Demand department puts forward purchase request-specifies purchase plan/order-makes inquiry/processes quotation-issues delivery notice-checks receipt-notifies financial payment.
The above is a complete procurement business process. In practice, many enterprises do not conduct inquiry/quotation every time. The main shortcomings of this process are: material management, procurement management and supplier management are completed by one functional department, lacking the necessary supervision and control mechanism; At the same time, in this mode, the supply department (department) is responsible for maintaining the supply of raw materials for production. In order to ensure the normal supply of raw materials, it is necessary to increase the purchase volume, especially when the price of raw materials rises, which will easily lead to unnecessary inventory backlog and increase a large number of accounts payable.
Poor enjoyment of business information.
Because most purchasing operations and negotiations with suppliers are completed by telephone, there is no necessary written record. Purchasing information and supplier information are basically mastered by every business person, and information is not shared. Its influence is: the traceability of merchants is weak, and it is difficult to pursue problems once they appear; At the same time, the implementation of procurement tasks depends on people to a considerable extent, and the post changes of personnel have a great impact on business;
Procurement control is usually ex post control, not only the procurement link, but also most business links of many enterprises are ex post control, so it is impossible to monitor beforehand. Although we admit that ex post facto control can also bring certain effects, ex post facto control can reduce many unnecessary losses for enterprises, especially if an enterprise spans multiple regions, its significance will be more obvious.
Take responsibility as the core
In the traditional management mode, the management idea that runs through it is based on department management, and its level is first the department, and then the corresponding work scope of the department. For example, we can find the supply department (branch) in the enterprise organization chart, and then we can further understand the specific work that the supply department is responsible for. In ERP systems, especially in large foreign ERP systems, each employee first corresponds to various responsibilities, which can be preset by the system or defined flexibly. The procurement process in the following table will include the following responsibilities in the ERP system:
We can think that the system will separate all or part of the work of the procurement module, such as making purchase requests, checking warehousing, notifying financial payment, managing suppliers, etc. This design method of the system is to decompose the work to be completed into related responsibilities and correspond to the modules. In ERP implementation, it is best to merge the responsibilities belonging to a module into a working group or business department. The benefits of this are as follows:
Enterprises concentrate similar businesses, which embodies the idea of centralized management. For example, an enterprise found that the responsibility of the same purchase order belongs to multiple business departments and merged into one department at the suggestion of consultants, which reduced a lot of purchase funds. The implementation of centralized management also reduces a lot of coordination work, because the inter-departmental coordination of enterprises is a time-consuming and laborious work, which undoubtedly greatly improves efficiency;
Separating the responsibilities belonging to inventory from the original functional departments is beneficial to strengthen business supervision, because from the perspective of inventory management, it is hoped that the inventory will occupy the least amount of funds, and the smaller the inventory quantity, the easier it will be to manage, while the purchasing department hopes that the inventory quantity will be "more" to ensure production demand. Such a pair of contradictions makes the inventory management department make relevant inventory replenishment plans, including maximum and minimum plans and material deployment plans, in combination with production consumption as much as possible, while the purchasing department uses inventory. After a period of operation, its inventory will inevitably be adjusted to a relatively reasonable level.
The separation of logistics management and capital flow management means that the function of notifying financial payment is placed in the financial department, which embodies the management idea that capital flow moves with logistics, avoids many human factors in paying suppliers, and also plays a considerable role in restricting blind procurement, because the right to payment is not in the logistics department.
Basic information is very popular.
Although many enterprises regard reducing daily workload as one of the success criteria when implementing ERP, the workload of some posts will increase after using ERP system, especially those that provide basic information. Specific to procurement management, the work of buyers and inquiry/quotation managers will increase, because in the past, these jobs were all done by telephone, and ERP system requires all procurement documents to be recorded in the system, which will bring the following changes to procurement management:
Business traceability is strong. ERP system can query the purchasing business with any supplier at any time, and can know the status of the business, including the quantity of inventory received, the quantity of purchased goods returned, the quantity of invoices, etc.
Reducing human factors in enterprise operation is the central link of procurement management, but there are a lot of human factors in traditional supplier management. After using the ERP system, the system will analyze the supplier's situation according to the set indicators, including the supplier's supply quality analysis and quantity analysis, and draw conclusions from it, and formulate corresponding supplier management strategies, such as setting corresponding quotas and inquiry priorities.