Finance
Why your procurement team needs a strategic tech advantage
Procurement leaders are eager to modernise their workflows – not just because automation, predictive analytics, and generative AI will allow them to accomplish more, faster. Their drive for modernisation is also personal.
After years of being viewed as PO processors, procurement leaders are ready to take a seat at the table. They have forward-looking ideas, and they’re prepared to make a meaningful impact.
These leaders recognise that cost-cutting is only one dimension of their role. With specific, advanced tools in place, procurement can act as drivers of strategic change, helping businesses improve performance on critical metrics like project turnarounds and reduce supplier risks.
So, what’s holding them back?
3 barriers stopping procurement from doing their best work
Procurement can drive business growth in every aspect. But they’ll need the power of technology to do it.
Because procurement teams are expected to deliver across every competing measure – like cost-cutting and growth – they need all the help they can get.
The right technology can solve common problems like:
Time-draining manual admin
If you use POs for every transaction – even the small, non-strategic ones – you’re likely to come up against bottlenecks along the way. Automating smaller, more frequent purchases can free up your time to focus on bigger ticket items and high-value projects that contribute directly to business growth.
Indecipherable, unactionable data
When data is scattered across disconnected systems, visibility into where your money is going is compromised. This lack of cohesion impacts more than just reporting. It prevents you from making informed, defensible decisions. Centralising all business spend can help you make better-informed decisions, like proactively managing risks, negotiating better terms with suppliers, and forecasting future spend more accurately.
Internal, cross-departmental friction
Inflexible processes and lengthy vendor onboarding times delay production and create friction between procurement and your most driven employees. You want control; they want to get their jobs done. With the right tools, procurement teams can facilitate essential purchases efficiently, enabling your teams to accomplish their tasks without unnecessary delays.
The vision of a modern procurement function
Using technology – intentionally and strategically – can help procurement evolve into a proactive, dependable function.
- Time consuming processes become automatic reconciliations and approvals.
- Backlogs of unreviewed POs go through a dedicated “fast lane”.
- Outdated, fragmented spend information is consolidated and recorded in real time.
- Tense inter-departmental meetings become more collaborative.
- Critical, last-minute purchases are supported through ready-to-deploy contingency funds.
- New opportunities go from “stuck in procurement” to “championed by procurement”.
How Soldo helps procurement teams level-up
- See where your spend goes: Soldo centralises procurement data into a single platform to help you spot trends and identify risks with greater agility. You can even integrate sustainability metrics into supplier information and automatically calculate your carbon impact.
- Ensure compliance without slowing down workflows: Soldo’s platform automatically enforces spending policies, giving procurement leaders peace of mind that purchases comply with company policies. At the same time, employees are free to make essential purchases within pre-approved parameters, minimising delays, and unnecessary approvals.
- Automate non-strategic purchases (which can represent up to 80% of your spend): Reconciliations and approvals are automated, and you can spin up one-time, virtual cards to work around lengthy vendor onboarding processes.
Want to speed up your procurement function?
Tell us about how your procurement team works, and we’ll show you how Soldo can simplify your procurement workflow and support smarter, faster decision-making at every step.
