An overview of retail procurement management

Retail procurement management can be difficult to navigate, and it comes with high stakes that can determine the success or failure of your business.

Retail procurement is the process of sourcing and purchasing the products your business sells. Through the procurement process, you establish the cost of goods sold (COGS), which is extremely important as it correlates to your profit margins. Businesses must closely monitor their COGS to avoid putting their companies at financial risk. Therefore, it’s crucial to have an efficient and direct procurement process, as it provides you with a clear understanding of how much it costs to run your business.

Among other aspects, retail procurement management includes creating a customer profile, identifying manufacturers and products, negotiating with suppliers, and tracking product performance. Supply Chain Partner assists their clients to better understand this complicated process and to resolve any challenges met along the way. Through automating and integrating disparate systems and processes, we have helped our retail clients transform the way they source and procure products.

The problem and work:

Procurement issues faced by retail companies

The retail industry is constantly undergoing rapid changes, leading to new procurement challenges. With e-commerce overtaking the traditional brick-and-mortar stores, the overabundance of consumer choice, and constantly evolving technologies, it is important for businesses to keep pace.

Expense management

One major problem our retail clients face is slipping profit margins. With the oversaturation of the market, businesses face pressure to keep prices low and competitive. However, the increase of raw material and production costs has made it harder for businesses to make a solid profit.

With the fluctuations of the economy, it is important for businesses to keep close track of their expenses. This is a tedious task that most employees do not want to take on and is often liable to human error.

Supply Chain Partner uses cloud technologies to integrate enterprise resource planning (ERP) and expense management solutions, streamlining the process for organizations. We have helped our retail clients completely digitize their travel and expense tracking process and have assisted our clients in the centralization, digitization, and automation of supplier invoice and tax processing.

Business spend management solutions

Operation inefficiency is another issue that plagues many retail companies. Businesses frequently rely on outdated, manual systems to manage their procurement processes. With the rapid changes and complexities of the industry, it’s crucial for organizations to adopt digital procurement solutions, both reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Supply Chain Partner assists organizations in the implementation of spend management technologies to modernize their procurement processes. Through these technologies, clients can simplify how their products are procured, invoiced, expensed and paid. By drawing on anonymized spend data, Supply Chain Partner also helps clients mitigate risk and increase efficiency.

The outcome:

What Supply Chain Partner has achieved

Supply Chain Partner works alongside several technology partners, including SAP Ariba, Coupa, Microsoft Azure, and Boomi. Through these systems, Supply Chain Partner helps clients solve complex procurement problems and spend more intelligently.

Supply Chain Partner is currently working with a retail client to implement Coupa source-to-pay with ERP integration in SAP Ariba. Coupa source-to-pay allows the organization to easily vet suppliers and connect sourcing with contracting, purchasing, invoice validation and supplier payments.

With the same client, Supply Chain Partner has also coordinated and built the Procurement Governance Framework to support the rollout of a centralized operating model. We also have designed and implemented communication plans, which include videos, presentations, group and one-on-one sessions, to speed up the onboarding of suppliers.

Supply Chain Partner has been working with this client since February 2020 and is continuing to help them increase efficiency and sharpen their procurement systems.

Contact us below to find out how we can assist you!