Leveraging digital capabilities can help the office of the CPHO become strategic and maximize savings
With supply chains remaining turbulent, and competitive implementation of technology, the office of the CPHO needs digitized processes to evolve into a strategic function that can use data insights to maximize savings and provide strategic insights to the rest of the organization.
In this blog, we will cover 4 outcomes of digitized procurement processes that can maximize savings and strategic value for the procurement function.
Improved strategic value
When procurement tasks are integrated into a Cloud ERP platform, procurement data is integrated with other key functional data from finance and HR. When a procurement function can understand its effects on the wider organization, it can work strategically when aligned with other teams.
Notably, with greater visibility of procurement data, advanced reporting capabilities, and integrated data, a Chief Procurement Officer can report on the strategic value and optimization of their procurement teams to stakeholders, enabling you to secure more resources.
When it's clear what effect procurement processes have on the wider organization, collaboration will naturally be improved. When procurement can effectively collaborate, with integrated data, they will naturally become more strategic and less isolated.
Another key capability of Cloud ERP is the ability to automate tedious manual tasks involved with data consolidation, such as manually creating reports or tendering documents.
When these time-consuming tasks can be automated accuracy can be reduced, compliance is easier, and ultimately, procurement teams can repurpose this time to analyze data and form strategy and data insights.
Spend Analytics
Of course, spending is a huge metric that needs to be managed within procurement, but without clear and integrated data about procurement spending, it’s hard to form a strategy and analyze what’s working and what’s not.
Preconfigured dashboards provide granular detail for your procurement specialists to analyze, as well as custom dashboards to meet your own specific needs. You can identify supplier dependencies and opportunities for savings, all while mitigating risks with instant visibility across your organizations spend.
With this granular and intuitive insight into spending, you can execute data-driven decisions to solve complex procurement issues that impact business strategy. Interrogating procurement data this way can help easily identify savings and efficiencies while being alerted to supply risk and compliance issues.
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Supplier Management
Suppliers are another integral part of the procurement process, every business needs reliable, cost-effective agreements with suppliers to meet its objectives, goals, and standards.
The management of suppliers is key, and closely connected to contract risk, but must be optimized with data-led strategies to both ensure supplier relations are cost-effective, and that financial and reputational risk and compliance are managed.
A data-driven understanding of the supplier relationship is key to the entire procurement process and with the streamlined capabilities of Cloud ERP, procurement can enable deep insight to predict trends and form agile strategies to sustain growth.
Digital Transformation Successful Implementation
It should be clear that digital transformation strategies do not lead to strategic and cost management success de facto but require keen implementation to reach the outcomes desired.
Digital transformation has its own costs that must be managed, namely, adoption must be high among users for investment to be returned, and ultimately vendor choice and the capabilities of the ERP selected can all affect implementation success.
For cost-effective implementation, CPOs should work with the CIO to ensure that staff are correctly onboarded, but also that the right tool is selected to enhance the strategic tasks you desire.
How can Unit4 help your procurement teams leverage digital tools
Unit4’s Source-to-Contract solution by Scanmarket has been chosen by over 500+ customers for its ability to revolutionize strategic value and cost savings in the procurement function.
Unit4’s Spend Analytics module provides the single source of truth and visibility you need to understand current and historical spending, accurately forecast future spends and develop agile strategies to reduce costs and reallocate budget where necessary.
Our Carbon Accounting reporter is a tool designed to complement our Spend Analytics solution, allowing you to extend the visibility of your supply chain beyond the bottom line and can help you reduce carbon emissions by 50% - vital for complying with ESG reporting standards.
Unit4 has great customer support for its Source-to-Contract solution – our customer Boliden could run 427 eRFx projects in the first six months, with every single user creating their own events, resulting in a 100% adoption rate.
To learn more about Unit4’s Source-To-Contract solution by Scanmarket, visit our dedicated webpage, or talk to sales to learn how we can help you leverage our ERP platform.
