As procurement’s role as a strategic business function becomes more evident, teams need the right systems and workflows to help them meet their full potential.
Forward-thinking procurement teams rely on eProcurement tools to help them maximize their resources, enhance their efficiency, and deliver long-term value. With the right technology—and a few tips to help you get the most from it—you can reduce costs, streamline collaboration, and improve supplier (and stakeholder) relationships. In this blog post, you’ll learn how eProcurement tools and best practices help you harness the power of digital transformation and transform your procurement processes.
eProcurement (short for electronic procurement) is the use of software, technology, and the internet to digitize the procurement process from beginning to end. Leveraging a range of cutting-edge capabilities—like automation, AI, bots, integrations, and a centralized cloud-based platform—it streamlines and improves key procurement and sourcing tasks like:
Selecting suppliers
Bid and scenario analysis
Recommending and awarding contracts
Communicating with vendors
Purchasing goods and services
Managing contracts
Invoicing and payments
Because eProcurement provides an incredible array of benefits (more on those shortly), adopting the right eProcurement tool is usually a major component of any procurement transformation strategy.
5 benefits of eProcurement
If your team is still doing procurement the old way—using manually updated spreadsheets, siloed emails, and even (eek) phone calls—eProcurement will completely revolutionize how you work. Here are some of the top reasons to implement eProcurement tools and best practices.
1. Increase savings and drive long-term value
An eProcurement tool reduces costs in a number of ways:
It enables you to diversify your supplier base, giving you a wider pool of vendors to choose from
It encourages competition through eAuctions that improve negotiation dynamics
It centralizes your data, providing greater visibility that lets you identify areas for cost-saving improvements
It reduces employee time spent on manual admin, so they can focus on high-impact work that delivers a bigger ROI
It uses AI-powered analysis to improve decision-making, allowing you to factor in price and non-price criteria—such as risk, quality, and sustainability—so you can focus on total cost of ownership (TCO) and alignment with your business goals
Running eAuctions are just one of the ways an eProcurement tool like Keelvar can help you reduce costs and improve negotiation
2. Get faster results with shorter procurement cycles
Launching a procurement cycle or kicking off a sourcing event the old way involves a lot of tedious admin: creating RFPs and intake forms, selecting relevant suppliers, manually evaluating bids, creating and processing invoices.
With eProcurement, you can rely on smart tools to quickly initiate and manage your procurement cycle. Create custom automated workflows that you can use again and again, let sourcing bots automatically select and invite the right suppliers from your pre-qualified list, and use AI to perform even the most complex bid and scenario analysis.
These efficiency enhancements make the procurement cycle run faster and smoother. Before using Keelvar for eProcurement, it took the Mars team four days to build one RFP; now, it takes them four hours to build the RFP for its entire European road freight.
3. Reduce manual work to free up your team
Improving efficiency saves money, time—and your team’s energy. By using an eProcurement tool with autonomous sourcing capabilities, procurement teams can remove up to 100% of manual work for tactical and tail spend, enabling them to focus on the bigger picture. Sourcing automation can automatically trigger purchasing workflows when inventory gets low, and empowers business users to run their own sourcing events without training (and within the guardrails set by your team).
Removing these low-value, high-volume tasks from your team’s to-do list wins back hours every week, giving them more time for impactful strategic work. Samsung saved 85% of time by switching to Keelvar’s eSourcing solution instead of spreadsheets. Just think: what could your procurement team achieve with 85% of their time back?
Keelvar’s Autonomous Sourcing lets you automate up to 100% of the tender process for tactical and tail spend
4. Scale your best practices and boost compliance
Implementing eProcurement is a great way to standardize your processes across your organization. Using an eSourcing tool as part of your eProcurement tech stack, you can build defined, repeatable workflows for any sourcing category, which can then be scaled across the entire company.
This means that every time a sourcing event or procurement cycle is kicked off, it effortlessly follows your best practices, and automatically meets compliance requirements thanks to custom approvals and controls.
5. Increase transparency and visibility across the organization
Having crucial supplier and procurement data locked away in individual inboxes or desk drawers is inherently risky: it reduces transparency and accountability (which makes it harder to stay compliant), makes it difficult to build and maintain robust supplier relationships, and locks away valuable information that could be analyzed and used for data-driven decision-making.
Switching to centralized, cloud-based eProcurement software collates all of your data in one place, giving you a single source of truth for all procurement activities across your entire organization. Not only does this streamline vendor management by letting you communicate with all suppliers from one convenient place, but it also creates a powerful data engine that fuels your reporting and analysis, helping you to continuously improve.
Use an eProcurement tool like Keelvar to visualize your data and understand your performance
Picking the right tool is one of the most important things you can do for your eProcurement strategy, but there are a couple of general best practices to consider as you implement your eProcurement strategy, too.
1. Get buy-in for the change
As with any digital transformation, change management is key. Get CPO or exec-level support and clearly explain the benefits of eProcurement to all affected groups. For example:
To C-level execs, management, and key stakeholders: Implementing eProcurement tools will provide greater visibility of all procurement activities. Combined with robust procurement processes, this will help the business identify opportunities to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and stay resilient, even in the face of supply chain disruption and volatile markets.
To procurement teams: eProcurement tools will streamline your workflow, cut down on manual work, staff trainings, and approvals, and give you more time to focus on satisfying, impactful, and strategic procurement work.
