A Guide to Procurement Software for Academic Institutions

The procurement process is critical for any business, 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 the procurement process. These employees would be responsible for everything from sourcing vendors and supplier management to negotiating contracts, 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 system.

What is Procurement Software?

Procurement software is a computer program that automates all of the aspects of the procurement cycle.

With an effective e-procurement system, everything relating to the procurement and purchasing process is recorded on one convenient, automated platform. A reliable e-procurement software can help improve organization, track spending waste, streamline budgeting, and more.

Effective procurement processes can help maintain financial sustainability, combat spending waste, and address budget deficits through spend management, strategic sourcing, and resource allocation.

What contributes to spending waste in 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 approval processes, a lack of collaboration, and minimal transparency. Especially in cases where procurement processes are carried out and tracked manually, poor expense tracking is common. 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.

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 being 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.

Three ways Tradogram can eliminate procurement challenges

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If you are looking for comprehensive and reliable procurement management software, Tradogram has 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 can 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. Using Tradogram’s comprehensive list of tools, you can improve your expense management, supply chain management, supplier discovery, budgeting efforts, contract management, and so much more. These features will allow educators to spend more time teaching and less time procuring.

Second Way

Tradogram’s spend management tools allow for complete spend visibility across all departments within your organization. This is done through an approval workflow system to structure company spending, a budget planner to carry out forecasting, and the ability to generate real-time spend analysis reports. It also contains various e-sourcing tools that allow educators to plan their negotiation process and send RFPs/ RFQs to numerous suppliers. It also includes an item master catalog for transparency and a delivery management system that tracks your inventory distribution.

Third Way

Tradogram’s collaboration tools include several useful features such as contract management tools, instant messaging, notifications, purchase requisition capabilities for improved purchase order creation, and more.

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

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