I’ve been exploring tools that can help automate purchasing and vendor-related tasks. I keep hearing about the benefits of procurement software, especially for businesses that are scaling. I want to understand how it helps in streamlining operations, reducing errors, or improving vendor management. If anyone here has practical experience using one, what kind of changes did you notice? Is it worth the switch from spreadsheets?

Are you talking about an ERP system like SAP? If so it’s all about data collection of business operations. Sure you make some no brainer decisions to do things that are practical but it always devolves into “how much did this improve the bottom line?” You start to get data on what business has the highest margins in sales and what products are proving to be a PITA to the bottom line due to customer support eating through labor.

spreadsheets are good but you start hitting walls when the company expands. Suddenly Purchasing managers are making entries to a file, but simultaneously works in production are changing the same file to reflect what they consumed in production. You then start auditing things and don’t know what the QTY row numbers mean. Is that actual inventory? Is that a mix of inventory on order? does this reflect what the production consumed today? if so when?

It gets messy without the right tools when the company scales.