Procurement process includes the preparation, processing, payment and the approval of payment. The procurement culture often includes the following:

• Procurement risk analysis.
• Purchasing decisions.
• Purchasing guidelines.
• Decision-making approaches.
• e-procurement tools.

Every company has to focus on strategic sourcing and procurement because business will not be able to get profit if the procurement price is more than the profit that it makes on selling the actual product. This whole process comes under the procurement risk analysis.

Automation in Procurement

The need for automation has increased rapidly in the present world. Everyone is looking for a fast and qualitative solution in any kind of field. Generally in a common complaint in procurement culture is that the teams spend more time in learning and completing the administrative tasks. Many procurement services companies are worrying as their team is not spending much time on growth-enhancing activities.

To overcome this, Robotic Process Automation has been introduced which includes e-procurement tool that effectively carries out all the administrative duties and give the buyers their precious time. Procurement professionals can easily use this interface because the programming skill required to set up an RPA are very easy to implement when compared to the traditional e procurement softwares.

Why Should Procurement Services Companies Consider RPA?

By considering RPA and implementing it, the procurement professionals in a company can focus on cognitive activities like interaction and working with stake holders to clearly understand their business requirements.

RPA can also help in reducing the supply chain risk as robots are faster than human. When compared humans can carry out a contract renewal process once a year, whereas robot could carry it frequently as required.

In the future, RPA will not be limited to covering the procurement lifecycle. It will also cover the bidding process from the vendor's side as robots can be used for both side negotiations. The use of big data in RPA will be essential in understanding the underlying trends of pricing and volumes to ensure that a sustainable procurement is being done.

Conclusion

RPA plays equally significant role for both procurement services companies and procurement professionals.

For Procurement services companies, it's an immense value adder as it saves lot of time and man power at a very low cost when compared to the old traditional e procurement software. RPA also plays a very important role in procurement risk analysis and helps in an effective sourcing and procurement planning.

For Procurement professionals, it reduces the time that they spend on the administrative tasks and helps them to concentrate on growth-enhancement or cognitive activities which help in the growth of the company and themselves also.

With the future advancements, RPA will play a crucial role in procurement and ensure to provide a qualitative and time saving solution for all the procurement services companies.