How Important is Procurement for Business Growth?

The simple answer to the question posed by the title of this post is very important. The more detailed answer is it’s one of four main areas of a business that can help drive growth. To fully understand the role that procurement can play in growth, we’re going to start by looking at the other three areas, and then dive into exactly what can be done within procurement to help a business grow. Streamline Operations Because operations generally make up a significant portion of a business, there are lots of areas for improvement. It’s common for various gaps and inefficiencies to come up as a business expands. By first identifying those shortcomings and then finding ways to eliminate them, the operations of a business can be streamlined in a way that will put it in the right position to grow. Create a Sales System When a business is just getting off the ground, it’s standard for the sales team to rely on best practices. While taking that approach can secure some early wins, really nailing down sales is often a process of trial and error. The need for trying different things is why many businesses keep a fairly loose sales process. Although that can work for awhile, it eventually leads to a bottleneck. In order to move past that bottleneck, it’s important for businesses to take what they’ve learned about effective sales and put an actual system in place. Taking the time to put this kind of system in place will not only benefit the existing sales team, but it will also support growth by making it easy to bring on new sales talent in the most efficient way possible. Focus and Scale Marketing In most cases, marketing follows a similar path to sales. After a period of figuring out what works, marketing is usually able to hit its stride. But in order to really drive growth, marketing needs to take its efforts to the next level by mapping out what’s going to be done over the next year. By thinking in terms of quarters instead of weekly or monthly campaigns, marketing can reach the point where it’s able to drive significant growth. Simplify and Empower Purchasing Now that we’ve covered the other three areas of a business that can drive growth, we want to take a look at how procurement can do so as well. When done in the most efficient way possible, procurement can help a business maintain an optimal budget. To make this happen, purchasing managers need the right tools. By taking advantage of cloud purchasing software, purchasing managers can ensure that everything from streamlining purchasing process to enforcing budget thresholds is within their control.