Have you ever wondered how these giant international corporations purchase all the stuff they need for daily operations? Like pens, paper, printers, materials, computers and coffee…Do they hire one of those Hekatonkheires, (otherwise known in Greek mythology as the “Hundred-Handed Ones”. Or do they have a tribe of little gnomes responsible for that? Or maybe they have bought the latest 3D-printer, capable of creating all this stuff? And, although I like to use my imagination sometimes, if they do neither of them, what do they do? In real life, every company has a special department, which ensures that the company does not stop its daily operations because of lack of resources.
OK – let’s leave all these corporations aside and focus on a small example from real life. Let it be a law office and its president, James Mahoney, who decided to buy a mahogany table for his cabinet. What should he do? Most of time he gets what he wants immediately, but that’s not the case here. First of all, he needs to approve this purchase with George Clinton from the financial department. George is responsible for approving purchase requests from top managers. James opens his favorite email client and sends an email to George:
To: George Clinton
From: James Mahoney
Subject: Mahogany table
Body:
Hi, James!
Can you please approve this purchase for my cabinet? Our company is rich and my current table now looks like foreign piece of furniture in this kingdom of wealth and prosperity.
Regards,
VP of “Law kings”,
James Mahoney
But George is too busy with other managers’ requests and he loses the request in the “Inbox” folder. James is going to meet an important client next week (and he thinks that the mahogany table is a key point for this meeting), so after two days of silence, he goes to George’s office. After a brief verbal altercation, George tells James that the company cannot afford this table, because it is too expensive. He offers a standard desk to James and James (reluctantly) accepts this offer.
The next email is sent to Johan Reizenberg – the guy, who must call the company which sells the selected desk. He must, but he cannot – he’s on vacation in Hawaii with his wife, Rosalinda. I can keep telling you about this sad story, but I think you have got the point – a simple purchase process can involve many people, and without a specially designed process and convenient purchase requests and order software, this can lead to unsolved problems that remain there forever.
Below are the basic steps for making a purchase in most companies:
- purchase request creation (first letter from James to George);
- purchase request clarification (change of mahogany table to simple desk);
- purchase request approval (George has approved this purchase);
- purchase order creation and supplier selection (Johan is responsible for that);
- communication with supplier and obtaining the invoice for payment.
Is there any software capable of tracking these steps and turning complex purchase process into a simple procedure, where the relevant person always knows what they need to do, when and why? Where all information is stored in a single database and is accessible to all those involved? Where you cannot lose the information (like often occurs in email conversations)? And now it is my turn to come out and introduce you software for tracking purchase requests and orders (and even more – but that’s not the subject of today’s topic). This software is Comindware Tracker with its professionally designed “Finance and Administration” solution.
Push the “New Purchase Request” button and fill in the required fields in the form. After saving the request, proceed with “Submit Request for Approval”. Notification with the link to your purchase request will be sent directly to the person who is responsible for approvals in your company (your administrator can configure this in Comindware Workflow Designer, or we can do this for you). After that, your purchase request will be approved or rejected, transferred to the financial department for payment and finally be delivered right to your door. And you do not need to wonder if George has lost your email, or Johan is on vacation – configure the process once and all you will need to do in the future is to click the “Next Step” button and correctly fill the required data.
All purchase requests are stored forever in the Comindware Tracker database. Every action on the request – be it the price change, approval, rejection or a comment – is all tracked and displayed in the “History” tab of the form. You can create convenient lists of purchase requests from different departments, on different process’ steps. You can see visual statistics in real-time updated dashboards. All this is possible within a single software solution started with one click. The solution is Comindware Tracker Finance and Administration Solution.
Our Finance and Administration solution contains many processes which are useful in almost every company for example “CapEx approvals”, “Account Payable Requests”, “Invoices” and “Travel Requests”. These processes are designed by our professionals and are suitable for most finance and administration needs. However if you need to fit these processes to your company requirements – there’s nothing simpler – open the Comindware Workflow Editor and redesign our processes to suit you, both quickly and visually. Start your free 30-day free access period to Comindware Tracker Finance and Administration solution right here!
