Industry Insights · 3min read

Traditional Procurement vs. Digital Procurement

See how digital tools can drastically help simplify procurement processes for food manufacturers.

It is no secret that B2B procurement has been drastically lagging behind the B2C industry when it comes to customer centricity. As a result, particularly in food procurement, many manufacturers are still grappling with unnecessarily complex processes, resource-intensive steps and tedious paperwork and emails. 

With highly globalised supply chains, the time (and money) that B2B buyers are spending researching suppliers and products has been consistently on the rise since 2015. And because procurement processes are unique to every business—think, order quantities and frequencies, product specifications and certifications, delivery times and terms, pricing and payment terms—many businesses must enter seemingly endless communication loops to acquire the products that match their needs. 

Here is a typical example of what this process looks like for F&B manufacturers:

Digital procurement facilitates efficiency along the supply chain. Food manufacturers can save heaps of time and money thanks to automated and streamlined processes and user-friendly interfaces where everything is readily available in one place. Furthermore, having access to everything in one place makes it much easier to maintain a continuous overview. The availability of data allows customers to make insight-based decisions and helps foster transparency. Customers also benefit from greater flexibility as procurement can be tailored to their individual needs. 

Using foodcircle’s digital procurement solutions as an example, we demonstrate how digital processes can make it quick and easy for B2B customers to procure the products of their choosing. It should be noted that the identification of needs and purchase requisition are steps which occur internally within each company, hence, are not depicted in the digital outline below.

Looking at these two simple examples, it quickly becomes clear how much untapped potential there is in B2B procurement for saving both time and money. By funnelling the entire procurement process through one digital dashboard, B2B customers not only avoid endless back-and-forths with suppliers but are also able to benefit from having all necessary information available in one place. 

Sign up to foodcircle today (it’s free) and start your digital procurement journey tomorrow!