Introduction

Pre-Procurement Automation, which automates the discipline of searching internally before buying, is the logical extension of our Virtual Pooled Inventory (VPI) service. It is available to users of VPI whose data is of sufficient standard, and whose organisations are able to act in a co-ordinated way across their sites.

The service effectively delivers an enterprise wide MRP by automating the pre-procurement discipline of searching internally across your enterprise first. We take the purchasing requirements generated by individual MRP runs and then apply those requirements to a corporate set of rules configured individually and based on surplus rules, part value and geography. This service allows you to automate the internal discipline required to prevent unnecessary buying when a spare is available elsewhere within your organisation.

Service Description

Pre-Procurement Automation operates on all the sites you configure it for. This may well include vendor-managed stock at your own sites, or indeed a supplier's inventory which you have agreed will be included. The process involves triggering the search, applying a series of rules and then initiating a purchase.

Search Initiation
The initiation of automated searching can take place either by the manual input of a list of requirements, or through a hand-off direct from your ERP. The required fields are manufacturer's name and part number, and the search uses direct matching with alias functionality.

Rules Based Decision making
The key to obtaining high quality results from the search is to preset the rules such that no time is wasted trawling through spare parts that would not be transferred. During the system set-up, you will be able to choose for each site in your group a level of value that is economically worth dealing with, and what your preferences are in the event of multiple sites being able to supply the item.

Clearly there may be times when these rules need to be overridden and this option always remains available through the standard VPI search engine.

Purchase Initiation
Once the source of a spare is identified, you are able to initiate a purchase manually using our transaction forum. Preferably, however, we will have configured the system to automatically initiate a purchase order process within your ERP or E-Procurement system.