What impact does good procurement have on business-wide success?
Procurement determines whether your business has timely access to the goods and
services it needs. Without a high performing procurement function, your business can experience long supply
delays and spiraling costs. But an empowered procurement team can reduce risk, boost your efficiency, and
contribute to strategic goals that drive business-wide success.
What are procurement services?
Procurement services are third-party services that deliver specialized support for
the procurement process. They come in a variety of forms, including but not limited to:
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Procurement as a Service, where all the skills, capabilities, platforms,
and resources needed to manage procurement processes are consolidated in a single service.
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Digital procurement services, which deliver procurement technology like
Procure-to-Pay platforms, analytics dashboards, intelligence delivery tools, and AI-powered
capabilities.
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Procurement consulting services, where teams come into a procurement
organization to make recommendations to improve operations — and in many cases, implement those
recommendations too.
How does procurement as a service work?
Procurement as a Service (PaaS) is a method of outsourcing part or all of your
procurement function or processes to an expert provider. This specialist service combines deep expertise and
cutting-edge technology and analytics to support a range of common procurement activities including:
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Spend data analysis
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Cost saving opportunity identification
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Contract negotiation based on market intelligence
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Procurement category management
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Day-to-day procurement task automation
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Supplier relationship management
How does procurement as a service drive cost savings?
With PaaS, you get the procurement expertise and experience you need to achieve the
best prices and contracts possible from suppliers. And specialist procurement service providers often have
access to data and insights you can’t get anywhere else.
Having a centralized procurement platform makes it easier to identify areas where
your costs are potentially too high, and unlocks ways for your business to make savings while maintaining
product quality and operational stability.
What are the additional benefits of procurement as a service beyond cost savings?
PaaS does far more that identify cost savings — it’s a key accelerator
for value across your business, delivering:
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A stable supply of essential goods
Ultimately, procurement’s function is getting goods where
they’re needed, when they’re needed. And in a market as volatile as today’s, your
team’s ability to do that depends on access to current data and oversight of global trends.
It’s difficult to do that as an individual business, but it’s a procurement service
provider’s modus operandi. So, tapping into their knowledge and experience is one of the best ways
to weather market turbulence and keep your supply chain stable.
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A streamlined procurement process that’s easier to scale
Centralizing procurement into a single platform automates workflows,
supports compliance, and consolidates vendor management. And that streamlines the entire procurement
process. PaaS also reduces the need for manual interventions and accelerates approvals, meaning you can
quickly add procurement resources when needed and reduce them when appropriate — supporting
business-wide flexibility and scalability.
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Access to strong, reliable data for insight-driven decision making
PaaS uses advanced data analytics to identify risks, trends, and
opportunities to improve performance. It delivers a centralized platform that captures all your spend,
interactions, and transactions and provides curated data sets and actionable insights that help you make
the right decisions at the right time.
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Better visibility, value tracking, and control
With real-time insight across the whole procurement lifecycle, you get full
visibility into supplier performance, cost savings, and contract compliance. And with less day-to-day
procurement work to manage, you have more time to look at the bigger picture and take control of every
decision. You can also benefit from intuitive dashboards and reporting to give key stakeholders the
insight into procurement they need to understand the value of your work and see the positive changes
you’re making.
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Simplified compliance
PaaS enables you to embed policy enforcement and clear audit trails
directly into your procurement workflows. That means you don’t need to constantly consider how
different transactions align with regulations and internal policy or make sure you keep up with
disconnected paper trails — the platform will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
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Improved supplier relationships
A consolidated platform for procurement supports transparency and
collaboration — and that’s the basis for good supplier relationships. By aligning
expectations and goals with an insight-driven platform you can find new ways to create mutual value for
your business and your suppliers, and foster productive long-term partnerships.
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Responsible sourcing built in to support corporate ESG goals
PaaS enables you to build ESG criteria into your contract management and
supplier selection processes. It makes it easier to prioritize vendors based on their environmental and
social values — as well as their prices and timescales. That way, you get a fully rounded view of
your options and can make decisions to partner with suppliers that meet all of your requirements.
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Access to expertise, skills, and new perspectives
Partnering with procurement experts gives you access to a broader pool of
skills, specialized for procurement. Procurement experts have deep domain experience, access to
specialist capabilities, and market and industry awareness. And by combining their expertise with your
internal procurement resources, you can improve your ability to make the right decisions, spot new
opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.
How much strategic value do procurement services deliver?
Procurement services can transform how you manage spend, address risk, and align
procurement decisions with business-wide goals. With specialist expertise to lean on in times of volatility and
data-driven insights and analytics to inform your decisions, procurement departments can deliver and demonstrate
extensive strategic value.
Conclusion
Procurement services — particularly Procurement as a Service — deliver
a wide range of benefits that go far beyond cost savings. They keep your supply chain moving amid even the most
turbulent markets, deliver data-driven insights and visibility into your whole procurement process, and simplify
compliance and responsible sourcing.
To learn more about WNS Procurement’s procurement services, and discover what
they could help your organization achieve, visit click here.