Part 1: Streamline Purchase Requisitions

When we buy something, we ask ourselves: do I actually need this? Do I have the means to purchase? It is crucial that every purchase meets specific criteria. The same goes for a company purchase. But, there’s a catch: unsurprisingly, a company’s purchasing process is much more complex than a personal one. Such processes are often both time-consuming and error-prone. What can we do to streamline our purchase requisition process? Dynatos has the solution. The best news? You might already be using it!

Complexity of the process

The process of a purchase requisition is necessary for a business to run. Before an order is placed, the order itself needs to be approved by the correct in-company authorized person. This makes purchase requisition an integral step of the purchasing process. All employees need to be able to make a request to acquire certain products or services. Only after approval an order can be placed with the vendor. That sounds doable enough. Then what is going wrong?

The issue lies in the processing. Some organizations forget the process altogether. Orders come in unauthorized. Others use manual purchase requisitions. This tends to be time-consuming for both requestors as well as approvers. Vendors and their products vary, and so does their data. This makes multiple requests difficult to coordinate, especially when managing several departments. Evidently, this complexity results in a number of mistakes. Without an automated Purchase Requisition process, we waste time and have little visibility of our expenses. That slows down our purchasing cycle, ultimately decreasing our business performance.

The solution: automation

Streamlining your purchase requisition process has several benefits. Process Director, the Tungsten Automation software, automates your workflows. This way, you gain clarity, integration, and control. Purchasing becomes more transparent. Employees experience heightened accountability and can use their time more efficiently. This lowers costs for purchasing, logistics, and accountancy.

• Clarity – your employees enjoy a clear purchase requisition process along with more alignment in purchasing guidelines. This increases visibility and reduces errors.
• Integration – you gain better insights in all purchase requisitions in every department of your organization. Existing electronic catalogues are integrated. Data is also automatically validated. For example SAP-entries, transaction and configuration settings.
• Control – you have full traceability. This way you are able to deter and detect fraud, prevent duplicate orders and have easy access to documentation for financial audits. This allows you to compose an audit trail to comply with current and future regulation.

Using SAP

These perks can be realized in no-time, when using SAP. This dashboard allows control over the entire requisition process. A Senior Consultant at Dynatos explains: ‘You can see the SAP interface as a cockpit from which you have full control of all requisitions. This allows a complete overview of who does what and what happens where. It ensures the right acquisitions end up with the correct person to authorize them.’

The best part? SAP is easy and user friendly. You are able to upload attachments and previously used documents can be copied and adjusted. ‘It’s a smart way of deriving or supplementing the right data,’ our consultant adds.

Other articles in the serie “5 Steps to automated invoicing process”:

Part 2: Automate Order Confirmations and save energy and time.
Part 3: The significance of Delivery notes for automated invoice processing.
Part 4: Keeping track of your Accounts Payable.
Part 5: Enabling high performance in Sales Orders.