Procurement touches nearly every corner of your business. From the products and solutions that keep your daily operations running smoothly to the suppliers you choose to deliver them, your purchasing decisions impact costs, inventory management and your supply chain. Duplicate orders, inconsistent deliveries and reactive ordering are common pain points that drive up costs and create unnecessary operational disruptions. To sum it up, efficient procurement is essential. But what does it look like? Here’s a breakdown:
Using Demand Forecasting
One of the most effective ways to improve your procurement processes is to be proactive. Demand forecasting uses historical data, seasonal trends and other operational patterns to predict how much of each product you will need during any given time period. This allows you to make more informed and precise purchasing decisions, reducing the likelihood of overordering or stockouts. When paired with automated tools, demand forecasting becomes the foundation of strong inventory management and accurately anticipating needs.
Centralizing Purchasing
When different departments are left to their own devices when ordering products and supplies, inefficiencies can appear quickly. Duplicate purchases, overordering or underordering, and not following standardized practices often lead to increased waste and higher costs. Centralized purchasing can help you avoid these issues and disruptions, making for more consistent ordering and a cleaner paper trail, which is invaluable when it comes time to review spending or identify opportunities to cut costs.
Reviewing Purchase History
Similar to demand forecasting, it’s important to review your past purchases to find patterns. Regularly review which products you’ve ordered, how frequently, in what quantities and at what costs. You might notice products being ordered in quantities that don’t match actual usage, categories where spending has gone up or instances where waste has increased. Making reviewing purchase history a regular part of your procurement process helps you order smarter overall.
Carefully Tracking Placed Orders and Incoming Shipments
Efficient procurement doesn’t stop after an order is placed. Tracking orders from when they’re placed to when they’re delivered plays a key role in procurement and inventory management. Without visibility into order statuses and incoming deliveries, it’s impossible to anticipate what you already have coming in and accurately place future orders. It also becomes difficult to anticipate possible delays, discrepancies or disruptions. Always track placed orders and incoming shipments, and match up what you receive to what you ordered to maintain accuracy. Use this information to inform upcoming orders, as well.
Consolidating Suppliers
Managing a long list of suppliers can be time-consuming and costly, and it can introduce challenges in your supply chain. Every vendor is another relationship to manage, another expense to track and another opportunity for disruptions to arise. One of the most helpful things you can do is to consolidate your supplier list, focusing on partnering with single-source suppliers whenever you can. This opens the door for stronger relationships, more consistent and dependable fulfillment, and simpler pricing structures. Consolidating your suppliers is also a huge time-saver, and time saved usually means money saved.
Veritiv Pollock is a trusted single-source supplier that helps you simplify procurement, inventory management and supply chain management. If streamlining operations is your goal, we’re here to help make that happen through comprehensive business solutions, reliable fulfillment and custom logistics. Contact us today to get started with a solutions partner you can count on!
