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In the latest times, it is observed that ServiceNow has become one of the popular platforms that is leading the organizations with its unique services. Recently, ServiceNow has come up with an additional feature, procurement management that helps in the simplification of the procurement processes streamlining and handling the procurement teams. Apart from this, it also provides its extensive support in automating the workflow processes and offering visibility as well. Let us know more about the feature and how it helps the procurement teams, its role in process improvements. ServiceNow Training helps you gain knowledge and skills for career advancements and also to learn new techniques and features.
What is ServiceNow Procurement Software?
ServiceNow is one of the leading organizations that has been involved in making things simpler for the organizations and now has introduced a solution called Procurement Service Management which is responsible for transforming and improving the procurement processes, paving a way for the improvements in digitization.
Most organizations are looking for a solution that will enable digital transformation these days. ServiceNow has brought up an offering that helps in transforming the operations digitally and improves the strategies by redirecting the activities with constant collaboration with the consumers. As per one of the recent surveys, it is known that 50% of the queries or requests made will be regarding the procurement of the goods and services. This new solution will help the teams to deliver and focus on the work that is highly important and provides a high outcome. The request can be simply picked up via email followed by raising the request and creating a playbook that provides the users with all the necessary steps required. Hence, the primary focus was to automate the simpler tasks, further reducing the burden on the procurement teams.
The new service developed by ServiceNow is capable of working with Coupa procurement and SAP Ariba and many other procurement packages that are available and being developed by the users. PSM is also capable and compatible to work with different products with its integration Hub technology.
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Procurement service management is considered as a service offering that includes all the capabilities and requirements needed for the procurement teams for process streamlining and provides additional feedback and information on how to tackle the problems that come up during the process. Through this offering, one can be redirected to the self-service options available for smaller things or tasks.
Procurement service management, shortly called PSM, is built on technology that is reliable, scalable and extensible. The ServiceNow platform has implemented this offering by including different hyper-automation technologies like process mining, low-code application development, integration, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation to establish the connectivity between different data sources, etc.
As we see there is rapid development in the technologies dynamically, the procurement teams have constantly been busy redefining the work they do. PSM has cleared one of the most wanted needs by the organizations and has come up with the advantages like eliminating the inefficiencies and enhancements in the processes and constantly improving the experience with 100% satisfaction.
Even the finance departments will be capable of managing all the activities in the procurement life cycle, a centralized platform that provides visibility to all the systems and processes. With this, the organizations can track and record the activities and report the Service level agreements (SLA’s), allowing them to respond to the trend analysis and pattern matching experiences.
With the implementation of the self-service and automation capabilities in ServiceNow, it has become easier for the source to pay teams to perform the processing – leading to an improvement in speeding up the process.
Some of the organizations like Genpact, a Multi-national company often referred to as a service provider that is taking care of the procurement activities for about 100 clients. The responsibilities could be any from the level of processing the common and daily-based transactions till the end of the agreement negotiation.
What are the capabilities that make ServiceNow procurement software centralize teams and processes?
To get an in-depth idea on the capabilities and features that the ServiceNow Procurement solution holds, let’s look into some of the aspects below.
Streamlining the sourcing and procurement of goods and services
Through this offering, the employees are allowed to order the product and services that are required, provided with pricing, or they can also request the price of the products if needed. The employees also have a chance to fill out a requisition intake form and request to call off the catalog items which is a part of the sourcing process.
Positive feedback and experience for the stakeholders
There will be an establishment of connected experiences with the collaboration and integration of the suppliers leading to a high-valued outcome.
Transparency
It is important that you provide the employees of the organization with complete visibility and access to the procurement management and processes involved in it. The employees should be able to view all the details like the sourcing requests, status updates about the purchase requisitions and many more. The employees should be capable of tracking the progress of the requests. The system has to be set up in such a way that the employees receive the email and alert notifications related to the status updates.
Task routing automation process
It is important that the rules have to be updated so that the requests will be automatically routed to the fulfillers or the buyers. With this, only related people can work on the request and avoid confusion.
Procurement case management
The procurement process has to be managed efficiently and effectively. For this, the organization has to ensure that all the employees have a knowledge base and should be capable of submitting the procurement cases. The procurement teams will be involved in managing and tracking the progress or status updates.
Below is the set of the tasks that can be automated:
- Editing of a purchase requisition
- Purchase order cancelation
- Purchase requisition cancelation
- Vendor onboarding
- Invoice submission
- Credit card request
Visibility to the procurement processes
A continuous improvement is observed in the source-to-pay activities and processes which helps in the enabling process of real-time benchmarking. There is a high chance to determine and identify the pain points and process the improvements required to enhance the poor procurement processes based on the insights and analysis.
Workflow approvals
The procurement administrator is responsible for approving the purchases and has to follow some of the approval rules and follow the approval strategy. During the evaluation process, the approval engine is responsible for the conversion of the approval rule into an approval plan and implementing it. Once the whole of the process is executed, the required decisions and the routing process have to be initiated with the list of the approvers who have been involved, along with the status of the approvals and many more.
Improvement in the team efficiencies
The workloads and the team performance can be measured with the help of procurement service management. The service level agreements have been met with the implementation of the automated process rather than the manual processing by the procurement teams. All the leaders within the organization and procurement leaders are involved in looking for implementing the right opportunities which help in process enhancements.
With the procurement service management offering, it is possible to layer the ServiceNow now with the different range of functionalities that help in the performance of the procurement management teams. It provides the flexibility to make a choice to choose the system that can be used along with the supplier of the right choice and the strategies to be implemented to work with the supplier.
In simple terms, the ServiceNow procurement management feature is automating the processes and workflows and also delivers end-to-end visibility to the procurement teams and enhancing the production levels. In the traditional times, before the ServiceNow procurement management system was developed, the procurement teams have been working manually across different systems for process standardization, operations which have resulted in less productivity with no version control.
With the PSM, it has become easier for the employees to take up a chance to request and make purchases at any point of time, anywhere. With PSM, the employees are able to focus on the strategic priorities and also implement the case management among the different teams. It is integrated with the existing enterprise resource planning and many other technologies that work on procurement activities which is further leading to an elimination of risks and errors.
Closing thoughts
In this article, you have got an idea about procurement service management, and its working structure in the traditional way vs. the newly evolved offering. We have also gone through the capabilities and features that procurement service management holds along with its impact on the business procurement teams which is further helping in terms of organizational development. It is a huge offering for the procurement teams which has made their work easier and reduced the workloads. To gain more knowledge about the different services provided by ServiceNow, you can check for the ServiceNow training programs to enhance your career.
