Procurement Management
Streamline procurement management with a single software solution
A critical component to IT Asset Management is understanding your asset lifecycles; from purchase to decommission. With SolarWinds Service Desk you can manage all of your procurement objects, like vendors, contracts, and purchase orders. Integrated tightly with various modules across Service Desk, it provides valuable insight into license utilization, changes requiring purchases, risk analysis, renewal requirements, purchase approvals, and asset decommission decisions. Now you can finally manage the entire lifecycle of your assets in a single place.
Procurement fully integrated into your ITSM solution
Our procurement objects are tightly integrated across the Service Desk solution including Asset Management, Discovery, Change Management, Risk Management, Problem Management, Incident Management, and CMDB. It's common for many areas of IT to require purchases from vendors, whether needed directly by IT or in support of other departments. Tracking these purchases successfully requires tracking the vendor and contracts associated with these purchases. Additionally, by associating each purchase to a particular set of incidents, changes, risks, or assets provides historical context for why a purchase was needed. For software licenses purchased, our discovery engines can monitor devices for use of licenses, ensuring efficient use of purchases.
Easy to use and comprehensive procurement processes that drive more efficiency resource use
Procurement can be a very complex thing to manage in other systems, so we’ve made it as easy as possible. Each part of procurement (vendors, contracts, and purchases) is a separate object that captures all of the important details that both finance and IT requires in order to ensure efficient resource use and consumption.
When it comes to next quarter’s or year’s budget planning, you’ll have the evidence you need to maintain or increase your budget ask. You’ll know which contracts will renew, for how much, and the amount of spend required through purchases to keep your organization running smoothly.
Maximize resource utilization and reduce your risk exposure
In fast paced environments it’s common for employees to run rogue downloading software that your company doesn’t exactly own the licenses to use. Or in other cases, not even using the licenses that you do own.
With SolarWinds Service Desk you can connect your service portal, service requests, knowledge base, and procurement objects together to create a better end-user experience. End-users visits the service portal looking for access to software, find a knowledge base article providing them a link to a service request form, that is linked to your contracts and purchase orders. Not only do your end-users get a better experience, but it also reduces exposure to unlicensed software, and ensures better utilization of purchased resources.
Service Desk’s procurement module can also analyze software resources and show assets with no matching licenses within its Reconcile feature.
Get More on Procurement Software
What are procurement tools?
Procurement tools help with specific elements of the procurement process. Procurement is the process of finding and acquiring goods and services from an outside source. Specifically, it’s a means of ensuring the buyer gets the best possible price for the goods, services, or work they require. E-procurement software might help you compare various factors of a product you’re looking to purchase, such as quantity, quality, and time. By presenting all the pertinent information on a single interface, procurement tools create a more streamlined purchasing process.
Procurement tools—often referred to as automated purchasing systems—help you manage all the moving pieces involved in the procurement process. The most powerful procurement platform provides more than just real-time price comparisons; they also organize your orders, provide the suppliers’ details, help you manage purchases, and assist in budget management.
Some of the tools designed to help you streamline and improve the efficiency of your procurement process include contract management software, purchase order management software, and vendor management software. Though it’s possible to purchase a separate procurement solutions to help with each of these elements, it’s better to get procurement management software that takes care of them all.
SolarWinds Service Desk comes with all the procurement tools you need to successfully manage your hardware, software, and service products.
What does procurement software do?
Procurement software brings all the important elements of your service management system together in a single location. There, you can keep track of all your obligations, including licensing, maintenance, and subscriptions. The best software includes contract management, vendor management, and purchase order management.
The most important thing a procurement system does is automate your procurement process. The best tools should help automate the purchase order and approval receiving processes. They should also provide simple tracking to eliminate the need for manual data entry.
Procurement software also helps with budget oversight and approval tracking. A comprehensive procurement system keeps records of your spending so you always know what you’re spending with each supplier. This information is readily available and can help you optimize your costs, saving you money in the long run.
A solid procurement platform also lets you control who can make purchases. For example, you can set rules saying only a manager or an executive can make purchases. If a regular employee tries to make a purchase, their manager will be notified and will need to give their approval before the purchase is processed.
Most importantly, procurement management software provides complete visibility into each stage of the procurement process. This means your managers can easily find any information they need. If a problem arises with a specific software product, for example, you can check the software to see all your licensing information, including your contract and other factors like the maintenance of the product and the length of your subscription.
What is a contract management system?
Contract management software (which is part of a broader procurement system) helps you organize and manage the contract creation and maintenance processes for all your hardware, software, and other service needs. It gives you complete control over the contract process, simplifying collaboration and auditing for the contract’s life cycle.
The importance of managing your contracts cannot be overstated. Whether they’re formal or informal, contracts are at the center of everything an organization does. They’re integral to all the necessary software and hardware purchases an organization must make. They spell out the expectations for each party, explaining the recourse if one party does not fulfill its obligations. Given the importance of contracts, trying to organize them manually using printouts and file folders is a serious issue.
Due to the difficulty and risks of manual contract management, many entities have begun using contract management software to avoid doing it all by hand. With the right tool, you can build customized contracts and align them with the rest of your asset management system. This means you can see all the pertinent information in one place, so you always have the relevant contracts on hand whenever you need them.
