Overcoming procurement challenges: A comprehensive guide for purchasing managers

As a purchasing manager, you play a crucial role in driving procurement process efficiency, cost savings, compliance, and maintaining strong vendor relationships. Your responsibilities encompass a wide range of tasks that contribute to the overall success of the procurement process and, in turn, the success of the company. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the common procurement challenges faced by purchasing managers and provide actionable tips for overcoming them, empowering you to streamline operations, collaborate more effectively, manage purchasing efficiently, and make informed decisions in your role.

Understanding the importance of the purchasing manager's role

A purchasing manager’s responsibilities will differ from one company and organizational structure to the next. In small to mid-size companies the role often reports directly to the head of finance, if no procurement department exists. Day-to-day responsibilities can include developing, implementing, and managing company-wide purchasing policies and processes, driving policy compliance, managing vendors, maintaining a system of records, and ensuring timely delivery of goods and services.

In larger organizations, purchasing managers may work alongside a strategic procurement team. In this capacity, their focus is often on the tactical and transactional aspects of procurement to address immediate operational needs. It's important to note that the specific responsibilities and distinctions can vary between organizations. Some companies may use the procurement and purchasing titles interchangeably or have different role definitions or scope based on their internal mandate and industry.

Regardless of the organizational structure, the role of a purchasing manager is instrumental in establishing efficient and compliant processes for procuring goods and services. It plays a vital role in streamlining procurement challenges, purchasing the required volumes at the best quality and price, receiving items on time, and ensuring that processes are communicated, efficient, and adhered to.

Common procurement challenges encountered by purchasing managers today 

With processes that span many stakeholders, departments, and budgets, procurement challenges are to be expected within a purchasing manager’s overarching mandate. Inefficient, non-compliant and poorly managed processes can affect growth, impact profitability, and hinder operational efficiency.

Let’s explore the most common procurement challenges faced by purchasing managers that lead to these issues, and the importance of addressing them with proactive processes and solutions to drive value, streamline operations, and make informed decisions that can lead to cost savings.

Manual procurement processes 

Many organizations still depend on manual procurement processes - an outdated approach that’s time-consuming, prone to errors, and inefficient. The burden of manual procurement processes entails physical and electronic document management across locations, tracking vendor lists and purchases across multiple spreadsheets, and a constant exchange of emails for purchase requests and approvals that often cause delays and process bottlenecks. This lack of efficiency and centralized visibility impacts purchasing cycles, elevates the risk of errors, and restricts the organization's capacity to scale operations efficiently. 

Evolving operating models

The advent of remote and hybrid operating models, along with the management of dispersed teams working in the field or across multiple office locations, further exacerbates procurement challenges. The lack of visibility and control over processes in these environments adds another layer of complexity for purchasing managers looking to manage processes and compliance effectively. 

Lack of visibility and transparency

Manual processes carried out by employees in dispersed locations further compounds matters, as there is no visibility or oversight of their purchasing activities. This impacts managers’ abilities to make informed decisions. Visibility and transparency enable oversight, process optimization, and faster, more effective resolution of procurement challenges and risks.

Companies have a lot to gain from establishing transparent and auditable processes, having a clear view of procurement activities in real-time promotes accountability and fosters a responsible spending culture. 

Lack of accurate data and insights

Siloed, manual data capture from different sources impedes a purchasing manager’s ability to gain holistic and accurate spending insights. Identifying spending patterns, evaluating vendor spend, reviewing purchasing cycles, tracking budget allocations, and uncovering potential cost-saving opportunities becomes a complex undertaking without adequate tools for analyzing current and historical purchasing data.

When organizations face difficulties in accessing this data, the risk of financial losses increases as they miss out on valuable strategic opportunities. Having access to accurate and reliable data is key to making well-informed decisions.

Selecting the right vendors

Selecting the right vendors can be challenging for purchasing managers due to factors such as limited visibility into spend by vendor, insufficient data to evaluate reliability, and the complexity of comparing multiple vendors’ pricing. Additionally, the lack of real-time insights and the time-consuming nature of vendor evaluations contribute to the difficulty of making informed decisions that align with the organization's objectives and requirements.

Choosing the right vendors can alleviate procurement challenges and unlock cost-saving opportunities. By nurturing relationships with the right vendors, you could qualify for more favorable terms, discounts, and price concessions. Conducting a thorough vendor evaluation that considers factors like price, quality, delivery capabilities, and reputation will help you decide which vendors to establish strong partnerships with to drive value and long-term success. 

Gaining insights into contract terms, transactions, vendor spend, and purchasing frequency and volumes are essential for effectively navigating vendor selection and consolidating your vendor list. The next concern is ensuring that staff strictly adhere to purchasing from approved or contracted vendors to maximize the anticipated savings from pre-negotiated agreements. However, without proper visibility or robust systems in place, these tasks are complex, time-consuming and difficult to enforce.

Delivery issues

Timely and reliable delivery of goods and services is critical for uninterrupted and efficient operations. Purchasing managers face procurement challenges such as late, incomplete, or damaged deliveries, and paying for goods not received, particularly in remote delivery locations. Establishing clear communication channels with vendors, defining service level agreements (SLAs), and implementing effective ways of tracking and accessing documentation, quantities received, and delivery dates is essential.

