How to Streamline Procurement with Cloud-Based Order Management System

Today's fast-paced business environment demands efficient, transparent, and controlled procurement and supply chain processes. Manual and disjointed order management workflows result in maverick spending, missed discounts, and poor visibility into expenditures. Cloud-based order management systems offer a solution.

Cloud-based order management centralizes and automates the complete order-to-cash process on one accessible, cloud-hosted platform.

Key Capabilities of Cloud-Based Order Management

A centralized procurement catalog provides a guided buying experience. It contains preferred suppliers, pre-negotiated contracts, and product catalogs tailored to each department. This reduces off-contract purchases and maverick spending.

Automated, rules-based approval workflows route orders to the appropriate people for review. Factors like total spend and product type determine the workflow. This increases oversight and policy compliance.

Real-time budget visibility reporting provides actionable insights into budgets, spending patterns, and trends. Procurement teams can make smarter purchasing decisions based on this data.

Supplier management capabilities allow centralized onboarding and management of supplier information. This includes catalogs, pricing/discounts, contacts, and more. All supplier data resides in a single location.

Purchase order automation generates POs from approved requisitions. The system sends them directly to suppliers for fulfillment. This eliminates manual purchase order creation.

The system matches POs, receipts and invoices for streamlined processing. It automatically triggers payments by extracting invoice data. This removes manual invoice reconciliations.

Dashboards and reporting offer real-time analytics and insights into spending. Leadership gains macro and micro visibility into budgets, trends, and performance.

Advantages of Streamlining Order Management With Cloud

Increased control over maverick spending occurs through the guided buying environment. This reduces off-contract and non-compliant purchases.

Optimized spending results from leveraging preferred supplier pricing and discounts. This directly improves the bottom line.

Process efficiency improves substantially. Automation eliminates manual efforts while digital approvals quicken turnaround times.

Real-time visibility through dashboards grants insights into budgets, trends, and performance at both high levels and down to the transaction details.

Compliance increases as automated workflows enforce procurement policies and approval requirements consistently.

Costs decrease since the cloud-hosted platform requires no on-premises infrastructure. The vendor hosts and manages it.

With cloud-based order management, procurement transforms from a tactical function into a strategic one. Tight integration of purchasing, budgets, and payments enables streamlined, optimized processes. Guided buying, pricing controls, and automation work together to optimize spend while reducing rogue purchases. Now procurement provides real business value.

Key Capabilities Buyers Should Assess

Configurable workflows allow tailoring approval rules and processes to fit the organization's needs and policies.

Robust reporting functionality provides actionable spend insights. Advanced analytics, forecasts, KPI monitoring, and drill-down capabilities are essential.

Mobile access keeps procurement teams productive on-the-go. Native apps allow approvals, supplier management, and report reviews while mobile.

Integration with ERP, payments, and other backend systems creates a unified data view across procurement, budgets, and accounting. This empowers smarter decisions.

Supplier portals enable self-service management of information like catalogs, contacts, and PO responses. This eases supplier management burdens.

Global support capabilities including multiple languages, currencies, and local regulations are mandatory for multinational organizations.

Strong security protocols, controls, and certifications ensure data protection. This is a critical evaluation checklist item.

Conclusion

In summary, cloud-based order management improves procurement's agility, compliance, and cost-savings. Complete spend visibility and control enables better budget decisions. Guided buying cuts maverick spending through streamlined purchasing. Automation provides major efficiency gains by eliminating manual efforts. Cloud platforms empower procurement to evolve from tactical roles into strategic ones delivering robust business value.

Here's how GEP can help you automate order management.