Are you looking for a better, more streamlined way to run your business? If you’re like many other business owners and industry leaders across the globe, it’s highly likely you’ve experienced headaches related to sourcing and supply chain problems. Fortunately, sourcing software exists to help mitigate some of these problems and help businesses like yours succeed. Today, we’re diving into how sourcing software can make your life easier and help your organization succeed. Check it out below.
Table of Contents
Finding the Right Suppliers
A major component of sourcing is finding the right suppliers. When searching for suppliers, look for quality, a positive reputation, reliability, and (of course) pricing. Location is also a critical factor, as you’ll likely want to do business with a local vendor rather than outsource it to another city or state. There are several directories and databases dedicated to helping you find suppliers (Alibaba and Service Channel immediately spring to mind), but there’s nothing better than creating your own supplier database. Using sourcing software to build and manage your suppliers is a fantastic use case for such programs and a good step in the right direction toward helping your business succeed..
Keeping Contracts Updated
Have you ever discovered a contract issue (such as an error or a looming expiration) when researching your suppliers? It happens. Part of a procurement manager’s job is to ensure all contracts are up to date and accurate. Different contracts for different services, and different suppliers, can often become difficult to manage. Fortunately, sourcing software can help you keep track of contracts. This includes what they’re for, who they’re with, their terms, and whether or not they’re expired. Sourcing software can also help you generate new contracts just in case you need them. Ultimately, overseeing contracts is a challenge on the best of days, but the right sourcing software can temper that feeling somewhat to make contract management seamless across the company.
Classifying Spend
Using a modern AI to help classify your spending is a practical—and worthwhile—solution to understanding where your money is going and preventing it from misappropriation. Artificial intelligence, when used properly, can offer an advantage in business. Instead of relying on it as a crutch, sourcing software instead leverages its machine learning potential to intelligently classify your spend. The software classified transaction data across several different sources. Then, the AI learns from the data and provides a more accurate overview of what your company’s actual spending looks like across multiple areas. Fraud or rogue spending can occur at any point along the sourcing process, so having the data immediately available at your fingertips is a boon for any company wishing to maintain control over spending issues.
Scaling Your Sourcing
For any business larger and smaller, scalability is a critical factor in how well a business succeeds. Theoretically, you should be able to scale your sourcing in the same way that you scale the rest of your procurement and supply chain processes. The best sourcing software should help you scale your sourcing efforts to deliver more efficiently to your customers. As a buyer, you already know and understand that sourcing is a core competency in the global economy. If you can manage that properly and scale it appropriately, you’ll set yourself on a path to success well into the future.
Saving Employees Time
Most of the time, a business implements something new to increase efficiency and save money. Sourcing software can help you do both. Many companies have their own procurement departments. Smaller businesses might have to outsource it to a third party to be more cost-effective. What makes this work so well is that Procurement and sourcing software solutions are often available on an as needed basis. It’s a software as a service sort of business. Whether you’re running a startup, a small business, or branching out a little bit more, there’s a level for everyone with the right software solution. Sourcing software also saves employees time by automating bidding processes so you can get multiple quotes from suppliers (instead of entering them manually). Furthermore, it removes much of the tedium from the process of sourcing products (which is quite time consuming), making it the best solution for efficiency and saving time for your teams.