With Pedlar, one-off purchases can be integrated into existing procurement processes instead of being handled through manual workarounds.
A business unit needs a specific spare part. After a short search, the right item has been found: price, supplier and delivery time are all confirmed. In principle, the order could be placed now. But the supplier is not set up in the system. So the product link is sent to procurement, item data has to be transferred, and the supplier has to be checked and, if it does not yet exist, created. On top of that come approvals and coordination between the business unit, procurement and accounting. A simple requirement quickly turns into a process of its own.
With one-off purchases in particular, this is not the exception. They typically arise precisely where existing catalogues, framework agreements and standard suppliers are of no help. The real problem is then often not finding the item required. The effort arises from getting the purchase cleanly into the company's existing processes afterwards.
A media break occurs when information cannot be passed on within a single continuous process. In procurement, this happens, for example, when an employee finds an item in an online shop but then has to transfer the required data manually into the company's own procurement system. Product name, item number, price and delivery information are copied or typed out, quotations are forwarded by email, and supplier data is recorded somewhere else.
Each of these steps seems manageable on its own. Taken together, however, they create additional work and additional sources of error. This is particularly evident with small, irregular requirements, because here the administrative effort is often matched by only a low order value. At Witzenmann, for example, the average order value of a one-off purchase was around 260 euros. At the same time, internal process costs could amount to as much as 140 euros per transaction. The real cost driver was therefore not the product, but the process surrounding its procurement.
For regularly required products, companies have usually established clear structures. There are framework agreements, fixed suppliers or catalogues. Employees find the items they need there, trigger their requirement, and the order runs through the designated approval process. The procedures are familiar, the suppliers are set up and the necessary data is available.
With one-off purchases, this logic only works to a limited extent. Today a specific spare part is needed, tomorrow a software licence, and next week perhaps equipment for an event. The products differ just as much as the suppliers do. For requirements of this kind, neither a dedicated framework agreement nor a permanent catalogue integration is usually worthwhile. That is precisely why workarounds emerge. The business unit does the searching itself, procurement takes over the information, a supplier is created, and the order is then fed back into the designated process.
This not only costs time, it also makes transparency harder. The more purchases are handled through different manual routes, the more difficult it becomes to track orders, approvals and spend consistently.
If the official procurement route is too laborious for a small requirement, a shortcut suggests itself. An employee orders the item personally and submits the invoice afterwards, a company credit card is used, or procurement tries to settle the transaction as quickly as possible outside the usual procedures. For the individual order, this may appear simpler at first; for the company, however, it creates new problems.
Approvals may only take place retrospectively, spend becomes visible later, and information is spread across different systems and departments. The attempt to bypass a laborious process therefore merely creates another special process. What makes more sense is a procurement route through which rare and individual requirements can also be handled within existing structures.
With one-off purchases, it is barely possible to predict which product will be needed tomorrow or which supplier will have it available. The specific requirement therefore cannot be standardised in the same way as a regularly required item. The process behind it, however, can be made uniform.
This is exactly where Pedlar comes in. The company sets Pedlar up once as a creditor. Different one-off purchases can then be handled through this single business partner, without a separate creditor having to be created for every new source of supply. With punchout, this procurement route can additionally be integrated directly into existing electronic procurement systems.
The user opens Pedlar from their familiar system. An existing quotation can be uploaded as a PDF file, or a product link can be pasted in. The relevant line items are transferred into a shopping basket and then passed back into the procurement system. Approval, budget check and ordering continue there within the existing procedures. This allows the business unit to procure an individual requirement without having to build an individual internal process every time.
A continuous procurement process does not only save the manual transfer of product information. The greater leverage comes from the fact that a separate supplier process is no longer required for every new source of supply. With the Single Creditor Model, Pedlar remains the central business partner, while the actual suppliers can change according to the requirement. Pedlar handles the onward processing with the respective supplier as well as payment, delivery coordination and invoicing.
The company is therefore left with a single, uniform procurement route, even though products and sources of supply may change constantly. Witzenmann shows what this can mean economically. There, the annual process costs for around 300 one-off purchases fell from 42,000 to 6,300 euros. That corresponds to a reduction of 85 percent.
One-off purchases cannot be avoided entirely. Companies will always need products, services or software that fall outside existing contracts and catalogues. What matters, therefore, is not preventing these requirements but creating an economical route for procuring them.
If every new supplier triggers a process of its own, effort and complexity grow with every purchase. If, by contrast, the handling is standardised, even very different requirements can remain within clear structures. The item needed may be unusual; the process behind it does not have to be.
Would you like to discuss how one-off purchases can be integrated into your existing procurement processes without manual workarounds? Schedule a call →
