ethical, diversity, environmental and governance.

Debunked: By leveraging ProcureTech, like VendorPanel, to help meet ESG requirements, organisations can tackle the biggest barriers head on. Our smart integrated solution allows ESG suppliers to be discovered and validated with no additional time required, arming Buyers with data that they can trust and accurately report on.

Additionally, businesses can significantly reduce the risk of reputational damage when utilising smart ProcureTech for ESG goals, helping mitigate potential for lost revenue as a result of unethical sourcing practices. This further highlights the critical importance of aligning procurement practices with broader organisational values and goals.

Procurement is about so much more than tenders! Procurement is required to ensure fair, competitive and compliant sourcing, value on purchases, good supplier relationship management to ensure projects are delivered on time and to an acceptable standard, and management of contracts.

We have touched on ways technology can help improve how Buyers go to market and who they engage with, but what comes after a contract has been awarded and how can ProcureTech help?

Many organisations will have a number of contracts in play at any given time, and contract management is a key part of the procurement lifecycle. Without the right processes and technology in place, contracts have the potential to cause serious challenges and setbacks for any business.

Without technology in place to help manage your contracts World Commerce & Contracting highlights significant cost leakage, averaging 8.6% across agreements, as a result of missed deliverables, renewals, and milestones, contributing to financial losses and operational disruptions.

These are inherent challenges with manual management of contracts. Related documentation can be scattered across multiple departments without a centralised source of truth, leading to a host of problems in contract retrieval and management. Docusign notes that on average, mid-size organisations, contract data is typically spread across 20+ different systems.

Case study: Read how Melbourne Airport got control of their contracts through VendorPanel’s Contract Management platform.

Debunked: Smart ProcureTech can help streamline the entire Source-to-Contract lifecycle, from policy guidance and planning, to effectively managing your contracts, and everything in between. Solutions are designed to ensure every part of your procurement event is efficient, compliant and driving value.

But as a note, it can help you boss your tenders too!

ProcureTech, like VendorPanel, is designed to be intuitive, easy to use and impactful for non-Procurement people within an organisation. It enables compliant, data-driven and valuable purchasing, helping eliminate the risk of reputational or financial damage at an organisational level.

But knowledge is power and PwC highlights that 88% of CEOs and other business executives struggle to capture value from their technology investments, driving hesitation and roadblocks in new solutions.

So, we hope this article has equipped you with some stats and conversation starters for you to take to your decision makers on why ProcureTech is a must-have for any organisation. But we’ve got lots more to share with you on how technology, like VendorPanel, can drive positive impact for your business.

If you’re interested in learning more about any of our Source-to-Contract solutions, please get in touch today.