Apply your own approval processes to e-sourcing processes and streamline your approval routines! xFLOWer enables the creation of automated approvals beyond complex human approval processes.
Procurement process management
Apply your own approval processes to e-sourcing processes and streamline your approval routines! xFLOWer enables the creation of automated approvals beyond complex human approval processes.
Support your strategic procurement processes with a custom workflow system and make all tasks faster and more cost effective!
Manage your internal procurement request through predefined, custom business processes and enable organization-wide transparency and lightning fast procurement operations!
Choosing the best supplier is the key to successful strategic procurement management. Choosing the right partner not only provides better prices and therefore less costs, but constant high quality of the purchased products and services is ensured too. By applying proper procurement processes, a comprehensive procurement system can be created that is flexible enough to adapt to the organization's needs and changes. At the same time, such systems guarantee transparency and greater procurement throughput by speeding up and automating certain process steps. Most e-sourcing systems don't provide sufficient support for the preparation and follow-up of actual procurements, therefore these tasks must be resolved in different ways and by different systems. xFLOWer on the other hand is capable of supporting all parts of procurement processes, including preparation, operations and follow-up, hence enabling the comprehensive management od procurement operations in a single, unified system. Procurement processes can be defined freely as needed by the organization, while sophisticated user right management features limit user access as defined by the leadership. Of course, users cannot modify processes or deadlines, while on the other hand all processes can be modified by users with process editor rights. (For this purpose a user friendly GUI is provided as a low code platform for process editing.) Hence in case a new or radically modified function is needed, it is unnecessary to purchase another system for such purposes. The number of participants is not limited, therefore suppliers, partners and all internal staff can be included in procurement processes as needed. The powerful xFLOWer document management (DMS) engine offers custom templates and automatically created documents for all procurement processes, therefore standardizing procurement documentation.
Internal procurement requests can also be managed by xFLOWer. All little value assets necessary for daily operations can be requested through custom internal procurement management processes. All such procurements are managed through transparent, unified, custom business processes with the comprehensive approach known from strategic procurement process management. Thus, not only procurements can be managed in the system, but also all preparations and follow-up processes can be implemented into xFLOWer. Requesting, approvals, billing and all other processes can be included as needed with the possibility to automate any task as needed. Moreover, in case of larger organizations, request eligibilities can be assigned to departments or even job functions. Hence coworkers from a certain department or function will only be able to request a certain selection of items. Accordingly, administrative workload is decreased, approvals can be automated and no cumbersome, multilevel decision making is needed for quirky purchase requests. For certain departments - say IT - which can be responsible for operational procurement for other departments, can perform purchases for such departments too. In such cases the above detailed model is applied too, thus there's no need for the IT department to decide whether a certain coworker or department is entitled for a purchase or not, while purchase details can be predefined in the system too. For example, xFLOWer can be set up to only enable the purchase of Intel i7 laptops with at least 8 GB of RAM and SSD for developers, while administrative staff may only request i3 models without SSD and so on. The variations are endless, custom needs are determining the system's behavior in this sense.
The system is capable of handling frame agreements and budgets too, in case of budget, time-relative budget management is also available. In practice this means that the system not only monitors budget limits, but also the timeframe for which the budget is allocated. If the budget exceeds the amount associated with a given timeframe, the system may automatically deny further requests until the term and the budget becomes synchronized or it is able to forward such requests for high level approval - depending on settings. For example, in case the budget for a department is 100 units for a year, and at the end of Q1 more than 25 of 100 is intended to be spent, the system may block the spend or ask for further approval for the excess costs.
Pertaining to procurements, appropriate approval processes are not only intended to hold back excess costs, but also to ensure transparency in terms of approval responsibilities. At the same time, automatic approvals can also be used, based on custom, complex approval criteria. For example, the system may examine term based budget for a given department while also considering the value of individual items. In such cases the following setup can be a good example: if the term-relative budget is not exceeded AND the item value is below X$, the request can be approved automatically. And all other possibilities can be managed too: what should happen, if the request value is ok, budget is ok, but term is not appropriate? What if the value exceeds the automatic approval limit, but the budget is gone while the term is still available? All such possibilities can be implemented into xFLOWer procurement processes and managed - either manually or automatically.
There are different possibilities to manage requests based on value too: in case some items of a request are below the automatic approval limit, such items are approved automatically, while other items - still from the same request - are forwarded for manual approval.
