How to Make Procurement Compliance Easy for Employees Using Automation Software

• Standard
• e-procurement, Purchasing

The goal of implementing automation technology in businesses is to empower human employees. Human-centric software design makes routine tasks faster and easier, reduces frustration, and frees up employee time to focus on the most rewarding parts of their jobs.

One of the things that can frustrate employees regarding procurement is unclear compliance rules. Even if your company maintains updated procurement guidelines in a document that’s readily available to employees, there can still be challenges. Employees might lose access to the document or forget where to look up a rule. They may think they remember something correctly and accidentally make a mistake. These sorts of problems become even more of an issue if procurement systems are confusing or difficult to use.

Goals and Challenges for Compliant Procurement

Your procurement system should help create value for your company and support the goals of all stakeholders. For the company, and the procurement department in particular, this is a place where there’s potential to identify savings, manage budgets, enable policy-compliant buying, and build relationships with suppliers. Outdated or unclear policies will make meeting those goals difficult for purchasers and finance departments. Similarly, clunky purchasing systems can also make compliant purchasing a challenge.

For other employees, procurement ought to be a tool they can use to make necessary purchases. In many cases, though, trying to keep purchases compliant seems like a hindrance more than anything else. No one wants to spend hours trying to figure out the procurement system just to order replacement paperclips and pens for the office. The more complicated your procurement system, the more tempting it will be for employees to try and go around it. Such maverick spending then generates issues for other finance departments as well.

Automation Software and Policy Compliance

One of the key benefits of modern, flexible automation software is that you can customize it to fit your company’s needs. The software is also very user-friendly. This makes it easier for employees to make purchases using your company’s approved process.

A punchout catalog and item catalog are two tools our software offers that are particularly useful. They’re a user-friendly way for employees to shop from within your purchasing software to ensure they only make approved purchases from selected suppliers.

Tips for Supporting Compliance

Before implementing new procurement software, make sure your company’s policies are up to date. That will make it easier to customize the software. Start by evaluating your current procurement practices and see where you stand. Make sure to gather input from as many stakeholders as possible. You’ll also want to make sure you clearly communicate changes for policies and the purchasing system to employees.

With NextProcess’s Purchase Order Module, we’ll help you customize the software to automatically enforce company policy and make compliant buying easier for your employees. If you need to adjust your policies later, you’ll be able to continue customizing the software. Our customer service team will be happy to help with that as needed. To learn more, and schedule a free demo of our software, contact us today.