Procurement can feel like a never-ending treadmill of emails, negotiations, and chasing approvals. If you're in the trenches, you know the drill: hours lost to mundane tasks that drain your energy and leave little room for strategic thinking.
But there are smart, practical ways to cut through the clutter and reclaim your time. Whether you're a one-person procurement function or part of a larger team, these tips can help you work smarter, not harder.
6 Ways to Slash the Procurement Admin Burden
Before you can cut the admin burden, you need a clear picture of where your hours are vanishing. Start by tracking your time for a couple of weeks with a free app like Toggl or RescueTime, or even jot notes in a notebook, logging what you're doing every hour or so during your workday.
Break it down: how much time goes to chasing approvals? You might discover that mundane tasks like manual data entry are eating up 40% of your day, while strategic stuff gets squeezed out. Once you've got the data, pinpoint the biggest time-drains and prioritize fixes.
For some added motivation, why not make a list of what you could achieve in procurement if you had more time on your hands? Here are six ways you can claim back your time.
1. Digitize and Automate the Basics
First things first: if you're still devoting hours manually entering data into spreadsheets, it's time to go digital. This doesn’t necessarily mean a heavy investment in a tech solution - at its simplest level, digitizing your procurement processes means swapping outdated habits for tools that do the heavy lifting.
Start by scanning and storing documents in a cloud-based system like Google Drive or Dropbox. This eliminates the hunt for lost files and makes everything searchable. Then, automate the simple stuff: use tools to connect your email, calendar, and best-in-breed procurement software so that purchase orders generate automatically when inventory dips low.
For approvals, platforms like DocuSign can route signatures electronically, cutting down on back-and-forth emails.
2. Leverage GenAI for Faster Communication
Communication in procurement often means juggling emails from both upstream and downstream (stakeholders and suppliers). Together, they can eat up your afternoons. But generative AI (GenAI) can help you speed up basic communication without sounding like a robot.
Tools like ChatGPT can help you create polite, professional replies to common queries, such as status updates on orders or clarifying specs. The key is to personalize them. Add a touch of your voice so it doesn't come across as canned. For example, if a supplier asks about payment terms, GenAI can outline the details quickly, and you just tweak it to fit.
Don't overdo it; use it for the repetitive stuff, like summarizing meeting notes or generating initial RFPs. This keeps things human while slashing the time you spend typing.
3. Train a Chatbot for Procurement FAQs
Building on communication, why not offload even more by training a chatbot? Chatbots are way more advanced than they used to be, and can absolutely field simple questions from business stakeholders.
So long as you’re able to connect it to the data it needs, a chatbot should be able to answer procurement FAQs, such as "What's the status of my requisition?" or "How do I submit a new vendor?" Feed it your procurement policies, vendor lists, and common scenarios, and it learns to respond accurately. Integrate it with your internal chat system, like Slack, for seamless access.
The beauty is in the scalability: once set up, it handles inquiries 24/7, reducing interruptions to your workflow. Just make sure there’s an option for the stakeholder to escalate their inquiry to a real person.
4. Consolidate Your Vendor Base
Fewer vendors mean less hassle. If your supplier list is sprawling, it's time to trim it down. Consolidating reduces the admin of managing multiple contracts, invoices, and relationships.
Audit your vendors: identify overlaps and prioritize those offering the best terms, reliability, and value. Focus on multi-category suppliers who can handle more of your needs. This streamlines negotiations, standardizes processes, and simplifies compliance checks.
The result? Less time vetting new suppliers and more on strategic sourcing. Companies that consolidate the supplier base will see a drop in admin costs, plus stronger partnerships with fewer, trusted vendors.
5. Implement Regular Process Audits
Even as you eliminate administrative burdens, new ones tend to creep in over time. To keep admin in check over the long term, build in regular audits to spot bottlenecks.
Set aside time quarterly to map your workflows. Use free tools to visualize steps and eliminate redundancies. If you work in a large organization with serious data capabilities, speak to the IT team about sophisticated process mining and how it might help.
6. Join a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO)
We've covered solid tactics to chip away at admin woes, but if you're ready for a massive leap, one impactful way to slash the administrative burden is joining a group purchasing organization (GPO … specifically, Una!
Imagine ditching the endless supplier hunts and negotiation sessions across key indirect categories. With Una, you tap into over 2,500 pre-negotiated contracts that lock in savings and stability, all while getting personalized support.
Una’s sourcing advisors act like an extension of your procurement team, offering another layer of expertise when it comes to all things procurement and spend management. Together, we'll work to drastically cut down on the amount of time it takes to source the goods and services you need, realize cost savings, and drive value.
- Save more money: Una members save an average of 18-22% in a variety of indirect spend categories.
- Save more time: Stop spending hours finding and vetting suppliers and negotiating contracts.
- Save more effort: Access additional resources, indirect spend category expertise, and more.
- Save more... everything: Save relationships, your energy, and your sanity. The possibilities are endless.
Ready to claim back your time? Contact Una to learn more about membership and how working with a GPO can save you more than money.
