SMBs Can Leverage Managed Services to Improve Procurement

As important as the procurement function is for companies to purchase the products and services they need in a compliant, cost-effective way, many businesses face the challenge of dedicating enough resources to procurement.

Fortunately, procurement doesn’t always have to be managed in-house. Just like other functions ranging from accounting to marketing to technical support can be outsourced to third-party partners, many companies — especially small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) — benefit from leveraging business Managed Services for procurement.

Save Time and Money

Outsourcing procurement to a trusted partner can free SMBs up from challenges such as:

• Finding qualified procurement staff
• Implementing and managing procurement technology
• Sourcing vendors
• Analyzing spend
• Assessing procurement risk

SMBs may also be able to customize their Managed Service relationships, so if they do want to be in control of analyzing areas such as spend through their in-house finance team, they can still benefit from letting their Manage Service partner focus on areas such as vendor risk management.

By not having to dedicate the resources to all of these areas, companies can save approximately 30% of their time and money, as employees can instead focus on core business functions such as sales.

Gain a Competitive Advantage

In addition to saving time and money through Manage Services, companies that outsource procurement can often gain competitive advantages by leveraging the expertise of their Manage Services provider.

Across outsourcing as a whole, beyond just procurement, a Deloitte survey finds that cost optimization is no longer part of the top-five criteria for outsourcing. Instead, companies are more often turning to outsourcing to gain a competitive advantage. In 2018, 49% of organizations moved more services to outsourced providers that innovate, compared with 20% in 2016, so this is becoming increasingly important.

With Procurement Manage Services, service providers can help your organization innovate in many ways, such as helping you gain the products and services you need to target new market segments. A procurement Manage Services provider can also help you gain spend insights that can inform overall budgets and help you find innovative ways to reduce costs, such as by procuring technology tools that have a lower total cost of ownership over their lifetimes.

Elevate Your Procurement With Premikati’s BPO Services

Premikati is one of only six SAP® Ariba®Manage Services partners, and we have the experience and technology to handle your procurement needs. Leveraging SAP® Ariba®as the underlying procurement platform, combined with our in-house expertise, we can quickly help SMBs gain the services of a full procurement department in a cost and time-effective manner.

As you focus on your organization’s growth, we can provide the procurement support you need to scale up while staying on budget. And over time, if you decide to bring some procurement functionality in-house, we can adjust our service offering to meet your needs so that procurement can always be a source of strength for your organization, not a burden.

To learn more about how Premikati can lift your procurement capabilities through Manage Services, please get in touch with our team.