5 steps to Increase Stakeholder Visibility on your Procurement Team

Proper stakeholder visibility is an issue many procurement teams face. With unclear processes and decentralized storage of supplier data, giving team members and stakeholders proper visibility can take a lot of work.

However, if this problem is not fixed, a procurement team’s efficiency and internal reputation will likely suffer. 

Still trying to figure out where to begin? Keep reading to learn the steps you can take to increase stakeholder visibility within your procurement department.

Outline transparent processes

When your team is functioning well enough, it can feel redundant to sit down and outline precise procedures for intake, risk management, and other procurement tasks. However, doing so will not only increase the efficiency of your procurement team but will also give other stakeholders greater visibility into where their requests are at any given time.

When you can point to exactly what stage a request is in, it gives those you work with confidence that their requests are being given proper priority. Conversely, when there is a lack of visibility, stakeholders can feel frustrated that their requests aren’t moving along quickly.

Create extremely clear processes, give stakeholders visibility, and watch as your team builds trust within the company. 

Keep stakeholders informed

When you have centralized processes, you can then make it a high priority to keep stakeholders informed. Be proactive rather than reactive– instead of waiting until a stakeholder asks about a request, give them regular updates on where their request is and what the timeline to completion will be.

Stakeholders often want their requests completed within hours or days, and while that may not always be possible, giving them regular updates helps them see that the request is moving along as quickly as possible.

This visibility and communication gives them great trust in your team and department and ensures they will continue coming to you to help them with future requests.

Centralize supplier data storage

Does your team have a centralized way to store the most updated supplier data? Too often, the answer is no. Instead, supplier data lives on individual computers and floats between teammates, making stakeholder visibility limited 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. 

It’s also essential to think about how your suppliers are providing you with data. Is the process quick, easy, and streamlined? Is it different for each supplier? A simplified procedure of how suppliers give you data will help your team increase efficiency and produce more quality work. 

With a streamlined process, it becomes much easier to vet the given data’s accuracy quickly. The accuracy of different aspects of data can be assessed at each stage of your supplier onboarding program. And, if you accurately store that data, using and expanding preferred supplier lists becomes more accessible than ever.

Create trackable goals

Businesses revolve around goals. No matter the size of your business, you likely have goals. Unfortunately, procurement is a department that can get lost in the day-to-day tasks and needs to remember to create goals and plans that stretch them. 

However, if you focus on creating measurable goals that make a difference within your business, employees at your company will better understand the importance of your work.

Ensure that your goals are trackable and reasonable and contribute to the overall business goals. Then create a team culture where you work collectively to reach those goals. 

Advertise your team internally

Even with the best intentions to meet employees where they are, if they don’t even know you exist, you’ll find they still don’t use the processes you’ve put right in front of them. Most of the company’s focus is outward: selling products to businesses or consumers outside the organization. Your job in procurement is to sell yourselves internally.

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

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

What’s next?

On the hunt for a system that will allow you to centralize your processes and supplier data? Graphite may be the solution for you. The Graphite platform will enable you to customize your supplier intake process, enhance stakeholder visibility, and centralize where your supplier data is stored and updated.