To business users: Our intuitive new eSourcing software will let you run sourcing events on your own with no training necessary, so you can quickly get the items or services you need in a compliant, convenient way.
Once everyone knows how the new eProcurement workflows will enhance their day-to-day, they’ll be as excited for the change as you are.
2. Optimize your procurement workflows
One of the best things about eProcurement tools is the ability to build time-saving workflows that can be used again and again. As you prepare to transfer your existing manual workflows to your eProcurement tool, take the opportunity to assess how they’re currently working for you and how you can improve them.
To do this, map out the current process, and identify any common blockers and pain points. We recommend chatting to multiple stakeholders—like your procurement team, business users (i.e. requesters), and even suppliers—to get a 360-degree view.
Some questions to consider:
Where is your team spending the most time? (e.g. can you embrace automation to free up more resources?)
How can your procurement strategy contribute to business goals? (e.g. can you prioritize sustainable sourcing to help meet key ESG objectives?)
Which workflows or categories have special requirements? (e.g. which workflows need extra controls, like additional regulatory documentation at the RFP stage or purchase limits that require team approvals?)
Use this feedback and your answers to the questions above to optimize each workflow as you build it into your eProcurement tool.
3. Set KPIs to measure improvement
What’s motivating you to implement an eProcurement tool and best practices? Are you looking for efficiency gains, cost savings, improved visibility and governance, faster procurement cycles, or greater alignment with organization objectives?
Whatever’s driving the transformation, setting clear metrics or key performance indicators helps you measure the success of your eProcurement initiative. Depending on what’s most important to your business, you could track:
Cost savings
Category spends (e.g. maintenance, repair, and operations)
Length of procurement cycle
Percentage of sourcing that is fully automated
Hours saved for your team
Maverick or rogue spend
Percentage of sustainable procurement
Monitoring the right KPIs enables you to quantify the business-wide impact of your eProcurement strategy. With clear data, you can easily communicate your wins, celebrate your team’s successes, and grow the procurement team’s reputation as a strategic partner.
What is eProcurement software?
As we’ve seen above, eProcurement software is a digital tool or application used to manage and improve the procurement process. Unsurprisingly, the right procurement tech stack is a major player in any eProcurement strategy.
eProcurement software can be used for the entire procurement process or part of it. For example, with a specialized eSourcing solution like Keelvar, you can optimize the sourcing stage and lay strong foundations that benefit the entire procurement cycle.
Some key features and capabilities of eProcurement software to look for include:
Integrations with the other tools you use every day (like asset lifecycle management or benchmarking tools)
Custom workflows
Supplier management
Catalog management
Contact management
Invoicing and payment capabilities
Reporting and analytics
The best eProcurement tools
Choosing the perfect eProcurement tools for your tech stack sets your team up for success. Here are a few of our favorites.
1. Sourcing optimization
The decisions you make at the sourcing stage lay the foundations for the rest of your procurement cycle—so it’s crucial to get it right. Effective sourcing optimization not only improves efficiency but also maximizes value throughout the entire procurement process.
Keelvar (that’s us 👋) is an all-in-one eSourcing solution that combines AI-powered sourcing automation and sourcing optimization in one easy-to-use platform. It enables you to reduce manual sourcing work, make data-driven decisions based on complex analysis, and scale sourcing excellence across your entire organization.
Keelvar’s eSourcing solution optimizes the sourcing process to drive better results throughout the rest of your procurement cycle
2. SAP
SAP is a procurement software suite that covers the entire procure-to-pay (P2P) process for medium and large organizations. Key features include automation, integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, compliance monitoring capabilities, and access to SAP’s global supplier network.
Keelvar’s Sourcing Optimizer directly integrates with SAP via an API, allowing SAP customers to seamlessly add optimization and automation to their large or complex spends. Learn more about how Keelvar integrates with SAP here
3. Asset lifecycle management
An asset lifecycle management or inventory management tool enables you to keep track of necessary items and resources so you can proactively order more. It’s a helpful tool in your eProcurement tech stack because it alerts you when it’s time to reorder supplies or spare parts. Even better: integrate these intake tools with your eSourcing solution to automatically start the procurement process once inventory dips below a certain level.
Integrate your eProcurement tools for maximum efficiency—for example, connect your inventory management tool with your eSourcing solution to automatically take care of repurchasing items
4. Benchmarking tools
Benchmarking tools—like Xeneta and FreightWaves SONAR—provide real-time market data about freight rates that help you make strategic decisions for transport and logistics procurement events. Integrating these insights directly into your sourcing optimization platform lets you increase competition, enhance negotiations, and drive cost savings, leading to better procurement outcomes.
Bring comprehensive, real-time market intelligence into your eSourcing tool to make strategic decisions
5. Sustainability tools
ESG and sustainability is top of mind for many organizations, and procurement teams are looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions in the supply chain to contribute to these business objectives. Incorporating data such as CO2 impact from tools like Searoutes into your eProcurement strategy lets you make more informed decisions to support your ESG goals.
Using the right eProcurement tools elevates your procurement department, maximizing your team’s resources and empowering them to have a greater impact on the business. With Keelvar’s best-in-class eSourcing solution, you can use the winning combination of autonomous sourcing and sourcing optimization—as well as integrations with the other eProcurement tools you use every day—to get better results in every sourcing event and establish a sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective procurement process. Want to learn why Keelvar is a must-have eProcurement tool for businesses like yours?
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