More than 82% of buyers (source: 2015 purchasing decision survey ) use Excel to design their order tracking tables and plan their needs. An inexpensive and easy-to-use solution, Excel is not the solution that suits all businesses.
Indeed, this solution has several disadvantages:
- Suitable when the number of suppliers and products is limited, Excel is poorly designed when your purchasing management becomes more complex
- You are forced to create the entire architecture for managing your purchases yourself instead of taking advantage of an IT solution entirely designed by a team of qualified professionals to capture, update and share your information
Excel seems suitable for very small businesses whose purchasing process remains simple. Beyond that, it represents more of a handicap to the development of the activity, creating a lack of visibility and gaps for the proper functioning of your purchasing policy .
The supply of purchasing management software is booming following very strong demand from many companies:
- These are complete tools allowing you to centralize all of your data
- They facilitate their consolidation
- They offer simple solutions for updating and sharing data
32% of companies say they use purchasing management software today, a figure that is growing very quickly.
Ultimately, they allow you to obtain a clear and precise vision of your purchasing policy in order to meet your needs and those of your customers. In just a few clicks, you will know precisely each product you have, its recipient, current stock, supply status, monitoring the performance of each buyer or comparing it with demand from your customers. It will also allow you to locate elements that can be improved in your purchasing policy.
Some solutions go even further by offering:
- Automatically collect information about your supplier
- To launch online calls for tenders
- E-procurement tools allow your customers to directly choose the products they want online
