Derek Is Stressed – His Purchasing Team Aren’t Coping With Long Winded Processes

Meet Derek.

Derek is very stressed.

Derek is the Head of Purchasing for a large organisation. Derek and his Purchasing Department are responsible for all purchases company wide.

Derek’s team are using a legacy Finance System that’s been in place for years that their in-house IT exec tries to ‘patch’ or update every so often but nothing ever seems to get better. It’s not just the technology that’s making Derek stressed though.

Nobody’s looked at or overhauled the organisations purchasing processes in years so Derek and his team are faced with hugely overcomplicated purchasing processes, having to waste inordinate amounts of time on outdated manual processes.

Worse… the fact that so many of those processes are manual means a lot of human error creeps in, costing his team even more time correcting mistakes.

Putting together monthly reports for the board is one of the worst tasks his team faces as they have to make sense of and combine data from multiple systems and sources, all to a tight deadline.

It’s no wonder Derek and his team are so stressed!

What Derek desperately needs is some kind of solution which would allow his team to manage suppliers, create the complete lifecycle of a purchase document (quote to invoice), manage approvals and reporting… all in one platform and all at the click of a button.

Introducing… Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Purchasing Module…

D365 Business Central is a business management solution from Microsoft. It’s part of the Dynamics Suite and is aimed at SME’s to help automate and streamline their business processes.

It’s highly adaptable with a plethora of features (with more being added for free constantly) that included finance, manufacturing, sales, shipping, project management and more.

It’s easy to implement, easy to configure and even easier to use on a day-to-day basis.

Focussing on Derek and his issues though, Business Central comes with a specific Purchasing module that easily allows organisations to create and manage their suppliers, all on one platform.

D365 BC’s Purchasing Module will allow Derek’s Purchasing team to create an overview of the organisations entire purchasing profile which will enable them to make their daily buying routines much clearer and manageable.

It doesn’t end there though!

They’ll also get access to all of their supplier purchase history, outstanding orders and trade statistics, all on the same dashboard.

Those dashboards can then be configured for individual team members based on their logins, displaying what’s most important to them at the touch of a button.

That level of individualised data means each team member will be better able to manage their function without having to worry about long winded manual tasks!

The automation doesn’t stop there though.

With Business Central’s Purchasing module, every time one of Derek’s team raises a purchasing invoice, inventory levels are dynamically managed to keep them at optimum levels with no further involvement from the team needed. Stock is automatically ordered, delivered and checked in, whilst suppliers are automatically paid… all from the click of one button!

Efficiency and service levels go up whilst time and costs associated with inventory go down.

Oh and those board reports everyone used to dread?

As all the organisations disparate data streams  are plugged straight into the back end of Business Central, any kind of report Derek’s board, his team or himself could wish for can be generated with… yup, the click of a button!

You can even plug D365 BC into other Microsoft tools like Power BI to better visualise that data or layer it with a level of AI and ML to identify unlooked for trends.

Derek was stressed… but then he and his team started using Business Central.

Now they’ve complete visibility over the entire purchasing process, from looking at how an order is progressing, right down to expected receipt dates or managing which invoices are due for payment.

Ok… so the tone of this article may have been a little tongue in cheek but in all likelihood we’re sure you know a Derek (or may even be a Derek yourself!).

Business Central’s Purchasing module really can automate most of the day-to-day functions of a purchasing team, allowing them to focus their time on much more valuable tasks that can bring real ROI to organisation.

Feel free to reach out to our Business Central experts today to find out what’s possible for you…