5 procurement hacks every financial controller should know

As a financial controller, your role in the procurement process is complex and essential. 

You know that efficient procurement helps in controlling costs, ensuring compliance, and optimizing operational efficiency. But if procurement isn’t your primary expertise, you may not be aware that there are easy wins and opportunities you can take to boost the process for you and your entire team.

This article will cover five essential procurement hacks that can help financial controllers streamline procurement processes, reduce costs, and improve overall procurement performance.

‍

‍

5 procurement hacks every financial controller should know

‍

Hack 1: Formalize Early

Implementing a structured procurement process early is the best way to avoid inefficiencies, reduce risks, and ensure compliance. 

Early formalization helps in managing budgets better and sets up the company for long-term success. As your company grows, ad-hoc procurement methods can lead to uncontrolled spending and lack of visibility. Formalizing procurement processes provides clear guidelines and accountability, making it easier to track and manage spending.

‍

‍

Hack 2: Leverage Technology

Using advanced spend orchestration platforms like Zip can significantly streamline the procurement process. 

These platforms offer automated workflows, real-time visibility, and seamless ERP integrations. Orchestration software solutions help manage procurement activities more efficiently, reduce manual errors, and provide better control over spending.

Benefits of Procurement Software Solutions:

• Automated workflows that reduce manual intervention and speed up the procurement process.
• Real-time visibility into procurement activities, helping in better decision-making.
• Integration with ERP systems for seamless data flow and enhanced financial control.

Hack 3: Optimize Spend

Develop clear procurement guidelines so the company can properly manage and optimize spend.

As a financial controller, you know that every dollar spent should contribute to growth and stay within budgets. Establish spend categories, negotiate with vendors, and regularly review procurement policies and you’ll consistently find ways to save and optimize spend.

Hack 4: Prioritize Adoption and Feedback

Focus on user adoption by making the procurement process intuitive and straightforward. Having a user-friendly intake process is an increasingly important way of ensuring adoption across the company.

You should also establish a feedback loop with a diverse, internal procurement committee to help improve the system based on employee and stakeholder needs. 

Ensuring that employees understand the benefits and are able to contribute to refinement of the procurement process is a great way to gain higher efficiency and better compliance across all metrics.

Hack 5: Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration

Procurement is no longer just the role of a dedicated team, or a financial controller. Increasingly, it’s a distributed process, where employees across the company submit their own intake requests. 

Innovative platforms like Zip have added AI-assistance to help guide these employees, and take on the manual labor that leads to poor intake adoption, and creates work for finance teams.

This is why it’s important that everyone on cross-functional teams involved in procurement—from finance, legal, IT, and operations—understand the role and purpose of compliant procurement practices. Ensuring orchestrated workflow collaboration is the key to identifying risks, improving vendor management, and making it clear that procurement’s goals align with the broader company strategy.

‍

Why follow these procurement hacks?

‍

These procurement strategies can help financial controllers achieve better financial control and savings, while accelerating workflows for any employee making purchasing requests. 

Aligning procurement goals with financial objectives can improve risk management and prioritizing strategic budget allocation. 

‍

‍

How early spend visibility can benefit procurement strategy

‍

Early spend visibility is an important part of effective procurement management. Real-time spend tracking tools, such as Zip’s procurement capabilities, provide comprehensive visibility into spending patterns, enabling financial controllers to make data-driven decisions. Early spend visibility helps in identifying cost-saving opportunities, managing budgets more effectively, and reducing financial risks.

For example, Lattice was struggling with a system that was not only clunky, but also lacked the necessary visibility for their teams to effectively make strategic procurement decisions.

By orchestrating their cross-functional purchasing workflows with Zip, they were able to achieve a 50% decrease in cycle times, while significantly increasing their cost visibility.

‍

“Anytime I want to look at the status of any procurement request, I can go into Zip, easily navigate to it, see where it is, who's commented on it—what's the status of the IT approval process? What's the status of the legal approval process? What's the status of the red lines?” _{- Robert Scott, VP of Legal, Lattice}

‍

Optimize Procurement with Zip

‍

Zip’s procurement capabilities can help financial controllers streamline procurement processes and improve overall efficiency. Key features include:

• Intake-to-Procure Process: Simplifies and modernizes procurement from the initial request to final order, increasing efficiency and reducing approval times.
• Cross-Functional Approval Workflows: Centralizes approvals, integrating legal, risk, and financial reviews, which enhances team efficiency and ensures compliance.
• Spend Insights: AI-powered insights provide comprehensive visibility into spending patterns, enabling financial controllers to optimize cycle times and make data-driven decisions.
• User-Friendly Experience: Ensures seamless compliance and ease of use for requesters, improving overall procurement process adoption.
• Vendor Management: Streamlines vendor interactions and approvals, ensuring all vendors are properly vetted and managed efficiently.

To learn more about how Zip can transform your procurement process, request a demo today.