End to End Procurement Explained: Definition, Types, and Steps in the Procurement Process

Whether your business is large, small, or somewhere in between, effective IT procurement is crucial for acquiring the assets needed for friction-free operations. 

End to end procurement focuses on the entire IT procurement process from start to finish to build a thriving supply chain, maximize efficiency, and save money. 

Here’s everything you need to know about end-to-end procurement to build a successful IT procurement cycle. 

What is End-to-End Procurement?

At its core, this refers to the holistic lifecycle of IT procurement. 

It starts with the basics of identifying your organization’s specific needs. Say, for example, for hardware you need monitors, laptops, and mobile devices. And for software, you need a CRM system, productivity tools, and security software. 

From there, IT procurement moves on to supplier evaluation and goes all the way to receiving IT assets and paying the invoice. 

In between, there are several other aspects of end-to-end IT procurement, including:

• Contract management 
• Developing a strategic sourcing process
• Purchasing
• Building an entire supply chain
• Supplier management
• Monitoring supplier performance
• Inventory management
• Spend management
• Procurement automation
• Refining your overall procurement strategy

When done correctly, the end result of a winning IT procurement process should be your organization forming strong supplier relationships with IT vendors, achieving maximum procurement efficiency, better procurement performance, and increased ROI. 

Not to mention, you’ll have a much higher level of transparency in the IT procurement process and know what does and doesn’t work. If, for instance, a particular IT hardware vendor has a habit of being late with laptop shipments or incorrect orders, you may want to look at alternatives.

And given the ultra-competitive climate that most businesses are in these days, it’s arguably never been more important to have an airtight end-to-end procurement process in place. 

According to The Hackett Group, organizations with a fully fleshed-out procurement process can reduce operational costs by as much as 45%.

Because of the complexities of IT procurement, many organizations prefer to partner with a professional like allwhere. allwhere offers hands-off IT procurement for effortless IT management and logistics, and has an extensive network of vendors for fast fulfillment at a reasonable price. 

With allwhere, the logistics and communication are taken care of, and you can track everything conveniently from a single platform, which saves time and eliminates many of the headaches that businesses encounter with IT procurement. 

Are Sourcing and Procurement the Same Thing?

No. Sourcing is part of IT procurement and focuses on things like supplier selection, offer evaluation, and contract negotiation. 

The main goal of sourcing is to establish strong supplier relationships to acquire the necessary IT assets while optimizing spend management. You can think of sourcing as a subset of the IT procurement process. 

Procurement differs from sourcing because it’s much more far-reaching and covers the full spectrum of acquiring IT assets. As we’ll discuss later, this runs the gamut and includes:

• Identifying the needs of your procurement team
• Purchase requisition
• Reviewing the purchase request
• Approving your organization’s budget
• Filling out a purchase order
• Approving invoice payment
• Record keeping
• And more 

The bottom line is that strategic sourcing is an important stage in the IT procurement process, but it focuses more on finding the right suppliers and optimizing each supplier relationship. Whereas IT procurement deals with the entire procurement lifecycle from start to finish. 

4 Main Types of Procurement

1. Direct Procurement

This refers to obtaining raw materials, goods, or services from a supplier that are used for production.

An example within the hardware context would be acquiring circuit boards, a touchscreen display, or a processor to create tablets. These materials would be used to provide the end product that the company ultimately sells to customers and are an integral part of the supply chain. 

2. Indirect Procurement

This type of procurement isn’t directly involved in production, but focuses on acquiring goods that are integral to day-to-day operations. 

Say, for example, there’s an e-commerce company with a global workforce team scattered around the globe. 

Indirect procurement could involve a chief procurement officer acquiring IT assets like computers, tablets, and electronic accessories to enable workers to perform their job duties. 

Although this procurement function doesn’t directly affect the end product, it plays a big role in maximizing an organization’s productivity and overall efficiency. 

3. Items Procurement

Also known as goods procurement, this deals with procuring physical items that are needed to perform operations. Some examples could be your procurement team acquiring machinery for production, office furniture, and any other type of equipment. 

Effective items procurement ensures that an organization runs efficiently and can produce the volume of goods needed to meet consumer demand with maximum ROI.

4. Services Procurement

As the name implies, this type of procurement solution deals with securing the services needed to carry out operations. Some common examples include IT asset management services, consulting, and product support.

These four types of procurement combine to create a smooth, streamlined business model where everything functions as a well-oiled machine. 

