Your Results

Your personalized action plan for greater impact from procurement

A step by step guide for maturing your procurement processes in order to have greatest impact on your business.

Your SCore:

Level 1

Businesses that reach the highest level of procurement maturity are proven to be more efficient, innovative and with faster speed to market.

Read on to discover how to quickly leap to the next level and have more impact on your business.

Your SCore:

Level 2

Businesses that reach the highest level of procurement maturity are proven to be more efficient, innovative and with faster speed to market.

Read on to discover how to quickly leap to the next level and have more impact on your business.

Your SCore:

Level 3

Businesses that reach the highest level of procurement maturity are proven to be more efficient, innovative and with faster speed to market.

Read on to discover how to quickly leap to the next level and have more impact on your business.

Your SCore:

Level 4

Businesses that reach the highest level of procurement maturity are proven to be more efficient, innovative and with faster speed to market.

Read on to discover how to quickly leap to the next level and have more impact on your business.

Your SCore:

Level 5

Congratulations! You are in the top 18% of procurement teams, and among the most impactful teams for overall business performance.

But 44% of your peers are in the level right behind you - and racing to catch you up.

Read on to discover how to stay ahead of the curve.

29%

Jump in efficiency and ease of collaboration

22%

Improvement in budget control

21%

Increase in a company’s ability to maintain IT and security compliance

24%

Faster speed to market

Our Research

Our research found that businesses with the most advanced procurement processes enjoy many advantages over those relying on manual, decentralized and reactive processes.

You can see the full rundown of the effect of advanced purchasing processes on business’ performance in our Procurement Impact Report.

Intake

Level 1

Your current situation:

You don’t have an intake process.

Procurement is partially involved in intake requests, and requests are received ad hoc and in inconsistent formats.

Departments handle their own procurement requests, while procurement oversees the process with multiple tools.

All intake requests come through a standard ‘portal’ or ticketing solution, proactively managed centrally by procurement across multiple tools.

Your intake process is automated and centrally managed, with custom intake forms for each department or request type, and incorporating criteria for pre-approvals and company policies.

What it could be like:

Your intake process is centralized and flexible.

You have automated request qualification based on company policies and approval criteria and even pre-approved suppliers.

Automation does all the heavy-lifting - saving you time and giving you more control.

The building blocks you’ll need to get there:

A basic outline of core requirements before a purchase can be made (budget approvals, budget owner, business cases, etc)

A well documented procurement approval process

A clear catalog of approved applications

How technology can help:

Customize your company-wide intake forms to make sure that every requester inputs the specific details needed for that request to progress.

At intake, map tags to specific workflows in order to avoid any manual reassignment or wasted time chasing incorrect stakeholders.

Integrate your workflow with existing ticketing tools to ensure you drive company-wide adoption and that processes don’t need to be re-written.

Routing

Level 1

Your current situation:

Your process is manual, unstructured and non-formalized.

You have a formalized and auditable process, pre-agreed and approved by core stakeholders.

You have a formal and mostly centralized process, inclusive of all approval departments (finance, legal, infosec) managed across email and teams’ project management tools.

You manage approvals across multiple systems and can track their status in real-time. You can route any that need compliance review to relevant stakeholders.

Your requests have parallel approval flows, with automated and smart re-assignments and can be managed in departments’ own platforms through numerous robust integrations.

What it could be like:

Routing is smart, integrated and fully compliant - without manual entry and robust integrations help you avoid disparate technology platforms.

Pre-agreed approval streams (including legal and compliance reviews) are paired with intelligent rejection handling and re-assignments to speed up processes and ensure stakeholder accountability.

You have detailed management information and can see all request statuses and approval bottlenecks in one place.

The building blocks you’ll need to get there:

A document approval matrix with legal, business and finance sign offs

Visibility of pre-approved budget items

Templates for business cases and contract justifications

How technology can help:

Automate accountability and tasking of stakeholders involved in the purchasing process to accelerate your approval process.

Set up parallel routing to make sure that no approval is requested without the correct tasks completed beforehand.

Set custom conditions, such as thresholds, before each routing to make sure that the request automatically maps to the correct next step.

Cost Awareness

Level 1

Your current situation:

You don’t have a formalized procurement process.

Employees often bypass procurement processes to manage suppliers directly.

You have formalized budget and procurement processes in place, with spend tracking and well-understood rules for when a purchase requires an AP process or can be done via company card.

You have company procurement policies in place, including vendor management, negotiation training and real-time insights.

There is company-wide adoption of mandated procurement policies. Procurement has total understanding of approval process and is accountable for policy adherence and budget compliance.

What it could be like:

Everyone in your organization understands the value of responsible spending and adheres to purchasing policies - amounting to a strong culture of cost efficiency.

From software tools to hardware, procurement has centralized visibility and control at every step of the purchasing process.

Next to no maverick spending

The building blocks you’ll need to get there:

Assign technical and budget owners

Monthly cadence and reporting with FP&A to track budget vs. actuals

Starting negotiations at least 90 days in advance to give you the time to assess business needs and license utilization

How technology can help:

Gain clarity over all purchases, renewals and requests in one location.

Have visibility of any bottlenecks and outstanding tasks that need your attention.

Set up notifications and alerts, with information customized for every stakeholder, with clear information on what is needed for each task.

Audit & compliance

Level 1

Your current situation:

Most of your procurement has no legal or compliance review and there is little or no regard for how Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is handled.

You have legal review for certain spend thresholds, and some case-by-case review by infosec / compliance teams.

You have formal legal and infosec / compliance review policies with an established approval matrix.

You have formal legal and infosec / compliance review policies and high confidence in adherence to regulatory requirements.

Intake forms automatically pre-approve or reject requests based on internal policies and external regulatory requirements. Relevant compliance stakeholders are automatically added to workflows

What it could be like:

Internal and external compliance requirements are built into the procurement process from the very start.

Relevant compliance personnel are automatically brought into the approval workflow through integrations. Processes vary by each region’s regulations, and suppliers are held to our own SLAs, not just their own.

Your processes are fully auditable.

The building blocks you’ll need to get there:

Starting renewals at least 90 days in advance to allow for appropriate legal and compliance reviews.

A process for approvals - including stakeholders - for when PII data is being consumed by the tool

A clear infosec review process for new tools and a review on renewals every 24 months

How technology can help:

Comprehensive audit trails across every purchase, including every document and discussion relating to that purchase.

All requests go through the correct approval process that includes compliance checks by Security, IT and Legal.

Clear understanding of the compliance, security and IT risks of each purchase by using vendor insight tools that pull out the relevant information.

Supplier Relationships & Benchmarking

Level 1

Your current situation:

Supplier relationships are transactional and you have no access to price benchmarking data.

You're beginning to use supplier performance metrics, and procurements uses its own experience to benchmark prices.

You actively consult networks for price benchmarks and supplier intel, and have a dedicated Supplier Relationship Management role.

You collaborate closely with suppliers and solve problems jointly, and invest in pricing insights from third parties (e.g. Gartner, Forrester or NPI)

You have real-time pricing health updates based on external data, and recommended price targets are automatically given to request approvers.

What it could be like:

Supplier Relationship Management is fully embedded in your procurement strategy, enabling continuous improvement of supplier performance.

With access to pricing benchmarks, you can negotiate contracts effectively and ensure you always secure the best possible price.

You have the visibility and control necessary to function as a strategic partner to the business, from optimizing contract sizes to securing favorable renewal terms.