The purchasing department is under constant pressure to reduce costs and make savings across the business.
There are several levers on which one can act to reduce costs:
- renegotiate existing contracts
- making use of tenders
- scouting for new suppliers to find better terms
These are undoubtedly good activities, but they take time: the first point to focus on in order to reduce costs must therefore be process optimisation. The first cost to be reduced is that of managing low value-added operational activities.
Technology comes to our aid.
Continuous information exchanges with suppliers, documentation exchanges, change and negotiation management, order confirmations, expediting and archiving are all time-consuming activities that can be automated.