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Purchasing

Procurement and Spend Management Software

Bring spend under control and reduce rogue spending by allowing users to make their own purchasing decisions from a marketplace of selected suppliers.

Purchasing software marketplace)

Key features:

  • Over 30 million products available

  • Spend insights

  • Intuitive search engine

  • Seamless integrations

  • Receipting and invoicing

  • Requisition management

  • Built-in price and purchasing approvals

  • Supplier managed catalogues and punch-outs

A rich, diverse customer base

Trinity College Dublin logo

How Purchasing will benefit your business

Centralisation
Single portal to purchase goods and services all in one place to reduce maverick spend.
Visibility and compliance
Greater insight into your organisations spend with built in compliant processes.
Strategy
Support operational efficiencies and cost management programmes in your organisation.

Why work with Advanced?

Tailored for our customers
From first call to ongoing rollout - we’re here for you
More than a product, we're about building lasting bonds based on trust

Since we started using Advanced as our procurement solution, our team have been able to save an average of 3,300 hours a year on admin time.

Tim Brannon, Director of Procurement at University of Leeds
Students in university lecture

Features and benefits

Supplier managed catalogue and portal

Purchasing is accessible to all suppliers who you have chosen, both large and small. Suppliers have access to a self-service portal to upload and maintain catalogues and pricing, all have electronic trading options. Product and pricing information is maintained by the suppliers, who are incentivised to keep the data up-to-date to maintain accurate orders. Therefore, errors are significantly reduced and invoices can easily be matched, with match rates of 90-95 percent.

Benefits of this feature
  • Suppliers maintain their own catalogue data to increase data quality, reduce errors and improve invoice match rates
  • Portal for suppliers allows them to view buyer connections, manage contracts and utilise electronic trading options such as quotes, PO delivery, PO flip to automated XML
  • A single channel creates a level playing field for large or smaller suppliers who may not be able to invest in websites or separate portals
  • Improves accessibility for suppliers with larger suppliers benefiting from receiving XML purchase orders or via the portal

Price approvals and impact analysis

Gain a clear view of price changes from suppliers to avoid incurring surprise costs. Category managers can view the previous price and revised prices before any changes are made, and can decide if they still want to make the product available to purchase. Impact Analysis provides key insight to inform your approval decisions such as how many times the items have been purchased in the last year.

Benefits of this feature
  • Price Approval module allows for buyer administrators to have a clear view of price changes sent in by suppliers
  • Approve and control any price changes before these go live to remove the surprise of additional costs
  • Built in Impact Analysis displays how the price increases would affect the organisation, based on an average 12 month spend and have full access to price history

Spend insights and reporting

Gain insights into your organisation's purchasing to improve your visibility, maintain compliance and ultimately optimise your procurement process. A user-friendly interface provides a high-level dashboard with the ability to drill-down for more detailed information. Buyer Insights can be configured to include relevant data for individual users rather than the whole organisation's spend.

Benefits of this feature
  • Different users can easily access the data most important to them
  • View analysis of not just spend but user adoption and procurement behaviours
  • Greater insights when comparing current and previous years data
  • Export data with easy-to-use export facilities
  • Analyse spend by category, contract and ESG attributes

Contract data enablement

Realise and maximise the monetary value of contracts by ensuring users are buying from these contracts through intuitive buying tools. Integrate core contract management information, including local contracts as well as central contracts and lots, governed by procurement groups or framework co-ordinators. Once suppliers, items and prices have been assigned to a contract, this information is used to guide end users to buy from preferred suppliers.

Benefits of this feature
  • Core contract management information integrated into the search functions
  • User guided buying to search contracted suppliers and items
  • Extract contact data with ease, and save time with contract data exports
  • Clearly view any contract changes from both buyer and supplier, before approval
  • Attach various information to the contract without the supplier being able to view it

ESG and sustainability

Sourcing from responsible and reputable is increasingly important. Purchasing from Advanced helps you work with suppliers that you have vetted positively against reliability and ESG rankings. Products and suppliers are tagged with data attributes such as sustainability labels and local supplier flags which are visible to users and guide them to purchase in line with your ESG initiatives. Track and improve your performance against ESG objectives via Insights Spend Analytics with reporting to track against your KPI's.

Benefits of this feature
  • Improve visibility of your suppliers and their ESG credibility
  • Work with, and guide your users to purchase from, suppliers that align to your ESG objectives
  • Insight on performance against ESG KPI's and objectives

Supplier punchouts

For the vast majority of items via Purchasing, the entire journey can take place with the solution. However for some extra items, additional customisation is required, for example, where a product needs customisation to their own specifications, such as to configure a desktop or laptop. To achieve this, a punchout is implemented to the suppliers website to access the specification requirements. The buyer organisation retains full control and can direct users to a standard selection criteria, with a single user experience across different suppliers and with the ability to compare and contrast items.

Benefits of this feature
  • Flexibility to implement punchouts to a range of suppliers to configure goods or services
  • Information is retained by the buyer and shared with supplier where needed
  • Standard selection criteria across a range of the suppliers

Amazon Business punchout

An additional module, the Amazon Business punchout helps organisations gain greater control and visibility of long-tail spend. Procurement teams control who can access the punchout and ensure all Amazon Business requisitions go through your organisation's standard approval processes, before the order is placed with Amazon.

Benefits of this feature
  • Reduce maverick spend and gain greater visibility of long tail spend with Amazon Business
  • View up-to-date PO spend with Amazon Business via the Buyer Insights module
  • Save time and reduce costs by implementing Amazon Business into your existing procurement process and FMS
  • Purchases via p-cards can be routed through the standard PO approval processes prior to the card payment being taken

Additional modules

Further modules available with Purchasing include: eRequisitions, Basket Workflow and Free Text Ordering. These help to bolster benefits available in the solution. The eRequisitions module provides an intuitive interface through which purchase requisition details can be specified by users and through which flexible approval workflows can be managed. Free text ordering permits users to request items via free text from both onboarded suppliers and from additional suppliers, giving greater access to the items needed to procure. Basket workflow allows non-finance system users to access the Purchasing solution, search for items and then create and submit their shopping baskets for approval before the basket is checked back out to the finance system.

Benefits of this feature
  • Specify the approvals process dependent on the product type, value or against a particular cost code with eRequisitions
  • Gain access to a greater range of suppliers and goods and service with Free Text Ordering
  • Configure text to appear in the supplier selection page of the Free Text module to remind or guide users on the required processes
  • With Basket workflow, all items are procured from preferred suppliers and policies adhered to but without being integrated into a finance system.

Transaction hub

The Advanced transaction hub enables end to end electronic transactions between buyer FMS & ERP systems to our Purchasing solution, as well as the order processing and billing systems of their key suppliers. 

Benefits of this feature
  • Facilitate your e-invoicing with all network suppliers, no matter their level of e-commerce
  • Remove double data entry by connecting your invoices and receipts with your FMS and ERP system.
  • Track inventory usage and past 12 months orders report to plan for the next year

Let us help you choose

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Speak to our Purchasing software consultants for personalised advice and recommendations.

CALL US ON:

0330 191 3730

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Purchasing Resources

FAQs

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Have a question?

Speak to our Purchasing Software consultants for personalised advice and recommendations.

CALL US ON:

0330 191 3730

OR WE CAN CALL YOU:

LIVE CHAT WITH US

Ask us your questions and get tailored content to help you.

Email us

Receive more information about our software and how it can support your business.