A Guide to Procurement Solutions for Academic Institutions

The procurement process is critical for any business whether it's a small business or a large one, and if done correctly, it can help increase profits and cut costs. A procurement process includes a variety of activities that contribute to the acquisition of goods or services.

Typically, procurement managers or procurement teams are responsible for monitoring and conducting  procurement operations. These employees would be responsible for everything from sourcing vendors and supplier management to negotiating contracts, order management, managing the purchasing process, inventory management, and maintaining records.

This traditional method can be more complex; it involves a lot of paperwork and is more challenging to monitor and organize, which leaves more room for error. However, this problem can easily be solved with a reliable web-based procurement platform.  In 2024, businesses are leveraging the best procurement management solution to simplify procurement process management. This post explains all you need to know about purchasing software and how its usefulness for your academic institutions.

What is a Procurement Software Solution?

A procurement system is a computer program that automates all of the key aspects of the procurement cycle.

With an effective e-procurement system, every workflow relating to the procurement and purchasing process is recorded on one convenient, automated platform. The best procurement solution can help improve organization, track spending waste, streamline budgeting, and more.

Effective goods and services procurement processes can help academic institutions maintain financial sustainability, combat spending waste, and address budget deficits. This can be achieved through the procurement system's asset management, strategic sourcing, and resource allocation features.

What contributes to spending waste in the procurement activities of academic institutions?

According to the National Association of Educational Procurement (NAEP), schools and universities want to make budgeting and financial stability their highest priority in this post-pandemic world. This is primarily due to the negative impact the Covid-19 has had on enrollments, fundraising, tuition payments, and state funding.

Spending waste in academic institutions is often brought on by poor expense tracking, fragmented requisition and ineffective approval processes. A lack of collaboration, and minimal transparency in spend management may also contribute to wastage. Poor tracking is common especially in cases where procurement processes are carried out and tracked manually. This is one of the many reasons spending waste can easily hide undetected in the spend data.

Transparency is vital to eliminating wasteful spending; employees must ensure that they are 100% transparent when reporting on procurement activities. If information is withheld, it becomes extremely easy to duplicate orders and repeat common mistakes. A lack of transparency can also create an opportunity for illegal or fraudulent activities. A cloud-based solution that helps businesses carry out frequent and comprehensive spend analytics will uncover inefficiencies in purchase order management and identify potential areas for improvement.

Academic institutions often neglect to collaborate with other departments and frequently reuse the same suppliers to save time. This, however, is a contributor to spending waste. If not enough effort is put into finding the right supplier during the sourcing process, and if separate departments don’t communicate, money is potentially wasted on duplicate purchases or ignoring a more cost-effective vendor. A centralized education procurement system could easily eliminate all these challenges and assist with cost savings within the entire procurement process.

Three ways Tradogram can help eliminate challenges in the procurement process

If you are looking for comprehensive and reliable procurement management software, Tradogram is a cloud-based solution with several useful features and capabilities to solve your procurement challenges.

This cost-effective procurement solution provides valuable data analytics and insights into your procuring and purchasing processes. Here are three main ways Tradogram procurement management system can help you manage end-to-end procurement more effectively and eliminate your procurement challenges:

First Way

Tradogram allows you to combat the internal bottlenecks that are caused by manual processes. Rather than eliminating human intervention, the procurement platform is powered by artificial intelligence to automate and simplify the processes. Essentially, it is a procurement automation solution that helps businesses streamline purchase activities so they progress faster and more efficiently.

Using Tradogram’s comprehensive list of procurement tools, you can improve your expense management, supply chain management, supplier discovery, contract lifecycle management, budgeting efforts, and so much more. These features of an electronic procurement suite will allow educators spend more time teaching and less time on time-consuming procurement operation.

Second Way

Tradogram’s spend management solution gives you the tools for complete spend visibility across all departments within your organization. This is done through an approval workflow system to structure company spending and budget management. The web-based procurement system has features that ensures that all procurement tasks are routed for approval across procurement to relevant procurement professionals and signed off by managers before any purchase is made.

A budget planner or spend management platform also allows you carry out forecasting, set budget limits and monitor spending across your procurement department using a unified procurement solution. Some procurement solutions may also integrate with an ERP system for effective resources management across procurement and other related departments.

Modern procurement solutions like the Tradogram software enables you to generate real-time spend analysis reports for all sourcing and procurement instances. It also has various e-sourcing tools that allow educators to plan their negotiation with vendors and send RFPs/ RFQs to numerous suppliers as part of the supplier management and sourcing stage of procurement.

Additionally, it includes an item master catalog for transparency and a delivery management system that tracks your inventory distribution. This makes it useful as a warehouse management platform for your educational organization.

Third Way

Tradogram’s collaboration tools include several useful features such as contract management tools, instant messaging, notifications, purchase requisition capabilities among other features used by companies for improved purchase order creation, and vendor relationship management. The e-procurement platform serves as a unified procurement system that puts everything you need to manage procurement in the same easy-to-use procurement channel.

The collaboration and vendor management features of this cloud-based procurement system is useful for teams of all sizes. Tradogram's procurement features also empowers leaders to help their companies keep their financial systems in sync.

To find out more about Tradogram procurement management solution and how our software solution can help you, contact us today or create a free account and request a live demo on how our software works. Get the number 1 procurement solution and let us help you take your business spend management to the next level.

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