How Finance Leaders Can Maximize Procurement's Value
Finance leaders
Get control over spend, boost visibility, and deliver cost savings with eProcurement.
Managing the financial operations of a modern organization is a complex and demanding task.
Finance leaders are asked to provide the financial strategy that powers the business to achieve its goals. At the same time, they must keep a tight rein on costs, improve cash flow, and deliver reliable financial insights.
All of this must be done while helping their organization successfully navigate a constantly shifting environment.
For these reasons, chief financial officers are interested in the opportunities for optimization that can be found within procurement. Automating the procure-to-pay process, simplifying purchasing, and managing spend through an eProcurement solution is quickly emerging as key to financial confidence and success.
Total control and visibility
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Teachers College, Columbia University
"We were able to streamline processes, add transparency, and at the same time, not have some mundane processes that we were doing before."
Patricia Walker, Director of Business Services
Ensuring a sound fiscal future
Maintaining control and oversight in a decentralized purchasing environment is a major challenge for many organizations. Different departments have their own suppliers and own ways of buying.
End users want to follow the correct guidelines, but purchasing can be more complicated than it needs to be. Your procurement team wants a compliant procurement process that lets them deliver efficiencies and savings, but they lack the right tools.
A purpose-built spend management solution helps your organization maintain financial stability by empowering you to:
- Forecast with greater accuracy thanks to visibility into committed spend
- Build a financial roadmap based on reliable data
- Achieve savings by directing spend to your preferred suppliers and taking advantage of your negotiated pricing
- Deliver on strategic objectives while maintaining a prudent approach to spending
- Reduce the risk of fraud by standardizing and automating your review and approval processes
- Ensure spending complies with all relevant internal and external policies and regulations.
eProcurement: Purchasing with full control and visibility
Managing the entire purchasing process through a single, easy-to-use solution gives your organization unprecedented control over procurement. You can cater to the specific needs of each department while remaining confident that spend is compliant and fully auditable.
All purchases are made at your negotiated prices, approved by those with the appropriate authority, and are allocated to the correct budget. Automation reduces effort at every step so your procurement and accounts payable teams are freed up to focus on more strategic work.
A streamlined and automated procurement process powered by an easy-to-use eProcurement solution will enable your organization to:
- Dramatically decrease off-contract spend by giving users an intuitive and familiar purchasing experience
- Oversee and manage the budgets and spending of each department
- Regain control and visibility over spend by minimizing the reliance on purchasing cards
- Align procurement and accounts payable with one set of processes around purchasing and invoice management
- Cut costs by reducing the resources required to manually process orders and invoices
- Reap the benefits of centralized buying, including the ability to negotiate better contracts and consolidate suppliers.
The perfect partner for your ERP
Your finance system is an essential tool for your organization and it’s understandable to look to it when transitioning away from a paper-driven procurement process.
But if you’re currently purchasing through an ERP procurement module, your procurement team and users probably won’t be short of reasons why it just doesn’t work for them.
Managing purchasing through a system that was not built for the task can be frustratingly inefficient and full of hidden costs. Supplier integration and enablement through an ERP can be time-consuming and resource-intensive for both procurement and IT teams. Plus, there’s an additional burden on IT whenever a modification, improvement, or security update is required.
Using an ERP procurement module can also be a complicated and cumbersome experience for users. Creating requisitions for everyday purchases can be frustrating and involve multiple steps and screens, driving some users to buy off contract in an effort to avoid the complexity.
The best eProcurement solutions overcome all of these challenges. They are cost-effective, purpose-built tools that work in tandem with your ERP to provide the functionality and usability your business wants, while giving you the central visibility and savings you need to maintain financial stability. Tight integration between the two means your ERP remains the financial source of truth at all times.
Learn more about the benefits of eProcurement vs managing procurement through your ERP.
The Unimarket difference
At Unimarket we make procurement simple by streamlining and automating the procurement process, saving your organization time and money. Our fully featured solution does everything you need without the distraction of functionality you’re unlikely to use.
Ease
User adoption is key to unlocking the strategic value of eProcurement. That’s why we’ve designed our solution to be easy for everyone to use, no matter their role or level of comfort with technology. It offers an instantly familiar online shopping experience that people love to use.
That means more spend on contract, better visibility into spend, and greater administrative efficiency — all adding up to the return on investment you need.
Savings
With Unimarket, you can significantly reduce the cost of purchasing across your entire organization. Hard dollar savings come from being able to direct spend to your preferred suppliers and leverage your buying power to achieve the best possible pricing and contract terms.
Plus automated invoice matching and approvals mean your accounts payable team only needs to manage exceptions, freeing up time and resources.
Integration
Our solution integrates tightly with your ERP, allowing data to flow easily between the two systems. This provides certainty around data accuracy and consistency while ensuring your finance system remains the master system of record.
And because Unimarket is hosted in the cloud, you’re always using the most up-to-date version and there is nothing for your IT team to manage.
Affordability
Our simple, all-in pricing model is completely transparent and allows you to have as many users and suppliers as you need, without worrying about increasing costs associated with per-user or per-seat pricing. Implementation, testing, user training, and ongoing support are also all included.
Unimarket plays well with others
Unimarket can quickly and easily connect with nearly any ERP, Finance, or Accounting system quickly and easily with Workato, our integration middleware partner.
Explore our comprehensive suite of source-to-pay solutions
Beacon AI ✦ ݁˖
AI capability built directly into the Unimarket platform — turning scattered policies, dense contracts, and manual invoice data into instant, compliant answers.
Policy Guide ✦ ݁˖
The AI-powered procurement co-pilot that lives inside your workflow, delivering real-time, policy-aligned guidance to every buyer in your organization, 24 hours a day.
Source
Streamline every stage of your sourcing process, from procurement planning and supplier discovery through to evaluation and award, with compliance built in from the start.
Contracts
Take control of your contracts with a single, searchable repository that makes managing agreements effortless and efficient.
Marketplace
Deliver a seamless, user-friendly buying experience that your team will love, while ensuring compliance and cost control.
eProcurement
Automate and simplify procurement workflows to save time, reduce costs, and drive efficiency across your organization.
Invoicing
Transform invoicing with full automation, enabling faster processing, lower costs, and improved supplier relationships.
Expenses
Simplify expense management with an intuitive solution that saves time, ensures accuracy, and streamlines approvals.
Payments
Effortlessly manage supplier payments while eliminating fraud risks and gaining complete visibility into your payment processes.
Supplier Management
Streamline onboarding, centralize your suppliers, and ensure seamless integration with expert support.
Insights
Gain 100% visibility. Track spending, identify cost-saving opportunities, and ensure compliance while staying on budget.
Virtual Mailroom
Eliminate manual invoice processing with automated workflows that save time, reduce errors, and accelerate approvals.
Clarity.Control.Impact.
Are you ready to streamline your source-to-pay processes?