To be competitive and efficient in today's market it goes without saying that adopting automation in some guise is almost now a prerequisite.
For procurement, automation technology can be the key to achieve digital agility as it has the ability to collect data and information in the background for every transaction, something has been difficult to do in the past.
When talking about being agile and more strategic, automation can be the missing tool for most companies to take ownership of tail spend and ensure the best deal for stakeholders while capturing the hidden value in the smaller purchases.
An automated procurement function will have much more interconnected processes in which professionals can navigate through and take faster decisions to mitigate risks while monitoring the entire supply chain to keep it functioning at its best.
The benefits automation can bring to procurement
Automation in procurement looks like automation in every other sector or category: it can cut costs, increase productivity, cut the need for information being manually inputted, help the business grow with bigger revenues and improve engagement rate, with operational tasks taking to be completed.
But automation in the hands of procurement also means data being gathered, analysed and turned into smarter and faster decisions that will mitigate the risks within the entire supply chain. This data will also turn into a tool to predict future market trends that will make the company gain an advantage against its competitors.
The saved time that automation brings can also become invested time in managing supplier relationships. Having an engaged and resilient supplier network will also pave the way to make procurement agile. Any issues can be easily fixed with the help of suppliers that are partners and know how the business work.
A case study in automation benefits
In early 2021, Bosch implemented an autonomous system to organise and manage its supply chain that consisted of 37,000 employees and around 26,500 suppliers.
The company's procurement team of 9,000 employees were enabled with digital systems in their daily routine to ensure faster and transparent processes. The company expects to reach the mark of 85% of its global purchasing volume being handled by platform solutions and cloud systems.
This means that data, communication and exchange are consolidated in a smarter way to make their procurement professionals routines more dynamic, so they can focus on bringing value to the company.
Siemens is also going through the same supply chain automation implementation. According to their CPO Klaus Staubitzer, “There are technical capabilities available to us today that promise a great deal for our supply chain management because they create transparency and genuinely make a buyer’s life easier. What we have to do now is be clever in how we use these opportunities presented to us by the new technology.”
To find out how Maistro is using automation to get a handle of tail spend for multiple organisations, get in touch.
