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Company A is a top-three player in consumer retail, with a national-level network of hundreds of store locations and a dedicated indirect materials procurement department. They needed a solution for keeping an audit trail of all procurement events, from drafting to adjudication, including actions of buyers and suppliers. When the opportunity came up to choose a procurement solution, they deemed Prokuria as their best option.
The Challenges
In organizations with established processes, the procurement function is one of the main areas where internal audits are conducted. Every organization needs to ensure that supplier onboarding, contracting, and ordering is done in a highly consistent, highly predictable manner across the board.
This particular organization had a sizable procurement department, so it was important to ensure both a consistent approach and a level playing field with suppliers. It was also key that management (both management of the procurement department, and top-level management) had a unified view of the activities of the procurement department.
With different interaction points with suppliers (i.e., via email, telephone, etc.), this was next to impossible. Moreover, where a team of buyers, or, particularly for indirect materials, a cross-functional team was involved, maintaining a clear track of interactions and changes in sourcing projects of individual sourcing events was also very difficult.
In short, what Company A needed was:
Clear traceability of the lifecycle of a procurement event or project;
Improved coordination within the buying team;
Improved coordination between buyers, peers from the organization and management.
Before using Prokuria, Company A was using a makeshift system built on spreadsheets and email. So by building a custom module that would fit their needs, we hit the sweet spot of being flexible and robust, while at the same time being straightforward and intuitive enough to ensure a smooth transition to a dedicated platform.
The Solution
We’ve custom-built a module to implement a detailed audit system. The solution can record all actions taken by buyers or suppliers in a sourcing event.
The audit log is accessible to both buyers and auditors by accessing the event page and clicking the “Audit Log” link. Upon clicking, the user is shown a list of actions, along with the corresponding timestamps and users who have triggered them.
Prokuria keeps track of the following actions:
For buyers:
A sourcing event was published
A supplier has been removed from the event
An event’s deadline is extended
An event is canceled
A buyer has re-sent the invitation to participate in a supplier
For suppliers:
A supplier accepts Terms & Conditions
A supplier declines or accepts the invitation to participate
A supplier submits a bid or proposal
A supplier has retracted a previously submitted answer
For the system itself:
The event ends
An email invitation has been sent to a supplier
An email alert has been sent
An email reminder (24h before the closing time of an event) has been sent to a supplier
Results
As Prokuria easily lists all changes on procurement events and associates them with the users who have executed them, their internal audit process is now tremendously improved - with time savings and straightforward assessment of compliance.
Because users can now access the audit log from the platform, documenting lessons learned has also become much easier, particularly when conducting large procurement projects.
Schedule a demo and talk to one of our Procurement Specialists about your specific needs.