Procurement Planning software helps the procurement team to manage and monitor procurement activity across the whole organisation. It’s particularly useful where procurement is distributed across multiple teams, departments or sites.

If you need a strategic view of your procurement as well as the ability to coordinate buying across teams, departments and sites, procurement planning is increasingly the answer. By embedding Procurement Planning in your eProcurement system, the procurement team can create a framework in which people from across the organisation can participate in purchasing goods and services.

Procurement Planning can improve procurement in both the short and long-term. To find out whether it’s something your organisation needs to investigate, think about the following questions. To find out more, download our guide ‘What is Procurement Planning and should you be using it?‘

Does your organisation do budget management?

Most will, but not all. If you don’t much care what you spend and you’ll never run out of money, a procurement planning tool is probably wasted on you. On the other hand if the organisation wants to understand how far its budget will go and to ensure that what’s in the budget is what actually gets procured down to department level, then a procurement planning tool will be invaluable.

Are there many buyers in your organisation?

Where the number of buyers exceeds 10 and/or your organisation operates from multiple locations and/or offices, a procurement planning tool will be extremely useful because it enables ‘the right hand to know what the left hand is doing’. It embeds coordination, communication, consistency and efficiency across the organisation.

Do you have targets for efficiency savings?

Again, if the answer is ‘yes’, you should use a procurement planning tool. It will help you measure, monitor and manage your organisation’s progress to reaching targeted savings. It will also help to manage budget overspends which would significantly impact your overall performance.

Does the organisation have a mix of strategic and tactical procurement events or procure a wide range of projects?

Is your organisation’s procurement complicated, with a wide range of requirements and procurement methods? If it is, you should use a procurement planning tool as it will be a huge help in keeping on top of lots of disparate activity.

Do a wide range of participants and stakeholders get involved in your procurement?

If so, it will be important to have a cost-effective way to maintain their involvement and demonstrate that you are meeting their varying requirements. A procurement planning tool will meet that need.