How many times have procurement professionals found themselves behind the 8 ball, hurrying to catch up, or left with limited options because they are brought into the buying process too late?
We can remind, and ask, and plead the business to involve us sooner, but if we don’t make it simple and frictionless for people to loop procurement in from the very beginning, nothing is likely to change.
The idea of the ‘employee experience’ has received increasing focus in procurement over the last few years. One of the greatest opportunities to improve that experience in a way that benefits procurement as well as distributed buyers is at the point of intake, the period of time after a business need is identified, when stakeholders and buyers are focused on defining their business need and quickly securing multi-functional approvals.
If buyers can have their needs met quickly and conveniently in a way that also flags procurement, satisfaction and results will improve across the board.
In order to better understand how procurement teams are currently managing the intake experience, Art of Procurement partnered with Zip Intake-to-Procure to run a research survey. We analyzed the results, trying to uncover potential connections between company expectations, procurement performance metrics, and the employee experience.
That survey data is now available as a report that you can access here.
Our key findings include:
98 percent of respondents believe that an employee’s experience during the intake-to-procure process affects the impact procurement is able to have on the organization.
35 percent of employee-initiated purchases currently require five or more approvals before they can be processed.
77 percent of procurement organizations that report they are seen as strategic advisors or partners to the business also have a single, centralized purchase request process.
Only 41 percent of procurement professionals believe they currently have a reputation for being a partner to the business.
