Supply chain disruptions trigger a range of transparency, delivery issues, and make the process of procurement highly challenging for sourcing teams. Procurement management guarantees that all services and products are appropriately obtained so that processes and projects can advance effectively.
However, many sourcing & procurement teams in enterprises rely on traditional tools like Excel and Spreadsheets to handle tasks like purchase planning, supplier research, price conciliation, and inventory control. Unfortunately, owing to the volatility and intricacy associated with the procurement process, the conventional way no longer helps sourcing managers keep their business ahead of the market. Hence, organizations should equip their sourcing teams with a Cloud-based automation tool like Power Automate. With Power Automate, organizations could replace manual procurement practices and help sourcing managers in taking more strategic pricing decisions.
An Overview of Power Automate
Power Automate is a Microsoft-built workflow automation platform that allows users to streamline time-intensive and repetitive tasks by setting up scheduled or automated flows. This way, organizations can reduce manual task management considerably and drive productivity.
The key highlight of Power Automate is that it’s a no-code platform, thereby business users don’t need to input any script/code to automate their workflows and processes. Through a drag-and-drop visual interface, users can create custom flows that can be manually controlled, scheduled, or triggered by events automatically. Experts from the right Power Automate consulting service provider can implement this tool and build complex flows in a minimal turnaround time.
Use Cases of Power Automate in Procurement
1. Analyze Multiple Data Sources Simultaneously
Digital procurement is hard since it requires numerous data sources to be analyzed, starting from internal market reports to CRM files and competitors’ web pages. And, it’s a challenging task for sourcing managers to process this extent of information. Whereas, by implementing Power Automate within infrastructure, sourcing teams can centralize multiple data sources and get precise forecasts. Power Automate’s Analytics tool applies statistical approaches to data collection, analysis, interpretation, and visualization and enables administrators to understand what’s happened in the past and predict the possibility of future prices.
2. Simplify Approval of Purchase Requests
Power Automate in Procurement is beneficial because it can automatically approve repetitive purchase requests by considering business rule engines. For instance, deploying automated Cloud flow for approval would categorize the reorders for frequently used products. The data can accordingly be organized and then place reorders. Hence, as long as the orders fulfill the procurement strategy, orders for existing needs can be approved without human interference. And if particular orders require human intelligence for valuation, the flow can forward a request to the procurement manager for genuine approval.
3. Manage Price Volatility
Price volatility denotes the price oscillations of a service or item. To evaluate price volatility, sourcing managers need to consider a routine percentage variance in a product or service’s price. These oscillations can be hardly noticeable. But in the long run, price volatility is a vital parameter to be considered during price assessment. It indicates the level of price uncertainty and allows enterprises to predict prices more precisely.
AI Builder in Power Automate can help enterprises build smart forecasting flows that can track price volatility from time-to-time. In the context of the commodity market, where raw materials prices can change within seconds, this type of flow is beneficial. The flow can assess and respond to a range of factors in seconds, which is something a sourcing manager or worker never could.
4. Improves Accuracy of Price Predictions
As said before, the imprecision of traditional pricing methods results in serious consequences. Indeed, most traditional methods value subjective opinion and intuition more than solid data. And that’s why decisions made after such processes often lead sourcing teams down a rabbit hole. By using intelligent flows to forecast prices, sourcing teams will not just work quickly and efficiently but they can also price commodities more accurately, regardless of volatile market situations.
5. Streamlined Reordering
Power Automate in procurement can track the inventory levels on the dashboard and autonomously create POs (Purchase Orders) for the reordering products. The key advantage of automating re-orders is a reliable manufacturing process because the crucial intermediary produces will always be available for the production cycle. Besides, enabling this flow would help enterprises bypass the need for the workforce to complete purchase orders manually or keep tracking inventory levels. Overall, automated re-ordering enables enterprises to modernize inventory management by saving time and money.
6. Standardize Payments
By using scheduled flows in Power Automate, supply chain teams can make automated disbursements after schedule triggers. On-time payments enhance supplier relationship management, perform on-time payments, and maintain the business reputation. Microsoft Power Automate consultants from a recognized provider and can integrate finance APIs with payment flow to make pay-outs to the appropriate retailer in the right amount. This lessens the workload of the procurement teams and allows them to make correct, well-timed payments.
Once a transaction has been completed, payment flow can spontaneously form a journal entry. This entry will help enterprises in accounting and balance sheet appeasement. Moreover, the automated payment flow increases the efficiency of bookkeeping, since the digital footprint will allow businesses to access and process huge volumes of data.
Summing Up
Modernizing procurement practices should be a priority for sourcing teams to avert market complications from severely impacting their profits. Implementing Power Automate will help sourcing teams thrive in an ever-changing market. The automated flows save both time and money and can streamline multiple tasks, leaving sourcing managers with little more to do than watch their deals grow.
