Digitizing the End-to-End Procurement Lifecycle: A How-To Guide
The procurement lifecycle is powered by a complex machine, spanning a broad, interconnected network of processes and platforms that connects organizations with the goods and services they need. But over time, each element can grow even more complex, making the end-to-end procurement process inefficient and difficult to manage.
Digitizing the end-to-end procurement lifecycle enables organizations to overcome bottlenecks where manual systems let them down. It lightens the workload for procurement professionals, saving them time and effort on repetitive tasks. It also improves visibility, control, and auditability for all your procurement requests and transactions, as well as centralizing key procurement operations data.
At every stage, there’s an opportunity to streamline and evolve, from planning and forecasting, through supplier selection and purchasing, to fulfilment and delivery — you just need to identify the right use cases.
What are the key steps to digital transformation in procurement?
Effective procurement digital transformation means following a methodical step-by-step process. Each stage allows you and your team to reflect on where your challenges lie, and the best approach to overcome them.
As a guide, here’s a rundown of how to approach your digitization:
1. Find bottlenecks and improvement opportunities
Start by mapping the processes you currently follow for procurement. Some of your bottlenecks will be obvious — likely the factors that prompted you to explore digitizing in the first place — but others may be hidden behind workarounds.
Teams often set up their own non-standard processes to make manual work simpler, but they risk introducing errors, compliance issues, and data loss. And it might just be costing them more effort as they attempt to link their approach back to the main workflow.
Make sure you involve stakeholders from all the key procurement stages so you can identify any issues as requests move between different areas of the chain.
2. Build a structured plan for digitizing the end-to-end procurement cycle
All areas of manual work can be good candidates to digitize, but it’s often worth prioritizing the processes or tasks that have the biggest impact on your efficiency. Once you’ve identified your target — such as purchase order generation — you can build a plan for digitization. This will help you and your team stay focused as you explore your options and experiment with different ways to digitize your workflows.
The key is to set specific, measurable goals that’ll help you demonstrate the impact of a new, digital approach. If you can prove the value of digitizing with your initial use cases, it’ll also help you gain buy-in for further, more ambitious digital transformation projects.
3. Use your ideal state as a guide to choosing the right end-to-end procurement digitalization solutions
Finding the right technology can be a sticking point for organizations. Many take a tech-first approach, choosing a platform that offers the most impressive features or claims the biggest benefits. But often, this can lead to over-investing in tools that don’t match up to the organization’s exact procurement needs, or simply underdeliver.
Work backward from your ideal state to find the right capabilities. In some cases, digitization will be as simple as converting paper-based forms. In other cases, you might need to introduce a whole new set of workflows. Once you know your exact requirements, you can decide whether there’s a suitable off-the-shelf digital procurement solution or if you can handle it all in-house.
4. Make a comprehensive implementation and adoption strategy
Introducing a new digital workflow isn’t just about the technology you choose; there’s a vital change management component to consider. Teams build their daily activities around manual tasks and the workarounds they develop — so there’s no guarantee they’ll immediately pick up a new tool or approach.
Involve your team early in the planning stage. Not only can they advise on their needs, but this also gives you the opportunity to clearly show the value of digitizing their processes and how the digital workflow will fit into their day and improve their productivity. If there’s training required, build that into your implementation timeline so they’re ready to go when you launch the new workflow.
5. Review and adjust your new digital processes
Digitization isn’t always a “set and forget” experience. As you transition over to new digital procurement processes, be prepared to work with your team to refine and even redesign workflows so they’re operating at their best.
Return to your plan and compare your goals with the reality of day-to-day procurement operations with the new tools and approaches.
How can specialist end-to-end procurement consultants help with digitization?
Often, organizations benefit from having a fresh view of their workflows — an expert opinion on which parts of the end-to-end procurement process are the best targets for digitization.
End-to-end procurement consulting services can help you plan, deliver, and continuously improve your digitized processes. With a partner, you get an external perspective, informed by industry benchmarks and end-to-end procurement outsourcing experience to guide your decisions.
Conclusion
Digitization is the ideal first step toward transforming your organization’s end-to-end procurement lifecycle. It elevates time-consuming manual processes to streamlined digital workflows that free your procurement teams to focus on delivering more value.
To learn about WNS Procurement’s end-to-end procurement services and discover how they can help you digitize key procurement processes in your organization, click here.