The obstruction of the Suez Canal in 2021 disrupted the procurement of companies worldwide. In times of crisis and economic uncertainty as we know now, procurement transformation helps organizations avoid supply chain disruptions, giving them a competitive edge. Keep reading to learn about how to do procurement transformation the right way in your company.
Trustpair secures your entire P2P process thanks to automated and ongoing account validation. We integrate directly with the main procurement portals, streamlining your processes from end to end.
What is procurement transformation?
Procurement transformation is about making your procurement process evolve to remain competitive. In other words, it’s digital transformation applied to the procurement function. Your operations are streamlined using automation, which increases your team’s overall capabilities.
This process is also referred to as as digital transformation procurement. It’s taking the task of sourcing procurement, category management, and all other procurement activities from operational to strategic.
Optimizing your procurement function happens through assessing your current processes and seeing where you can improve. Procurement transformation requires identifying where your teams spend inefficient amounts of time, and which procurement activities could be streamlined.
Nowadays, implementing this involves using technology — mainly SaaS. Procurement platforms, fraud detection software, ChatGPT… It’s all about using automation solutions to reduce repetitive and labor-intensive tasks. Those systems also help make sense of huge quantities of data, giving you insights that support better decision-making.
By improving your procurement processes, your company will get more efficient and save money — but that’s not the only thing!
What are its main benefits?
There are numerous benefits to procurement transformation — all increasing your company’s overall performance:
Gain a competitive edge
Digitilizing your procurement is all about creating more value for your business. It aligns your procurement strategy and processes with your company’s strategic goals, making it easier to achieve them. Procurement transformation gives organizations a competitive edge today and in the future. By elevating and optimizing your procurement, your whole company becomes more agile and more productive, able to remain successful in changing markets.
Your procurement function now supports all other departments swiftly, ensuring that your business stays ahead of the curve by:
- Sourcing quality goods services,
- Reducing costs,
- Improving your supplier relationship,
- Mitigating supplier risks and reducing third-party fraud.
Reduce your costs
With improved processes come cost savings because:
- Your company sources cheaper and better-fit suppliers,
- Your team spends less time managing your procurement process.
Procurement platforms for example allow you to manage your sourcing and contract management easily. It saves you from chasing emails, spreadsheets, and contracts every time you need to pay an invoice or need a new provider.
Sourcing transformation is one aspect that improves your procurement organization. Transformation procurement should also include anti-fraud software, so you don’t lose money from fraud — directly through cybercrime, and from reputational losses.
Trustpair protects your business from fraud. We secure your procure pay (P2P) process from end-to-end, ensuring you don’t fall victim to fraud schemes like invoice fraud.
Improve collaboration
Procurement transformation done right requires involving all the relevant stakeholders.
We’ll see more about this below, but in a nutshell: it’s all about making processes that work for everyone. It means involving your internal and external stakeholders (vendors) in your procurement transformation journey.
Many vendor management systems include features that improve collaboration with different teams and suppliers.
For example, through procurement supply chain software, Legal and Finances can access your procurement platform and keep track of contracts and invoices. Your suppliers can have separate access to submit their invoices, ask questions, and upload essential supplier compliance documents.
It’s all about centralizing the necessary information to make working together smoother and less time-consuming. This increased transparency means everyone is on the same page and contributes to building lasting trust.
Secure your supplier relationships
Added transparency and efficiency turn into better relationships with your vendors, who are paid on time and according to their contract specifications. But procurement transformation can go a step further in securing your relationships.
Fraud is rising: our latest survey shows that 96% of US companies were targeted by at least one fraud attempt in 2023. Fraudsters come up with more elaborate schemes all the time.
Vendor fraud for example is becoming increasingly popular. In this scheme, criminals impersonate your real supplier but switch their bank account data for their own.
Sadly, the vast majority of these frauds remain undetected until it’s too late: you’ve sent funds to the impostors, and your vendors are left waiting for their payment. When that happens, you not only lose money — you also damage your relationship with your suppliers.
That’s why anti-fraud software must be an important piece of your resilient procurement transformation strategy. Using Trustpair means securing your procure-to-pay process so you always know who you’re paying.
Enhance compliance
Another advantage to procurement transformation is in keeping up with regulatory requirements.
With ever-changing regulatory landscapes, it’s more important than ever to:
- Keep track of important documents (audit trail) and
- Maintain your processes up-to-date with laws and regulations.
Improved procurement processes make complying with industry standards, internal policies, and local/international regulations easier. Thanks to technology, it’s also easier to monitor supplier performance to ensure cost effectiveness, quality and compliance. Procurement platforms can help keep an eye on your vendor KPIs and remind you to factor in legal requirements.
This helps mitigate the key risks in your procure-to-pay process and reduces the risk of financial fraud such as internal fraud risks. It also protects your business from reputational losses that come from associating with a bad supplier or receiving legal fines.