Establishing procurement policies and managing compliance

Inefficient manual procurement processes can often result in non-compliance with purchasing policies. Having an easy and accessible way to establish policies and drive compliance, regardless of staff locations is essential to maintaining control and mitigating risks. These policies can range from vendor onboarding rules and approvals, attaining quotes, escalating levels of approval to only raising purchase orders from approved requests. 

Non-compliance exposes a company to risks such as uncontrolled spending and potential legal issues. Policy compliance is essential for maintaining operational integrity, mitigating risks, and promoting a culture of transparency and accountability within an organization. 

Inefficient purchasing cycles and inaccuracies

Purchase order (PO) cycle times, PO accuracy, PO processing times and costs are the metrics for measuring the success of purchasing management. Long purchasing cycles and inaccuracies can be attributed to factors such as manual process inefficiencies, a lack of visibility into procurement activities, lost documentation, and inefficient communication and collaboration among stakeholders, resulting in delays, errors, and bottlenecks.

Furthermore, the often decentralized nature of procurement processes, along with limited visibility and outdated processes restrict the ability to consolidate purchase orders, leading to inefficiencies and missed cost-saving opportunities. 

Lack of control

Uncontrolled and unauthorized spending, known as maverick and rogue spending, occurs when employees disregard established procurement processes, making purchases without adherence to policies, approved vendor lists, or documentation requirements, usually due to a lack of policy awareness and inadequate controls. This undermines cost and budget control, increases the risk of fraud, weakens negotiating power, and compromises compliance efforts by purchasing managers.

These procurement challenges may differ from one organization to the next, with varying degrees of inefficiency. There is, however, a common thread - a general lack of visibility and control significantly impacts efficient purchasing management, adding more hours of administration, repetition, inaccuracies, and complexity to processes.

Solutions: How can purchasing managers overcome these procurement challenges?

Leveraging digital technology provides an all-encompassing solution to these procurement challenges. By deploying procurement software, organizations can:

• Automate and streamline company-wide purchasing processes.
• Minimize errors and inaccuracies.
• Gain real-time visibility and analytics.
• Manage spending against budgets.
• Drive purchasing policy compliance and accountable spending.
• Manage vendor onboarding and approvals.
• Eliminate rogue spend and overspending.

Accessibility

Accessible cloud solutions that provide multi-device mobility and digital workflows can easily alleviate procurement challenges and support any operating model.

Efficiency

It’s important to source an intuitive and user-friendly solution that will make you team’s day-to-day processes easier, faster, and more efficient. Choosing software that offers a mobile app can further improve usability, efficiency, and user adoption.

Proactivity

Procurement software can help your organization shift from reactive spend reviews to proactive spend monitoring. This is easily achieved by adopting proactive software-led measures that actively manage purchasing and vendor approvals, policy, and budget compliance, implement internal controls, and alert users to potential risks before any costs are incurred. Complete with end-to-end visibility.

Business intelligence

Selecting software with embedded analytics and reporting tools can further enhance informed decision-making, and value creation by identifying efficiency and cost saving opportunities. These are obtained via granular data insights into how the company purchases, transacts, and spends by vendor and employee, against budgets. Deploying technology will also improve collaboration between key stakeholders, aligning procurement needs, delegation of authority, and enhancing transparency and accountability.

Savings

The accessibility, visibility, control, and process efficiency combined enable time and cost savings, allowing businesses to focus on strategic initiatives and drive sustainable growth.

Getting buy-in to deploy digital technology

Purchasing managers often struggle to gain buy-in for software deployment, despite the prospect of long-term efficiency gains and cost savings. This is mainly due to resistance to change, lack of awareness about the benefits, upfront costs, and internal alignment issues. To overcome these challenges, it’s important to effectively communicate the advantages, address concerns, demonstrate ROI, involve key stakeholders, and provide evidence of success. 

Optimizing efficiency: The collaborative power of purchasing and finance

Choosing the right software will not only improve company-wide process efficiency, compliance, and cost control but will bridge the gap between finance and purchasing operations, creating more alignment, and providing access to data that can inform decisions and steer an organization to achieving its strategic goals, while streamlining day-to-day processes.

Bear in mind that not every procurement system will be a good fit for your company, so it's essential to select a solution that aligns with your specific needs, goals, and integration requirements. Investing in the right procurement software can assist in developing a cost-conscious culture that will build long-term financial resilience.

In conclusion

Purchasing managers face numerous responsibilities and procurement challenges, but there are digital solutions available to address them with ease. Embracing digital technologies, such as procurement software, can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and enable spend management, analysis, and reporting, while empowering a team in any workplace model to purchase and spend responsibly.

Additionally, the collaboration that software enables between purchasing and finance roles optimizes financial management, enabling better budget planning, cost optimization, and risk management. By integrating these solutions and practices, purchasing managers can make an impact by reducing operational costs, managing compliance, and contributing to the overall success of their organizations.

Replace procurement challenges with digital efficiency

As a purchasing manager, you hold the key to transforming challenges into opportunities. By equipping your company with the right tools, technology, and data insights, you can turn the tide in your favor.

Experience the full potential of Fraxion's cloud procurement software for proactive spend management, complete with procurement process automation, budget and policy control and advanced analytics. Get in touch with a product specialist to discuss your purchasing and compliance needs and book a custom demo.