A contract management system can help with audits, save you time, reduce your risks, provide future stability, and save you money in the long run.
What is purchase order management?
Purchase order management is an organization’s processes for making sure all the purchases it makes are justified and necessary and for ensuring the costs of each purchase are optimized.
It’s important for every organization to have an established purchase procurement process and for their employees to follow it. By doing so, they can be sure no purchase occurs without the proper approval and can make sure it’s an appropriate use of their funds.
With good purchase management software, you can simplify the purchase ordering process. Using this software, you can easily initiate the purchasing process with built-in, customized order forms. You can also utilize the tool to create approval processes and make sure purchase orders get their required approval before any purchases are made.
How does a vendor management system work?
A vendor management system works by creating and maintaining a comprehensive database of all the vendors you work with. This allows you to easily contact your hardware, software, and service providers when you need them.
With clear visualization into your vendors and services from a single dashboard, you can manage your vendors more effectively. Doing so allows you to keep your vendors happy and helps you save time and money.
Vendor management software is designed to streamline the relationship between an organization and its vendors. It can provide deep, tailored analytics related to vendor performance as well as other important information. Additionally, it can make it easier for your business to scale, as you already have a clear database with all the vendors you will need for successful growth.
The best vendor management software is part of a larger IT service management package. SolarWinds Service Desk provides a full suite of procurement tools to ensure your service management is at its most effective.
How does procurement management software work in Service Desk?
SolarWinds Service Desk comes with the procurement tools you need to effectively handle common management tasks.
Service Desk takes your contract management to the next level by providing vendor management software, purchase order management software, and contract management software. This means you have all the information you need about every purchase made within your organization, the vendors providing your services (whether that’s hardware, software, or something else), and the associated contracts.
When it comes to contract management, Service Desk lets you build customized contracts designed to make it easy to quickly reference your contractual limits and terms. In the Service Desk asset management suite, you can also align contracts to the relevant software licensing and assets they support. This can help ensure you stay fully compliant.
Using SolarWinds Service Desk means you don’t have to rely on manual processes to keep your contracts straight. You can rest easy knowing they’re always available, organized, and ready to use.
What are the benefits of using the Procurement Tool in SolarWinds Service Desk?
SolarWinds Service Desk is your all-in-one tool for procurement management. You can create contracts for existing software programs within your organization’s IT environment and set renewal reminders to maintain compliance to keep operations running smoothly and avoid hefty penalty fees.
This procurement management system helps you better account for organizational expenses, subscriptions, and investments with an index page dedicated to purchase orders. Enforce accountability and encourage transparency with detailed templates that outline information like who’s requesting approval for an ordered item, payment terms, total costs, and department affiliation, which can help refine the budgeting process and save your business money. Suppose you want to review all purchase orders. In that case, Service Desk allows you to generate a complete audit log of events related to specific orders, so you can address any roadblocks and prevent them from happening again in the future.
Service Desk also prioritizes the security of your IT infrastructure, with a user-friendly vendor repository and incident reporting capabilities to keep you posted on asset changes, service catalogs, issues, user behavior, and the CMDB. Rapidly spot unauthorized vendors and software downloads from a single control panel and pinpoint who downloaded them in the first place.
Overall, SolarWinds Service Desk brings users procurement tools and benefits, such as:
- Streamlined processes by automating tasks such as order creation, approval workflows, and tracking.
- Increased visibility into the status of purchase orders, including delivery dates, order quantities, and vendor information.
- Better collaboration between departments, vendors, and stakeholders by providing a centralized communication and document-sharing platform.
- Cost savings through data on vendor performance, pricing trends, and contract negotiations.
- Improved compliance with procurement policies, regulations, and contract terms via automated approvals and audit trails.
With Service Desk procurement tools, businesses can effectively manage their IT procurement needs and focus on growing their operations with peace of mind.
What are procurement tools?
Procurement tools help with specific elements of the procurement process. Procurement is the process of finding and acquiring goods and services from an outside source. Specifically, it’s a means of ensuring the buyer gets the best possible price for the goods, services, or work they require. E-procurement software might help you compare various factors of a product you’re looking to purchase, such as quantity, quality, and time. By presenting all the pertinent information on a single interface, procurement tools create a more streamlined purchasing process.
Procurement tools—often referred to as automated purchasing systems—help you manage all the moving pieces involved in the procurement process. The most powerful procurement platform provides more than just real-time price comparisons; they also organize your orders, provide the suppliers’ details, help you manage purchases, and assist in budget management.
Some of the tools designed to help you streamline and improve the efficiency of your procurement process include contract management software, purchase order management software, and vendor management software. Though it’s possible to purchase a separate procurement solutions to help with each of these elements, it’s better to get procurement management software that takes care of them all.
SolarWinds Service Desk comes with all the procurement tools you need to successfully manage your hardware, software, and service products.
“SolarWinds Service Desk is acting as a multiple solution platform for us. We’ve gone from six different platforms to one. It brings our departments much closer together.”
Gilad Vinitsky
CTO
The BLOC
Procurement software that takes care of all your management needs
Service Desk
Automate workflow approvals and centralize all procurement assets.
Audit inventory logs for real-time data analysis, proactive troubleshooting, and contract compliance.
Visually track and identify trends in assets and user behavior.
