Intake and procurement process orchestration is all about managing stakeholders as they navigate through the procurement process. Or, perhaps, it’s the best way to mitigate them trying to circumvent it!
Procurement is an intricate operation, with many moving parts and stakeholders, each playing a critical role in the harmony of your business operations. Procurement process orchestration simplifies this complexity. By ensuring each section of your business ‘orchestra’ plays in sync, it can achieve cost efficiencies, assure compliance and enhance business performance.
By embracing a strategic approach to procurement, you can streamline operations, mitigate risks, and foster stronger supplier relationships. This elevates your procurement function beyond a tactical, reactive organisation and transforms it into a pivotal driver of business value.
Let’s look at how the latest process orchestration technology can ensure you have a seamless user experience that makes stakeholders happy. But, it’s way more than that. It gives you the flexibility to mould and evolve your processes, without the constraints of a rigid, legacy tech stack.
Key Takeaways: Why we need Intake and Procurement Process Orchestration
- Streamlining of Procurement Process: Process orchestration simplifies the intricate procurement process by automating and integrating each step from intake to procurement, ensuring operational efficiency and strategic alignment with business objectives.
- Enhanced Efficiency and Visibility: By adopting process orchestration tools and platforms, businesses gain real-time insights and control over their procurement activities, facilitating quicker decision-making and improved risk management.
- Improved Collaboration and Compliance: Process orchestration fosters enhanced collaboration among stakeholders and automates compliance checks, significantly reducing manual errors and ensuring adherence to regulations and company policies.
- Cost Savings and Supplier Relationship Management: The strategic and automated approach provided by process orchestration results in cost efficiencies, optimised supplier selection, and strengthened supplier relationships, driving overall value creation in procurement.
- Agility and Scalability in Procurement Operations: The adaptability and user-centric design of process orchestration tools enable businesses to readily adjust to changing needs and scale operations, positioning procurement as a pivotal driver of business innovation and growth.
- Strategic Advantages for Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs): CPOs benefit from process orchestration through enhanced efficiency, improved compliance and risk management, cost reductions, and the ability to transform procurement into a strategic function within the organisation.
What is procurement intake?
Procurement intake acts as the initial step in the procurement process, where requisitions for goods or services are received and assessed. This phase is critical for early procurement involvement in both your strategic projects and more routine, tactical purchases alike. It sets the stage for effective process orchestration, ensuring that requests align with company needs and compliance standards.
By meticulously handling the procurement intake, businesses lay the foundation for better end user adherence to procurement policies. Not only that, it offers streamlined operations and risk management, crucial for optimising cost savings and enhancing performance.
Importance in Process Orchestration
The intake-to-procure step serves as the entry point to procurement process orchestration. It begins the process of integrating various parts of the business to work cohesively. It filters and prioritises requests, allowing procurement teams to triage their scarce resources towards more strategic requests.
At the same time, an effective intake process ensures that end users are able to self-serve for their more transactional buying needs. This step ensures that procurement activities align with business objectives, paving the way for efficient workflow orchestration and the adoption of process orchestration tools.
Role of Technology
Technology plays a pivotal role in refining the procurement intake process. With process orchestration software, you now have advanced tools for automating and managing complex end-to-end procedures across multiple departments. These technologies enable you to have real-time request tracking, automated compliance checks, and seamless communication.
By adopting such technologies, you’re able to transform a siloed approach into a well-orchestrated procurement process. The intake phase efficiently feeds into subsequent steps, such as vendor selection and contract management.
What is process orchestration in a procurement context?
We increasingly consider the ultimate business case for procurement teams as being the delivery of top line value, as well as bottom line cost savings. With this change in mindset, it’s not difficult to imagine that this type of software will soon be considered essential, especially in larger enterprises.
The evolution in procurement has led to a rapid increase in specialised technological solutions to meet its growing challenges. However, this has also resulted in a fragmented set of digital procurement tools. These can complicate the overall process rather than simplifying it, especially in enterprise organisations.