Download our latest white paper with Deloitte to learn more about procurement trends!
What are the 7 steps of procurement transformation?
Like any process, digital procurement transformation involves several key steps:
- Review your current processes. It’s important to gain awareness of how things are really done in your company: what are your current workflows? What tools are people using? Audit your current processes to understand what’s happening and what can be improved — from repetitive tasks to data silos.
- Outline areas of improvement. Once you know which parts of your procurement process need to be improved, look out for ways to optimize them. Can software be used to automate some tasks? Can you simplify and streamline parts of your workflows?
- Plan your transformation. Create a procurement transformation roadmap highlighting your goals, timeline, and resources needed to implement your strategy. Also include the ROI and benefits of these initiatives to gain internal leverage.
- Involve key stakeholders. Ask different employees, managers, and top managers to give their input and champion your project. It’s best to involve people with different functions and from different departments, as that will ensure a comprehensive strategy and full internal adoption. You can also interview vendors for their feedback on your current processes and proposed changes.
- Select and implement the right software solutions. With your needs identified, and the input of your various stakeholders, it’s time to source the software services that will help you streamline and secure your procurement process. We recommend a procurement platform as well as anti-fraud software.
- Educate and manage change. As you implement your improved procurement processes, remember to communicate the benefits procurement transformation will bring to the individual stakeholders and your company at large. Education of your employees and suppliers is key to ensuring success, so address any objections and celebrate any win to boost adoption.
- Measure and improve. It’s important to determine some KPIs to monitor the adoption and success of your transformation. Share the benefits high and clear (reduction in payment delays, spending less time managing suppliers, fraud, …) while also thinking of further improvements to your processes.
The best practices to build an effective procurement roadmap
Ready to implement procurement transformation in your company? Before you jump in, read on for the 3 best practices ensuring it is a success.
Understand your strategic business goals
The intention behind the transformation of your procurement department and processes shouldn’t be to involve more technology for the sake of it. Not everything needs to go through ChatGPT.
Effective procurement transformation is about aligning your processes with your organization’s strategic goals. It means identifying the current and future needs of your company. Understanding the board’s (or management’s) long-term vision will help you craft a procurement process that helps steer the business in the right direction.
Getting your CEO, COO, or even CFO’s input on the transformation is key. Knowing what’s at stake and the context in which your company evolves will inform your decisions for the better, ensuring your upgraded procurement process helps reach those strategic goals.
Involve all relevant stakeholders
While it’s tempting to work in your bubble when focusing on a project — especially rewriting processes — it’s exactly what you shouldn’t do.
Anyone in change management will tell you a successful procurement transformation strategy needs to involve different people. That guarantees two things:
- The transformation meets the actual needs of your employees and company.
- The new process will be more easily adopted.
We recommend involving all your stakeholders in your digital procurement process. That’s why “People” is one of the four procurement pillars. Depending on your business, this includes employees and managers from:
- Procurement
- Legal
- Finances
- Operations
- Marketing
- Accounting
It’s also important to involve your suppliers in the process. Ask vendors of different goods services if they have some input to offer, like a process they use with another one of their clients that works well. It’s important to gather different ideas and break silos, especially at the beginning stages of your procurement transformation roadmap.
It also means you will set up a workflow that meets most stakeholders’ needs, ensuring a high adoption rate.
Prioritize supplier relationship management
Last but not least: think about your suppliers. Procurement is more than sourcing the best product or services at the cheapest price possible. It’s about avoiding supply chain disruptions, and forging long-lasting relationships with your suppliers, making them a part of your competitive advantage in your industry. Following vendor management best practices will help you achieve this.
The digitalization of your procurement process needs to account for this. Going from sourcing from suppliers to actual supplier relationship management:
- Knowing your suppliers,
- Communicating well with them,
- Respecting your contract specifications.
This means seeing your vendors as part of your procurement teams, making them strategic allies to your success, and improving your supply chain management in the long run. For this to be possible, you need to be adequately protected against the risk of third-party fraud.
Trustpair uses automatic and ongoing account validation of your vendors to ensure you are indeed sending funds to them — not an impersonator. Our software does these checks in real-time, reducing the time it takes to pay your suppliers. It’s also more secure than doing so manually, as this part of your procurement process is both time-consuming and error-prone.
With Trustpair, you can approve payments for your suppliers instantaneously, knowing it will go to your real suppliers. The time freed can be used to optimize your procurement processes even further, ensuring you reach your strategic goals. We’ve worked with 300 companies worldwide, with a 100% success rate against fraud.
Key Takeaways:
- Procurement transformation is the process of upgrading your workflows so they’re more efficient, helping your company to reach its strategic goals.
- It involves implementing software technology, such as a procurement platform and anti-fraud software.
- Trustpair protects you against third-party fraud that could damage your supplier relationship and lead to financial losses.
