The days of misplaced invoices and erroneous receipts are finally over. New technologies have brought in a new era of procurement, one that is cloud-based. There are numerous reasons why switching to cloud-based procurement is advantageous to your company.
You surely have read article after article about the benefits of cloud-based procurement for businesses. But, there’s a good chance that you may have overlooked a key fact. The success of an e-procurement solution in your business depends on you providing fertile grounds. In other words, you need to prepare your business for this significant transformation in order to reap its rewards.
Considering these seven points will definitely help.
Seven Key Considerations
While there could be other items on this list, we decided to explore the ones below briefly.
- Data security and privacy. Determine the level of protection for all sorts of data and your privacy requirements. The e-procurement provider must be able to fulfill your particular security needs.
- Resilience. Assess the data’s security levels and how it’s guarded while it’s being transferred. Examine the hosting provider’s credentials and find out how often they do pen-testing.
- Continuous Monitoring and testing. Make sure you understand how a possible supplier checks their infrastructure and where your systems will be hosted.
- Compatibility. The e-procurement supplier must be able to provide a solution that’s compatible with your preferred networks.
- Backup Requirements. What method do you use to back up your operational environment? If you require it in a different area, you’ll need a provider who has many data centers.
- A systematic approach. Test out cloud services. Before completing the whole shift to the cloud platform, host some data elsewhere.
- Exit strategy. How can you retrieve the data once the contract expires? What happens if you decide to switch vendors? Make sure to consider this at the start of going towards the e-procurement process.
Bottom Line
With such benefits, it’s simple to see why cloud-based solutions are a popular procurement strategy among businesses.
Having access to real-time data across all aspects of the operation transparency from high-level executives is achieved by allowing team members access from anywhere and at any time.
It’s also a more user-friendly and organised solution to streamline supply chain exchanges and the company’s spending culture. We at Penny give you all of these benefits and more to put you on a fast track to success. Hence, don’t overthink it and please contact us right now.
