Hani Abdou, CEO and Founder of Tradogram
Procurement is both a global business practice and a challenging process, especially for the professionals in charge of managing it. The procurement challenges faced by public and private sectors alike include several common risks and logistical burdens, many of which originate from the difficulty of managing the performance of their suppliers.
In establishing and maintaining the process used to handle corporate purchasing, both the transparency and the quality of transactions between two or more companies is often compromised to ensure schedules and time-frames are met.
The rapid and ever-changing world of business procurement has forced experts to begin adopting software tools to assist them in the management of the complicated sourcing, evaluating, and ordering processes within their companies.
With more than 30 years of experience working in professional procurement, CEO and founder of the Tradogram software solution, Hani Abdou, explains the challenges that he and other procurement professionals have faced when forced to rely on traditional procurement methods. “The biggest challenge is allowing a smooth flow of information between a large number of internal and external stakeholders, and making sure that this information is clear and without misunderstanding,” Abdou says. “Being able to then accurately retrieve this information by using only traditional tools like telephone calls, instant messages and emails is a very difficult and sometimes impossible task.”
It can come as a surprise that, in the age of information, the communication of that information still poses such a dangerous challenge for businesses to overcome. “Miscommunication or lost information can be devastating in many cases,” explains Abdou. “This is very sensitive information that could result in a business losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
He continues: “It depends on the process being used, the industry, and the size of the company in question, but in many cases, by the time overspending is identified in the procurement process, a large amount of financial damage has already been done.”
The most common procurement challenges reported by businesses commonly include:
- Maintaining high-quality vendors
- Ensuring the best value for money
- Achieving full transparency throughout the process.
- Facilitating smooth communication and proper documentation of data.
- Enhancing staff performance and work environment.
How does procurement software help to overcome these challenges?
Having overseen the development of a software tool he wished he had access to during his time as a full-time procurement professional, Abdou shares why procurement software is a rising trend among purchasing managers. Procurement software provides operational tools for creating documents like requisitions, RFQs, purchase orders, and contracts. At the same time, it provides administrative tools for supplier management, approval processes, and budgeting.
“There are spend reports. These reports allow managers to access fully transparent spend visibility, which empowers them with the knowledge they need to make the right decisions at the right time.”
Tradogram has been implemented by a wide range of industries since 2014 to improve the procurement process, overcome the shortcomings of a longstanding ERP system, and bypass the complexities and high price typically associated with those systems.
Start building a better procurement process by using Tradogram for free today!