Steps of End-to-End Procurement

Identify Your Need

Before engaging in any other procurement activities, you must first determine the exact types of goods or services you need. 

Be sure that procurement leaders carefully consider quality level, volume, and, for physical goods, the timeframe in which you need to receive them from a supplier. 

By crystallizing need, this should help navigate procurement teams through sourcing, purchasing, supply chain management, and every other area of procurement management with minimal setbacks. 

Purchase Requisition

This is the stage where a formal document is sent to your procurement team that states the specific goods or services you want to purchase, along with the quantity, timeline, and how much of your budget you can allocate.

Review the Purchase Request

Here, your procurement professionals go over the purchase requisition to check for accuracy and ensure that it aligns with your organization’s needs and priorities. 

If approved, it moves on to the next stage. Otherwise, it will be rejected with the details as to why it was rejected. From there, you can either edit the purchase request, create a new one, or skip it altogether. 

Budget Approval

This step of the procurement process is exactly what it sounds like. Here, your company’s financial team decides whether to approve the proposed budget or not. If it’s not initially approved, changes must be made to your purchase requisition. 

Because budget approval is such an important part of spend management, your financial team should be meticulous about review and consider the long-term impact a purchase will have on strategic sourcing and supply chain management. 

Revolution and Terms

At this point, you’ll negotiate with a potential supplier on things like pricing, delivery time, and quality standards to ensure you’re on the same page. This is critical for reducing risk with supply chain management and setting the right expectations from the start. 

Fill Out a Purchase Order

Here, you officially complete a purchase order that states the details of what you’re looking to buy from a supplier and send it to them. Now it’s in writing, and it confirms all of the terms you agreed upon earlier.

Receive and Inspect the Goods

After receiving your order, you’ll need to thoroughly inspect everything to ensure the following.

• The order is correct
• There are no discrepancies or issues
• The goods were packed safely and arrived undamaged
• Compliance standards were met

If there are any issues, you’ll want your supply chain managers to immediately communicate them with the supplier and be sure that they’re resolved before paying the invoice. 

Note that if any issues arise, you’ll want to carefully consider your next move and whether or not you want the supplier to be involved in your long-term supply chain operation and sourcing strategy. 

Check Three-Way Matching

Next, you’ll want to compare three different items to make sure they match — your purchase order, the receipt, and the supplier invoice. This protects both parties so the supplier doesn’t overcharge or undercharge, and there’s no fraudulent activity.

If there are any discrepancies between the three items, they’ll need to be immediately brought to the attention of the supplier and addressed before paying the invoice. 

Approval and Payment of the Invoice

If everything is correct, you can go ahead and approve the invoice payment and let your finance department know. Be sure that the payment deadline is clearly indicated to avoid late payment and friction with a supplier. 

Also, note that many suppliers report payment activity to business credit bureaus, so late payments can potentially lower your business credit score. 

Record Keeping

Finally, you’ll always want to keep 100% accurate records of invoices and payments, as well as any other documents involved in the supply chain and procurement process. 

This is essential for bookkeeping, having a paper trail in the event of an audit, and guiding future procurement decisions. 

Why Choose allwhere for End-to-End Procurement?

Procurement can come in many forms. And as we discussed, it covers a wide range of goods and services. 

If you’re specifically looking for end to end procurement for IT assets like computers, monitors, laptops, and mobile devices, you’ll definitely be interested in allwhere. 

allwhere offers cutting-edge IT procurement services that cater to global teams with workers spread all over the world. 

We take the hassle out of global procurement and can help you seamlessly supply your team with top-tier IT assets from today’s top suppliers. 

At allwhere, we do all the heavy lifting, from sourcing to contract negotiations to purchasing and managing supplier relationships to payments and logistics. We’ve got it covered with our hands-off experience. 

We ensure that your employees receive the devices they need on time, while allowing you to track shipping every step of the way from a single procurement software dashboard. 

That way, you can reduce your workload and quickly get your employees up and running so they can get down to business. 

One thing that sets us apart from the competition is that we partner with a large network of vendors. This means that even if one vendor is out of stock, we can use an alternate vendor to find the exact equipment you want for quicker fulfillment and maximum reliability. 

And unlike many other tools that charge a platform fee, allwhere uses a pay-as-you-go model, with no platform fees and no minimums. Only get what you need with pricing that’s perfectly tailored to match your usage with no unnecessary charges. 

If you’re looking to save time and money and dramatically simplify your IT procurement and overall supply chain, get started with allwhere today.