With supply chain constraints affecting everyone, it’s more important than ever for organizations to have a reliable ERP to maintain stability. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps companies stay abreast in a competitive marketplace where things can change instantly. You can figure out ways to lower costs and increase profitability while gaining a 360-degree view of your operations. In addition to traditional supply chain processes, you can use Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management for sourcing and procurement functions.
What is Sourcing and Procurement?
Companies profit from goods and services by finding ways to produce them at a lower cost than their final sales price. Procurement management is about ensuring that businesses get the best price available. That means constantly monitoring essential factors like production time, quality, quantity, and location. Tasks common to procurement include:
- Setting up quality standards
- Getting financing for purchases
- Setting up purchase orders
- Controlling inventory
- Buying goods
- Disposing of waste
- Performing cost-benefit analysis
Sourcing involves checking out and managing suppliers used by your company. You must conduct thorough research and ensure that the suppliers can support your overall business strategy. You also have to define supplier quality standards and metrics by which you measure whether they are living up to your expectations.
Proper sourcing is essential to ensuring that your organization always has what it needs to fulfill its objectives successfully. You want to ensure that you have a steady flow of goods relied upon by your business for continued success and customer satisfaction.
How Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Helps With Sourcing and Procurement
The Software-as-a-Service solution provides organizations with all the functionality necessary to deal with global sourcing and procurement. You can adapt individual processes to handle specific business needs using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
In a typical scenario, someone submits a requisition when they require a product. You can use Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to set up product catalogs to help guide users through selecting a product. If a product isn’t available, you can still allow users to submit requests to the purchasing department to determine how they can make the purchase.
Procurement department responsibilities include the need to identify suppliers from whom they will purchase products and services. Your D65 Supply Chain Management instance can handle your need to:
- Submit quotation requests
- Share specifications about a product
- Receive bids from vendors
- Submit purchase inquiries to vendors
- Set up vendor catalogs
D65 Supply Chain Management Procurement Functions
You can set up purchase order workflows within D65 Supply Chain Management to submit for approval. Users can confirm the purchase orders and track them through different stages until it’s time to set up an invoice or cancel the order. The platform prepopulates fields with vendor information to limit the amount of keying required by users. However, users can override default values if they choose.
Discounts and Prices
You can create trade agreements within D65 Supply Chain Management for sourcing and procurement. They are vendor lists that record price, discount, and rebate terms. You can assign specific dates outlining the period during which the agreement is valid. You also capture negotiated pricing and discounts within purchase agreements, which outline your organization’s commitment to purchase certain volumes or pay a certain amount under specific conditions.
Delivery
Set up delivery schedules to plan out the delivery of orders on specific dates. You can initiate a direct delivery from a sales order. Doing so automatically generates a package ship for a sales order at the same time you record a product receipt for a purchase order.
Product Invoicing and Receipt
Keep track of when products arrive within a warehouse and receipts generated confirming our purchase. You can also track the receipt of non-physical orders using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
Creating Workflows Within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Workflows document your global sourcing and procurement business process flows within a system and capture who assumes responsibility for completing tasks or signing off on the document. Benefits of using workflows include
- Being able to define the approval process for various documents like expense reports and purchase requisitions
- Gaining visibility into the status of your processes, including viewing the history and performance metrics
- Providing users with a centralized work list to track workflow tasks and approvals for which they are responsible
Setting up a Workflow
Go to Procurement and Sourcing, then navigate to Setup -> Setup -> Procurement and Sourcing workflows. Once you’re there, you can set up a new workflow by choosing one from the available list.
- Purchase requisition review — Allows you to set up a workflow for reviewing and approving purchase requests.
- Purchase requisition line review — Allows you to set up a workflow for reviewing and approving purchase requisition lines.
- Purchase order — Allows you to set up a workflow for reviewing and approving purchase orders.
- Purchase order line — Allows you to set up a workflow for reviewing and approving purchase order lines.
- Vendor add application — Allows you to set up a workflow for reviewing and approving new vendor requests.
Additional Benefits of Using Dynamics 365 for Procurement and Sourcing
You can collaborate with vendors using the vendor collaboration portal. Other essential vendor functions available include:
- Managing contracts
- Onboarding vendors
- Monitoring vendor performance
The available workflows make it easier to ensure that negotiated pricing gets applied correctly. Integrating your supply needs with your vendor catalogs can also make procurement faster. The centralized platform lets you identify trends and places where you might be able to achieve additional cost savings.
Improve Business Performance With Dynamics 365
Revolutionize the way you handle your business processes using Dynamics 365 SaaS products. Internet eBusiness Solutions (iES) can show you ways to increase efficiency among your workforce and find ways to lower costs with the right D65 solutions. Learn more by contacting one of our experts today.
