Effective eProcurement process management is all about managing corporate spending and expenditures.

Typically, company procurement personnel are given competing objectives. They are asked to decentralize procurement processes and, at the same time, centralize aggregate and enterprise-wide demand in order to drive lower prices through bids and contracts. In addition, they are asked to ensure enterprise-wide buying compliance by preventing off-contract purchasing. No small task.

While many ERP applications provide eProcurement functionality, they fall short of meeting the specific requirements of each unique department, which prevents those who do not have that ERP tool on their desktop, or who cannot find the product they need in the catalog, from participating. This invokes rebellion and rogue spending that sends budgets out of control. Effective eProcurement management is more process than it is application.

Business Objectives

• Maintain the unique sets of rules and demands for each spend area, which would require a flexible infrastructure that can respond to changes in real-time, not a hard-coded system that requires an IT project for any updates
• Reduce process costs: with > 90% of procurement costs being related to the process, not the cost of pens and paper
• Eliminate "Rogue spending" that can account for as much as 1/3 of all corporate spending

Benefits of BPM

• Savings are significantly larger when BPM is involved
  While an eProcurement system may drive a 5% savings on purchases, a BPM-enabled eProcurement solution will drive upwards of 60 - 70% savings in process-related costs
• Platform flexibility with vendors
  BPM tools with service-oriented architectures (SOA) simplify vendor integration requirements
• Special requests are contained
  Business rules-driven processes allow users to submit requests though a single portal, whether products are in the catalog or not, eliminating any need to circumvent the solution
• Process visibility means an auditable, enforceable solution
  eProcurement is significantly more dependent on processes than on an application. Visibility into key eProcurement processes provides keen insight into the solution's effectiveness