Simple and sophisticated approval processes are supported too. A simple approval can be an approval by a certain approver, while the variations of complex human approvals are unlimited. Some examples are parallel or serial approvals by multiple approvals, 3 from 5 approvers must approve the reqest to be approved, and so on. xFLOWer is able to adapt to your existing approval routines thus providing a flexible solution for all approval needs.
Using xFLOWer for managing and automating procurement approvals speeds up approval processes, eliminates the possibility of human error, increases transparency, while saving resources for the organization by decreasing administrative workload.
There are many different tools to support procurement from IT side. The user organization’s size, type and industry determines which solution is needed.
In every scenario, exact identification of responsibilities is required, since it is one of the fundamental elements of organized work. In case of an internal order, employee purchase request or supplier selection, the process must be approved by responsible persona at some point. Since almost all operative processes need approval from different organizational levels, IT support of such approval processes is also fundamental.
We offer a number of different procurement solutions to fit all needs.
In case of enterprise – level P2P process management we offer a unique solution for this purpose. This software is capable of managing:
In case of smaller companies, we offer tailor - made procurement processes which are fitted to operate in SMB environments. Any process of any complexity can be managed however, so in case you have a comprehensive and strictly policy managed procurement routine, it can be defined in the module - furthermore, the moule can integrate with virtually any system you use to manage the process as whole, including - but not limited to - the following: CRM/PRM systems, other supplier databases, invoicing solutions, ERP systems and any other system supporting standard interface connections.
In case you would like to insert a workflow and DMS system into sour existing IT infrastructure that not only supports end – to – end operative purchase process management but is able to manage:
while seamlessly communicates with other systems (through interface connections) then xFLOWer is the professional choice.
xFLOWer is a robust and mature cloud based workflow and business process management solution. Its development started more than 18 years ago, and it evolved through the years based on international business experience and the actual needs of business leaders throughout Europe. Contrary to other procurement systems, xFLOWer is not only a “pre – wired” process, in which statuses and deadlines can be adjusted, but a much more comprehensive, yet easy to use workflow system capable of managing business processes, documents, approvals, user rights and historic customer data among others.
The xFLOWer procurement management module is part of the xFLOWer workflow framework, including the most required business processes and data sets predefined. Although, all these predefined values can be tailored and expanded as needed during the implementation period or anytime later!
xFLOWer procurement is a cloud based solution, however it "only" ensures a framework to create a business environment for your company - one in which you don't have to change your systems and operations frequently. Check out the xFLOWer Cloud product range - you can access all these features anytime: if you need any of it now, it is available, if it will be needed later, implementation into your existing xFLOWer instance will be flawless.
In the xFLOWer procurement module, everything is controlled by business processes, to which documents are attached. The processes are guiding all colleagues step by step through the operative procurement tasks, so it is not possible to omit any required administrational task.
No matter how complex your processes are, xFLOWer is always up to the challenge:
As procurement processes do not end at the delivery of the ordered service or goods, xFLOWer manages all related processes – and beyond. By implementing xFLOWer procurement management, you gain access to a full process management framework, able to manage all operational processes, even with integrations to as many systems as needed. Check out the xFLOWer Cloud selection – all these features and process types are available for you! If you need any of the further modules, it can be implemented in line with the procurement module at the same time it is implemented. However, if you only need further modules in the future, implementation into your existing IT infrastructure and xFLOWer instance will be flawless.
You are free to decide what procurement logic you want to use, and also, complete freedom in terms of parameterizing xFLOWer to support such logic is provided.
Your possibilities:
You may use automatic approvals in which the system decides if a request – or invoice, payment, etc. – can be approved or not, based on certain, freely configurable decision criteria. For example, invoices that are below a certain total amount can be approved automatically, while invoices above the limit are automatically forwarded into the approval process for manual approval.
Even the best system can’t provide a complete solution if operational processes are designated erroneously. For this reason, ready – made processes based on international best practices are integrated into all xFLOWer modules, which ensure professional organization of work from the first moment of usage. This unique feature enables business leaders to redefine operational processes solely by appointing coworkers for certain tasks – the rest is done by xFLOWer.
xFLOWer Cloud procurement module contains all the above features and enables the definition, management and automation of all operational processes regardless the number of processes, users of documents involved. By automating certain tasks, resources are freed within the organization, hence saving costs, time and energy for your enterprise. Therefore the company is enabled to focus on sales, clients and the constant development of its core competence to retain its competitive edge.