Core Functionality of ECS Cloud based Procurement Solution

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  Supplier Management

  Strategic procurement starts by qualifying suppliers before initiating negotiations. Streamline the collection and monitoring of supplier data to ensure that suppliers comply with corporate policies. Collect important supplier qualification information through internal and external questionnaires and self-service profiles. Select the best suppliers by assessing supplier qualifications, risk factors, and policy compliance. Use embedded social media to collaborate more effectively and achieve business alignment when planning and creating negotiation documents. Receive alerts when new information becomes available that might affect supplier management, capabilities, or risk factors. Suppliers and sourcing teams gain real-time full visibility into transactions as well as current and upcoming sourcing activities.
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  Sourcing

  Manually compiling and comparing supplier proposals can be time consuming and ineffective. Smarter negotiation and supplier selection leverages negotiation best practices to achieve bottom-line results. Embedded social collaboration makes it easy to combine effort to create more effective negation documents. Award analysis tools allow you to quickly evaluate supplier bids based on predetermined factors—such as price, quality, and value—allowing you to arrive at the best possible award based on your unique business requirements.

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  Contract Management

  Effective contract management is critical. Contract creation is streamlined with guided authoring that uses preapproved clause libraries, standardized templates, and embedded social collaboration. A secure, searchable contract repository with complete tracking and audit history enables users to quickly locate what they need. Automated renewal management capabilities give procurement professionals early notification of expiring contracts. Analytics identify contract deviations from defined standards. Auditable workflows enforce document approvals.
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  Requisitioning

  Negotiated savings are quickly lost when buying is not properly regulated during the procure-to-pay cycle. A modern solution ensures that these savings are realized through business policies, controls, and approvals. Reduce off-contract spend by providing employees with a consumer-like buying experience. Robust search capabilities, smart forms, shopping lists, and personalized buying experiences ensure that negotiated pricing and terms are automatically enforced through supplier catalogs and configurable approval workflows designed to control spend and reduce costs.

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  Payment

  Processing supplier invoices is often manual, error-prone, and time consuming. A complete source-to-settle solution streamlines and automates this critical function, helping you take advantage of early payment discounts and keep costs under control. This includes a robust payment management system that provides electronic transmission, “PO-flipping” from suppliers, and optical invoice scanning. Line-level invoice validation is fully automated for faster processing. Exceptions are managed through social collaboration with document sharing to speed resolution times.
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  Purchasing

  Automating routine procure-to-pay transactions, such as purchase order creation, frees you up to find new savings opportunities. Streamline the process while enforcing negotiated pricing and ensuring policy compliance. Create purchase orders from approved requisitions without manual intervention. Provide your buying professionals with insight into exceptions, status, and actions required. Communicate with your suppliers using embedded social tools.