Your Guide to a Positive Procurement Reputation

It’s unfortunate, but sometimes procurement’s reputation isn’t always the greatest; often it’s seen as an unnecessary roadblock to business success. Being inside of procurement, you know that’s simply not true. Your team performs the essential tasks of saving the business money and keeping it safe from risk. 

But do other employees know that? Without help, most people only understand their own world, goals, and issues. It’s your job as a strategic partner to help them see beyond that small scope and understand procurement’s imperative value in your organization.

If that resonates, it might be time for your team to do a reputation makeover. Here are a few essential steps to help you get started.

1. Create a Centralized Intake Process 

If you’re like a lot of companies, chances are your intake process is a bit messy. Low visibility and unclear procedures can slow down your team and decrease your value in the eyes of fellow employees and customers. If you want procurement to be synonymous with efficiency, quality, and helpfulness, this is something you must change.

Creating a centralized intake process will allow stakeholders visibility every step of the way. It will eliminate confusion and create clarity. In addition, using a centralized supplier management tool like Graphite will allow you to create and manage a list of preferred suppliers, making your supplier onboarding program more efficient. 

2. Gain Greater Visibility with Supplier Data Management

Does your team have a central location to store the most up-to-date supplier data? Too often, the answer is no. Instead, supplier data lives on individual computers and floats between teammates, making visibility and keeping data up-to-date even harder. Whatever your tool, your team will work more efficiently and accurately if your documents have a centralized home. 

With a process like that, it becomes much easier to quickly vet and assess your data’s accuracy. And, the accuracy of your data can be assessed at each stage of your supplier onboarding program. When that data lives in a central location, expanding and promoting preferred supplier lists to other employees becomes easier than ever.

3. Meet Employees Where They Are

The last thing you want is for employees at your company to see procurement as just another hurdle to jump before they can get something done. Instead, procurement should help employees speed up the tasks they need to complete.

However, procurement systems often get bogged down with too many unclear steps. As a result, it’s difficult for employees to maintain visibility throughout the entire process and even understand why they have to take certain steps.

Additionally, procurement creates more work for itself when constantly taking on new suppliers rather than utilizing current or approved suppliers. 

But all that can change if you meet employees where they are. Procurement must be the one to reach out to employees to help them gain a better understanding of where to begin onboarding a new supplier and how to maintain visibility throughout the process.

If you’ve successfully centralized your intake process, as we suggest in step one, meeting employees where they are (rather than expecting them to come to you) will be an easy and advantageous next step.

4. Advertise Your Team Internally

Advertising your procurement team will not happen organically or automatically. You’ll have to develop internal marketing campaigns to ensure that every employee at the business knows who you are, what you stand for, and how to use your services to speed up their work and achieve the outcomes they need.

With the proper messaging (combined with the right centralized processes), you’ll find that procurement becomes a department that is no longer viewed in a negative light. Instead, procurement will become a department that stakeholders don’t know how to live without.

If you’re looking for a solution to centralize your intake process, increase visibility for stakeholders, and become the team your business can’t do without Graphite Connect might be the solution for your company. 

Graphite Connect allows procurement teams to implement a centralized onboarding process that makes requesting suppliers a breeze. It can also help you find new suppliers, gain critical insights into supplier performance, and store supplier data.