Solution provider Zip explains it as:
“Put simply, it’s about unifying siloed workflows and creating seamless bridges between applications, data, and users. This strategic alignment ensures data integrity, fosters collaboration, and maintains transparency from the initial purchase request at intake all the way through to final payment and recordkeeping.”
Procurement orchestration emerges as this comprehensive solution. Its goal is to consolidate various systems into a streamlined, smart, and effectively managed, inter-departmental workflow.
Process orchestration in procurement therefore refers to the systematic coordination of various activities and workflows involved in purchasing goods and services. It entails using advanced software and platforms to manage the end-to-end procurement activities seamlessly, from intake to procure. Essentially, process orchestration centralises and automates procurement tasks, ensuring that every phase of the procurement cycle communicates efficiently, reduces manual errors, saves time, and optimises resource allocation.
At its core, process orchestration in procurement is about creating a streamlined, automated framework that supports strategic decision-making and operational efficiency. The process orchestration layer acts as the glue that binds various procurement processes, enabling organisations to execute their procurement strategies effectively and with greater agility.
What makes Process Orchestration unique?
Process orchestration brings a distinct approach to managing the journey from intake to procure, enhancing the way businesses handle their procurement processes. This section delves into the unique aspects of process orchestration, showcasing why it stands out in the landscape of procurement management solutions.
More Adaptable than S2P and S2C Suites
Process orchestration proves more adaptable than traditional Source-to-Pay (S2P) and Source-to-Contract (S2C) suites. It does this by offering flexibility that fits a wider range of organisational structures and needs.
Unlike some legacy suites – which come with predefined or limited workflows – process orchestration tools allow for customised workflow orchestration. This adaptability ensures that businesses can modify their procurement processes as their requirements evolve, without being constrained by the limitations of their software solutions.
Increased Adoption, Thanks to Better UX
An intelligently designed user experience (UX) within process orchestration platforms plays a pivotal role. This ensures your team WANT to use them, rather than feel forced to use clunky, legacy software. Modern process orchestration software is designed with the end-user in mind.
The intuitive interfaces and streamlined processes reduce the learning curve and enhance user satisfaction. It reduces the need to have “superusers” or expend time and energy training stakeholders how to buy something compliantly. This focus on UX encourages wider adoption across organisations, as users find the software easier to navigate and more effective in managing their daily tasks.
Greater Transparency of Procurement Processes
Process orchestration offers greater transparency throughout the procurement process. With the integration capabilities of business process orchestration software, organisations achieve a unified view of their procurement activities.
This transparency allows business stakeholders – and suppliers – to track the status of procurement actions in real-time, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions based on current data. The increased visibility into procurement operations facilitates better compliance, risk management, and strategic planning.
Enhancing Automation Opportunities for Transactional Functions
By implementing process orchestration, your organisation can unlock enhanced automation opportunities for transactional procurement. Just like S2P suites, workflow orchestration platforms also excel at automating repetitive tasks.
This not only conserves scarce procurement resources for more added-value tasks. It also reduces manual errors, accelerates processing times, and can lead to further cost savings. The ability to automate transactional functions also allows high-growth companies to scale their procurement operations efficiently as their business grows.
With its adaptability, user-centric design, transparency, and automation capabilities, process orchestration offers a unique and effective solution for managing procurement processes.
How does procurement orchestration drive value downstream from intake?
As we already explored, procurement orchestration extends well beyond initial intake, offering value further downstream too. By leveraging process orchestration tools and workflow orchestration platforms, organisations gain a seamless integration of their procurement activities, from intake right the way through to contract signature or payment. This streamlined approach not only ensures compliance and alignment with business needs but also facilitates more strategic purchasing decisions.
Streamlining Procurement Workflows
Workflow orchestration in the procurement process ensures that every step, from request intake to final purchase, follows a predefined, optimised path. This eliminates bottlenecks and reduces the need for your team to manually intervene.
The result: a faster procurement cycle. Efficient workflow orchestration means tasks are automatically routed to the appropriate stakeholders, ensuring timely approvals and more efficient processing.
