Designing and implementing systems and processes to enhance your purchasing power and reduce procurement time and costs. What is e-Procurement? Whatever your organisation does, there will be things it needs to buy. These might be products or services that are essential to running the business, like stationery, furniture, business travel, or they might be core commodities that form part of your business offering. Buying these commodities not only incurs the cost of the item or service itself, but also in processing the order and the subsequent payment. e-Procurement takes traditional purchasing processes and automates them, allowing the full range of activities from raising initial requisitions, to placing orders with suppliers, and interfacing with financial systems for payment processing to take place more easily, quickly and efficiently. ^ top of page Why is e-Procurement important? Traditional purchasing processes often involve disparate paper and electronic documents that move around the business slowly, and are at risk from being lost or ignored. Moreover, authorising invoices by signature can lead at best to a lack of control and at worst to fraud. e-Procurement not only ensures that electronic documents are processed at speed, but also that only authorised individuals approve documents, and that all transactions are recorded in one repository with a full audit trail of events. In addition to controlling the risks associated with spending money, e-Procurement can help to reduce the costs of the goods and services you buy. The ability to analyse spend easily and in detail enables cost-reduction efforts and supplier management to be focused where and with whom most money is being spent. In addition, taking advantage of on-line catalogues ensures that employees buy from your preferred suppliers, at the best possible price. With all spend from all areas of your business being aggregated, unit costs can be driven down. ^ top of page The AiM approach to e-Procurement AiM has developed a simple best practice model tailored precisely to the needs of organisations wishing to move from more traditional purchasing processes to e-Procurement. The key components are: - Spend analysis
- Process design
- System implementation
- Training and post-implementation support.
Benefits from using AiM - e-Procurement specialists providing simple, integrated solutionsPragmatic, scaleable solutions appropriate to the size and nature of organisation, budget and purchasing requirements
- Best practice process templates
- Partnerships and relationships with
e-procurement system vendors such as Oracle and Ariba - Expert Oracle and Ariba functional and technical consultants, and procurement specialists
- Excellent technical IT infrastructure designers, implementers and project managers
- Full integration with e-Sourcing solutions* (such as e-Auctions and e-Tendering) available.
AiM practitioners are experienced implementers of the two dominant e-Procurement systems: - Oracle iProcurement
- Ariba Buyer.
Proven benefits of e-Procurement systems: - Increased visibility and control of spend
- Improved terms of trade
- Time taken to procure goods cut by 50%
- Pre-spend approval (versus post-spend)
- Improved authorisation control
- Reduction in staff costs
- Supplier invoices paid on time (leading to fewer interest/late payment charges)
- Improved management information
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