Simplify Your Procurement Process Workflows with Vertice

Procurement workflows are the backbone of purchasing processes, ensuring every step—from vendor selection to approval and payment—is managed from start to finish. 

In essence, a procurement process workflow is a series of steps or a checklist that companies and departments follow when purchasing a new product or service.

By using procurement workflows, businesses aim to eliminate bottlenecks, reduce costs, and maintain compliance. However, this is reliant on factors like stakeholder buy-in, communication channels, level of automation versus manual input, process centralization and visibility, and whether it’s powered by technology or spreadsheets.

If these aren’t addressed, the advantages of procurement workflows aren’t realized and it can actually become a blocker to purchasing products and services.

Vertice offers innovative solutions to optimize these workflows, helping organizations achieve better results with less effort.

What are procurement workflows?

Procurement workflows are structured processes that guide organizations through each stage of purchasing goods and services.

These workflows ensure tasks are assigned, approvals are tracked, and compliance is maintained throughout the procurement process. This occurs through a series of stages.

Such stages include:

• Intake requests - the initial part of any procurement process workflow, this encapsulates the submission of a request for a new product or service, and the assessment of business requirements for the request.
• Vendor evaluations - Once the request is accepted by the business, relevant service providers and vendors must be researched and evaluated for their suitability and performance. After which, a preferred candidate (and possibly a BATNA) is selected.
• Contract negotiation - Discussions with the provider/vendor to agree upon contractual terms and conditions, including price, length of contract and usage limits.
• Approvals - Once the contract content has been agreed upon, it needs to be checked for legal, security and IT compliance. Key stakeholders in the business that look after these areas will be required to assess the contract and vendor to approve, question or deny the request, based on business criteria and policy.
• Purchase order creation, approval and invoicing - Once compliance checks have been successfully passed, the procurement process workflow moves to the approval of the request and the creation of a purchase order. The PO is sent to the supplier and approved before the contract is legally binding and invoices can be sent.
• Receiving, integration and onboarding - The service can now be accessed by the purchaser, and integrated into the organization’s setup with the help of the vendor - who also provide training and onboarding support for an agreed-upon time period.
• Maintaining contract records - Whilst still part of the workflow, this is an ongoing requirement after a procurement request has ended. This is crucial for monitoring performance, keeping an audit trail and streamlining vendor review and renewal cycles.

The steps within a procurement process workflow are generally split into two groups - Intake-to-Procure, and Procure-to-Pay. Intake-to-Procure generally ends once the vendor or supplier has been approved. Procure-to-Pay manages the processing and handling of financial matters after the contract has been agreed upon.

Advantages of Procurement Workflows

The advantages of procurement workflows include:

• Increased Efficiency: Automating manual tasks reduces errors and accelerates processes.
• Enhanced Visibility: Track every step of the procurement cycle in real time.
• Cost Savings: Avoid duplicate purchases and optimize supplier agreements.
• Improved Compliance: Ensure adherence to internal policies and external regulations.

Using Procurement Workflows Effectively

As mentioned, using procurement workflows to their maximum effectiveness depends on:

• Clearly defined steps: Map out each stage of the procurement process to avoid confusion.
• Dedicated communication channels: Clear and trackable communications enable everyone involved to stay abreast of developments - keeping requests on track and reducing confusion as it moves through the procurement process workflow.
• Leveraging data and technology: Utilize tools like Vertice’s platform to automate workflows, reduce manual effort and gain real-time insights.
• Stakeholder buy-in: Every procurement process needs input, reviews and approvals from experts in other areas (legal, security, senior management etc). They need to be fully accepting of the process and know their responsibilities and expectations to avoid bottlenecks and confusion.
• Regular monitoring and optimization: Continuously evaluate workflow performance and make adjustments as needed.

Whilst procurement process workflows can be established and implemented in multiple ways, the key objective is to make every step as easy and efficient as possible to complete. Procurement can be a highly complex practice, and any step can derail a procurement request if it is deemed to be too complicated, time-consuming or simply not worth doing. 

This is most common when those using procurement workflows are required to do so manually. Using disparate solutions like spreadsheets, email chains and in-person meetings that all require high levels of manual input are the least effective, and actively discourage employees from using them. As a result, spend control, compliance and accountability is all lost from any process. 

The most effective procurement process workflows leverage data and technology to marry up every step and requirement in a harmonious, centralized system. Integrating every step into this can prove challenging for even the largest procurement teams though.

How Vertice Can Help

From the market leaders in SaaS spend management, Vertice Intelligent Workflows is the definitive streamlined procurement process workflow system helps finance and procurement leaders gain complete control over their purchasing processes. 

Intelligent Workflows enables this thorough providing:

• Transparency: Granular visibility into all ongoing purchases, renewals and intakes.
• Simplified functions: Easy-to-build customized workflows and frictionless intake requests that accelerate and integrate into any existing procurement process.
• Control: Automate accountability and tasking of stakeholders across all complex procurement workflows.
• Visibility: Track all purchasing documents and approvals in one consolidated place for streamlined compliance, and record all maverick spend.

With Intelligent Workflows, you can:

• Reduce maverick spending by 2/3^rds
• Decrease manual steps in any process by 70%
• Halve the time needed to process each request

‍Key Features of Vertice’s Intelligent Workflow Tools

Intelligent Workflows revolves around the goal of gaining full control over your procurement. To achieve this, it focuses on these key features:

• Customizable Workflow Templates: With a drag-and-drag, no-code workflow builder, you can create, configure and change any workflow to match your specific needs.
• Centralized Granular Visibility: Understand the history and ongoing status of every purchase with a single-pane-of-glass interface that presents data in easy to digest formats.
• Intelligent Workflow Automation: Stakeholder accountability is guaranteed with intelligent routing and detailed, automated approval tasks and flows, and human error is reduced by removing manual steps.
• Track and Trace: Every document, communication, workflow direction and approval is tracked for each request in a full audit log to ensure compliance.
• Procurement Orchestration: Integrate into existing third-party systems to ensure intake and approval tasks makes using procurement workflows efficient and streamlined.
• AI-Powered Insights: Leverage thousands of data points and benchmarks to make smarter procurement decisions.

Ready to experience the advantages of procurement workflows?

‍Explore Vertice’s Intelligent Workflow now.