Enhancing Visibility and Control
Process orchestration platforms offer unparalleled transparency into the procurement process. By centralising procurement activities, all parties can monitor every phase of the procurement cycle and access real-time data on spending, supplier performance and contract compliance.
Or, in the case of the supplier or stakeholder, they can track real-time the status of their order or invoice. You can now relieve your Buyers of their overflowing inboxes or voice messages. Simple requests can be self-served, thanks to a transparent, user-friendly front end.
Facilitating Collaboration and Compliance
A well-orchestrated procurement process fosters better collaboration between departments. Organisational goals and compliance requirements can virtually run on auto-pilot. Process orchestration tools automate compliance checks and maintain an audit trail of all transactions, significantly reducing the risk of deviations from company policies or regulatory standards.
Automating Transactional Processes
By automating routine transactional processes, procurement orchestration frees up valuable resources to focus on strategic rather than administrative tasks. Automation in procurement not only improves efficiency but also enhances accuracy, reducing the likelihood of errors in order processing and payment procedures.
Can orchestration speed up your digital transformation journey?
Certainly, orchestration can significantly accelerate your digital transformation journey by enhancing procurement process agility, efficiency, and effectiveness.
By reducing the need for Buyers or Category Managers to be involved in minutiae, these efficiencies free up the time and energy to focus on strategic initiatives.
Solution provider Tonkean explains this perfectly. The immediate ROI is the hours that are regained by your Buyers and Category Managers, thanks to them not needing to perform administrative busywork.
“This entails—for each request—triaging the request to determine its relative risk, expense, and urgency; sourcing the item or service (potentially tricky if it’s a new vendor or something off the wall), handling the contract, PO, invoice—the list goes on. In most organizations, procurement teams have to do all this work manually—manually combing through channels to find all the submitted intake materials; manually pestering stakeholders for approvals, going back and pestering requesters for more information, manually updating systems along the way, etc.”
Something as simple as vendor consolidation across tail spend is a great example. You can succeed much faster with procurement process orchestration tool to do the policing on your behalf.
How does orchestration help improve collaboration with business stakeholders?
Orchestration fosters improved collaboration with business stakeholders by improving the end user’s experience and making him or her less likely to want to circumvent the procurement process.
“Procurement processes are difficult to follow because they’re difficult to manage.
Platforms like Tonkean sit above your other tools and wrap around them, enabling you to use them better, so you don’t need to rip and replace anything. Rather than asking users to learn another all-in-one tool, an orchestration layer can abstract out all the minutia, creating a much more realistic set of expectations.
Processes are far easier to follow if employees don’t have to change their behaviour to do so.”
Expanding on this idea, it should also drive in increased process adoption which translates into more spend under management.
Simplified Communication Channels
Through the implementation of process orchestration tools, your team gains access to a platform where communication barriers are removed, ensuring that everyone has visibility into the procurement process’s status and requirements. This ensures that stakeholders can easily contribute and stay informed. No need to navigate complex systems or deal with siloed information.
By meeting users where they already are e.g. in Microsoft Teams, Slack or Jira, it increases the likelihood of them voluntarily making purchases in a compliant manner.
Process orchestration platforms also serve as a central hub for communication. It enables stakeholders to share information, updates, and feedback efficiently in real-time. This centralisation ensures that decision-making is faster and more informed. Ultimately, this speeds up the procurement workflow from intake, right the way through procure-to-pay.
Stakeholders receive timely updates as push notifications to their procurement activities, enabling them to identify and address issues promptly. This heightened level of control and transparency facilitates collaboration, and reduces the need for manual workarounds.
Through these mechanisms, process orchestration significantly enhances stakeholder collaboration. Why not make procurement a more strategic, efficient, and compliant function within your organisation?
How can orchestration enhance current source-to-pay process?
Orchestrating the source-to-pay process transforms procurement from a facilitative to a strategic function in your business.
By integrating workflow orchestration and process orchestration tools, companies achieve greater efficiency, accuracy, and agility. These technologies work seamlessly to automate tasks, reduce manual errors, and speed up procurement cycles.
