5 Tips to Streamline Procurement Contract Processes

Procurement teams can improve effectiveness and increase productivity by streamlining procurement processes. One easy way to improve is to automate procurement contract workflows. Streamlining processes allows procurement leaders to focus more time on strategic drivers rather than tactical execution. Manually-intensive, paper processes can cause many problems for procurement teams, and many are leaving paper-based processes behind. Redesigning the contract workflow for procurement is a challenge, but procurement teams can modernise their system of agreement by planning ahead. Many British organisations are already progressing towards paperless procurement, and DocuSign has all the advice and solutions needed to build a digital procurement workflow. Here are 5 top tips to keep in mind when designing a new procurement system of agreement.

• Reduce human error by automating manual processes

A technology upgrade can automate administrative parts of the procurement process. It reduces human error and can also free up procurement individuals to spend time focussing on more valuable aspects of the procurement process, such as identifying new suppliers, building relationships and negotiating on terms. Automation can help to populate information into agreements, transfer information between systems and trigger the next stage of a workflow. 

• Visibility into the contract process for all stakeholders

Throughout the agreement process, stakeholders will often reach out to procurement to ask for a status update. In addition, sometimes, a contract start date can be delayed because stakeholders either haven’t signed or aren’t sure of the right order to sign. By using automation, each involved party has full visibility into the contract process. Those involved know what will be happening next, and the procurement team get asked fewer questions. This change increases the speed of the entire workflow. 

The DocuSign Agreement Cloud for Procurement helps organisations streamline the management of supplier agreements and includes mobile functionality. So users can approve, sign, redline or complete other actions from anywhere. Procurement teams can also schedule alerts to notify stakeholders when a change has been made to an important document.

• Communicate ease of use and remove barriers to adoption

If you digitise and automate a system of agreement to improve procurement processes, it will only be successful if people adopt it. DocuSign technology is simple to use and has a Net Promoter Score of 66, one of the highest ratings in the technology industry. DocuSign also offers access to a world-class Customer Support team and training through DocuSign University. DocuSign University can help your entire organisation, including system administrators, developers, senders and signers. 

• Leverage existing investments

It’s beneficial if your improved procurement processes work alongside the technology you already use. Organising the technology you use avoids duplication. The DocuSign Agreement Cloud has more than 350+ Integrations. Integrations include SAP, Oracle and more. 

• Ensure regulatory compliance is a smooth process

Procurement teams must ensure that the organisation’s supply chain complies with regulatory changes such as GDPR and Brexit.  DocuSign CLM, part of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, helps teams to meet regulatory requirements. Users can interact with full transparency and can also utilise clause libraries and templates as a simple tool to facilitate interactions between legal, suppliers and IT.

To discover more about the tools used in effective procurement workflows, download Building a Modern Agreement Workflow for Procurement. The eBook is full of information about streamlining the contract management process to revolutionise procurement work—or contact us to speak to an expert.