Plenty of reasons, but the doctor was surprised to see that one of the best articles for a small business layperson that listed some of these reasons was an article on Intelligent Living on 7 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Invest in Purchasing Software. While e-Procurement vendors are usually targeting mid-size, or larger, organizations (as they want 6-digit deals, and small businesses can’t afford more than 5-digit deals, and micro businesses not more than 4-digit deals), e-Procurement software, especially turn-key self-serve software, is beneficial for small (and micro) businesses as well because it helps organizations of all sizes.

All organizations spend money, and as a result, all organizations can overspend, get defrauded, spend too much time on tactical (thunking) tasks, etc. Low-end baseline 80% e-Procurement solutions can help them immensely, even those that cost as little 500 to 1500 a month. (Yes, they exist. After all, why did the doctor say that 120K is enough for full Source-to-Pay.)

The article points out the following seven (7) benefits of e-Procurement solutions in everyday layman terms which an average small business person should be able to understand.

Automated Purchase Orders

Quickly generate accurate purchase orders from catalog items or repeat buys and push the orders into your Accounts Payable (AP) and/or inventory systems.

Vendor Management

Unified view, complete order and contract history, and automated alerts.

Budget Control

Set budgets, monitor spending against budgets in real time, and set alerts when budgets are (close to being) exceeded.

Real-time Analytics

Real-time spending reports against up-to date data with simple trend analysis.

Enhanced Security

SaaS providers that have industry standard security certifications need to stay on top of cyber security, something the average small business would really struggle with.

Integration with Other Systems

Most small businesses are not very tech-savvy and a platform that integrates with the other systems they use is very useful to them.

Scalability

Most of this software can scale up to support more users, more catalogs, more POs, more transactions, etc.

In fact, as a small business, the only other things you would care about starting off is:

Invoice Matching

to make sure the invoice matches the PO (or is from a known vendor if it’s for a one-time off-catalog product or service you wouldn’t normally do a PO for)

Contract Tracking

basic governance with document storage with searchable, indexable, metadata for quick location for price and term verification

Again, e-Procurement is great for small businesses (and some of the providers in Part 37 of our Source-to-Pay+ Series are priced right for smaller businesses). It’s even greater to see plain language explanations of the benefits that small business owners can understand.