With a process orchestration layer, repetitive tasks are automated, freeing up your team to focus on more strategic tasks. This not only increases productivity but also reduces the chances of manual errors, ensuring a smooth, efficient process.
Facilitating Wider Digital Transformation
Integrating a process orchestration platform is a crucial step towards wider digital transformation across the business. It enables the current source-to-pay process to integrate with other parts of the business.
S2P is a very transactional function. Procurement process orchestration software enables you to streamline and be able to handle initiatives that fall outside of the traditional S2P box.
For example, S2P suites are mostly not able to track non-financial benefits, for example ESG-related KPIs such as carbon emissions or supplier diversity. It’s also very difficult to manage and track procurement savings or wider value-delivery in a S2P or S2C software suite.
Being a repository for historical RFPs and for contracts doesn’t really facilitate the wider process around vendor lifecycle management. S2C suites also don’t adequately track or monitor any unplanned – but urgent – project work. Nonetheless, procurement can – and does – deliver a lot of value here, beyond their planned strategic sourcing projects remit.
By leveraging the power of process orchestration, companies can transform their procurement operations, making them more strategic, efficient, and compliant. This not only cuts costs but also significantly improves the overall performance and agility of the organisation.
Process orchestration: what’s in it for the CPO?
Process orchestration brings significant advantages to the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) by streamlining the procurement operations, improving the internal reputation of Procurement and providing a more efficient process to drive overall business performance.
- Enhanced Efficiency and Time Savings: By automating routine procurement tasks, process orchestration minimises manual interventions, leading to faster cycle times and more efficient processes. This automation allows procurement teams to focus on strategic tasks rather than administrative duties.
- Improved Visibility and Control: Process orchestration platforms provide CPOs with real-time insights into procurement operations, offering enhanced visibility and control over the entire process. This allows for timely decision-making and proactive management of potential issues.
- Increased Compliance and Risk Management: The automation and standardisation of procurement processes through a business process orchestration layer ensures adherence to policies and regulations. This reduces the risk of compliance breaches, and makes preparations for internal audits less resource-intensive.
- Better Supplier Relationships: Self-serve interfaces and clearer communication facilitated by workflow orchestration tools improve interactions with suppliers. This can lead to better negotiation, collaboration, and partnership outcomes.
- Cost Reductions: By optimising procurement processes, process orchestration helps in identifying cost-saving opportunities, reducing waste, and making more informed purchasing decisions.
- Agility and Scalability: The flexibility and customisation opportunities provided by process orchestration software allows procurement functions to quickly adapt to changing business needs. Scale operations up or down as required.
In essence, the adoption of process orchestration within procurement not only streamlines operational workflows but also places the CPO in a position to drive significant strategic value for the business.
It’s a transformation that elevates the procurement function from being viewed as a cost centre to a key contributor to both top line value, as well as bottom line cost reduction.
Why is AI vital to business process orchestration?
Embracing procurement process orchestration isn’t just about keeping up with technology trends; it’s about setting your business up for undeniable success. With the myriad benefits ranging from enhanced efficiency to significant cost savings it’s clear that integrating this approach can transform your procurement function profoundly.
Remember, it’s not just about automating tasks. It’s about redefining how your business manages procurement to become more strategic, agile and resilient. The insights shared are the roadmap to not only elevate your procurement processes. You’ll also to position your business as a frontrunner in operational excellence and agile procurement operations.
Quoting Zip again,
“A modern procurement orchestration platform, enriched with AI, does more than streamline existing processes; it redefines what is possible within procurement. By embedding intelligence into every facet of the procurement journey, these platforms deliver real, measurable results, and return on investment. They accelerate workflows, enhance decision-making, and empower procurement teams to achieve objectives that were previously out of reach.”
But, probably the most important area where AI will change the game is by offering that enhanced level of user experience to your requisitioners. Your greatest benefit as a procurement leader will be the improvement in the brand equity of your department.
Until now, the people in your organisation may well dread the thought of having to purchase something. Instead of using a clunky ERP system or playing email tennis with your Buyers, they may actually find it a pleasant experience in future.
