Spend management, Uncategorized
How to do more fulfilling procurement work
Procurement is the backbone of operational efficiency. Your team is tasked with finding suppliers, negotiating contracts, building relationships, and managing risk – work that directly affects the wider business’s continuity and success.
Yet, many procurement teams find their functions reduced to “PO processers,” merely facilitating purchase orders rather than acting as strategic partners that keep businesses afloat amid change.
Alarmingly, only 25% of procurement leaders believe their business sees them as exceptional performers. The main reason: time-consuming admin.
Where Procurement’s time goes
Most of your high-value strategic work is put on pause or delayed because of admin, tasks like manual matching of invoice line items.
Because companies require budget owners to raise a PO when they want to buy something to ensure compliance with company spending rules, your team is left with a mountain of admin. Even the small, non-strategic purchases go through the same cumbersome process.
Just the process of onboarding a vendor – that is, setting up an organisation as an approved supplier – can take up to 6 months to onboard a new vendor at large organisations. This often leads to an internal conflict as requests become “stuck in procurement”.
The time spent on admin is a shortsighted use of Procurement’s potential.
What Procurement could accomplish with more time
Procurement comes into its own when it’s looking forward.
When it’s anticipating future needs, risks, and opportunities instead of just focusing on immediate transactions or cost-cutting. Creating contingency plans. Strengthening supplier partnerships. Prioritising socially responsible vendors.
But strategic, value-driven activities take time. So, when most of it is spent reconciling last month’s transactions, your business has missed an opportunity to grow.
Procurement leaders are aware of what’s at stake. More than half (56%) are seeking more flexible automation tools and methods. About a third (36%) named streamlining purchases outside of procurement as a top improvement.
They know that with the right tools to reduce admin and add insight, Procurement can finally focus on the strategic work it’s meant for. A tool that offers actionable data enables more forward-looking progressive work – which means greater resilience and faster innovation.
In a non-production procurement role, progressive work could look like:
- Proactively seeking and partnering with diverse suppliers that strengthen community ties or improve brand reputation.
- Sourcing environmentally friendly materials or services that meet the growing consumer demand for sustainability.
- Developing a robust risk management strategy to get ahead of supply chain disruptions and ensure continuity in business operations.
In a production procurement role, progressive work could look like:
- Implementing just-in-time inventory systems to reduce holding costs and increase efficiency, ensuring that materials arrive exactly when needed without excess stock.
- Collaboratively planning with suppliers to improve forecasting accuracy and align production schedules, which can help mitigate risks associated with delays or shortages.
- Tracking materials from supplier to production line, allowing for quicker response to potential disruptions in real time.
Your team were never meant to be “PO pushers”, even if that’s how the rest of the business saw you. But you can quickly shift that perception by taking a more modern approach to your daily activities.
How Soldo supports procurement leaders to become progressive
Shifting Procurement to a progressive function is about empowerment: enabling employees to make non-strategic purchases without a PO, automating approvals for bigger purchases, and reducing admin while maintaining full visibility and control.
By decentralising more company spending, your team can reduce their admin burden while staying in control.
How Soldo works:
- Employees are issued virtual or physical cards, empowering them to buy within set limits and rules, reducing delays.
- With purchase restrictions by category, project, or team, Procurement can track spending in real time, preventing overspend.
With Soldo, matching receipts with purchases becomes simple. And for some vendors, like Amazon Business, the platform even reconciles purchases automatically, eliminating errors and saving procurement hours of valuable time.
In the long-term, procurement teams can move past their reputation as “PO pushers”, be held in high regard as the exceptional performers they already are, and – most importantly – help their businesses face whatever’s coming their way.
See how Soldo can help your procurement team do more strategic, high-value work. Download our guide on how to build a more agile procurement team.
