E-procurement improves purchasing efficiency

RS Components has launched PurchasingManager, a novel e-procurement service it reckons will improve purchasing efficiency and control while delivering immediate cost savings.

RS Components has launched PurchasingManager, a novel e-procurement service it reckons will improve purchasing efficiency and control while delivering immediate cost savings for customers of its Internet Trading Channel rswww.com.

Trademarked RS PurchasingManager, this free service is uniquely designed to meet the product procurement and purchasing control needs of customer organisations in the electronics engineering and manufacturing sectors.

PurchasingManager allows an unlimited number of people inside an organisation to be empowered to place orders as and when they need things, freeing up the purchasing department's time to do other more valuable tasks.

But importantly for people whose job is to control expenditure and report on cost centres, PurchasingManager will ask for authorisation if individual or departmental spending levels are exceeded, as well as provide company-wide reports for analysis and even prevent people changing delivery addresses.

"We expect to build strong strategic partnerships with our customers thanks to this initiative", comments Paul Parker, General Manager, Internet Trading - RS Components.

He continues: "We developed this application on the back of a year's consultation with our customers because we found that existing purchasing software couldn't be adapted easily to mirror the way people like to work.

The result is a simplified workflow and approval process to make it relevant to ordering low value items.

Small things like changing the language used to reflect a company's existing internal vocabulary have proved culturally invaluable in getting people to accept a new way of purchasing online".

PurchasingManager is as simple or as complex as it needs to be to suit any size of organisation with logical layering of reporting at the organisational, departmental and individual levels.

This allows customers to discover the benefits of, and obstacles to, e-commerce within their own organisation before embarking on the complex and capital-intensive business of specifying a customised e-procurement system from a supplier.

As a web-based application, PurchasingManager is available across Europe simultaneously hosted by RS but with confidential information specific to each customer once they have logged in.

Covering 10 countries in Europe in seven languages through its network of Internet trading channels, RS offers over 300,000 product entries for maintenance, repair and operations products (MRO) across the categories of electronic, electrical, mechanical, health and safety, IT and datacoms, consumables and tools.

Customer reaction to the pilot stage has been enthusiastic with pilots completed successfully in the UK, France, Germany and Italy.

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