Procure 360°

All-round assistance with your procure-to-pay cycle

Now, more than ever, organisations are searching for new ways to reduce costs while delivering improved value and results. Taking a fresh look at procurement processes and procedures can help to achieve these goals but major, long-term gains will only come if you look beyond “purchasing” and work to get more from the entire procurement cycle.

Delivering procurement excellence

UNIT4 has applied its wealth of expertise in the field of procurement to offer a completely new service concept for our clients: Procure 360° (P360°) – a complete diagnostic review and range of work programmes.

Key benefits

Our Procure 360° approach will help you to make the Procurement function a real, sustainable, recognisable asset to your organisation, enabling you to:

  • understand the true performance and  costs of your operation
  • achieve better management, compliance and cost-control
  • deliver visibility and meaningful measurements of improvements and savings.

Throughout, our priority is to unlock genuine, new added value. So, for each stage, we can also help you produce either a wide-ranging business case or an incremental set of ROIs to ensure the value justifies the effort involved.

Want to know more?

Procure 360° is a prime example of the new wider range of solutions that we can now offer to meet your needs – both today and as your organisation continues to evolve.

Click on the links below for more information.

  • A real competitive edge

    Whilst it is true that streamlining purchase-to-pay activities can offer valuable short-term returns, there’s much more to procurement than just the buying of goods and services. When recognised and supported as a strategic function, procurement can not only improve profit margin but also support business change and provide a powerful competitive edge.

    Our experts are ready and eager to work with you, to provide the services, solutions and assistance you need, to take the procure-to-pay process and turn it into a cycle for continuous improvement.

  • Procure 360° - an overview

    We focus on three key stages of the Procure-to-pay process:

    • Procure to Purchase
    • Purchase to Invoice
    • Invoice to Pay

    and then complete the cycle with a review of what has been achieved.

    For each stage, we apply a diagnostic approach, assessing the scope and effectiveness of existing practices and analysing the results, in order to propose the best steps to improve each one. We then agree an appropriate level of engagement for our experts to work with your teams in delivering these service packages – to suit your own resources and circumstances.

  • Creating a business platform

    Our Procure 360° approach will help you to create a procure-to-pay business platform – a forward-looking strategy and change plan to make the procurement function a real, sustainable, recognisable asset to your organisation.

    It aims to deliver three key improvements:
    • Control - via:
     o end-to-end process
     o trained staff
    • Compliance - via:
     o policies
     o procedures
     o accreditation
    • Cost reductions - via:
     o spend influence
     o spend checking

  • The Procurement Centre of Excellence (PCE)
    Our team of procurement experts offers an extensive range of service packages, to help you create the desired procurement platform for your business. These can cover the complete range of procurement practices and procedures or be tailored to help you to achieve specific objectives – for example, “foundation gains” or “sustainable progression”. More…

  • Example project - 360° assessment

    One client asked us to assess its procurement function, to identify its strengths and weaknesses. After working through our 360° diagnostic questionnaire with the client, we were able to show them the areas of their procurement function that needed support. Our team were then able to work with the client to determine the priorities and set to work on them.

  • Example project - improved purchasing

    A dispersed purchasing function – with many buyers located in the business areas, rather than a dedicated procurement or purchasing team – was a cause for concern for another of our clients. We were asked to look at the current issues and design a robust purchasing function. Our resulting recommendation was not a complete re-write of their processes but various small changes to the way the company handled purchase orders, together with the implementation of strategic supplier management.

  • Example project - software consultancy

    We have also worked with clients that have installed our Agresso or CODA procurement and purchasing software  solutions . As a result, the clients gained a better understanding of the links between the procurement function and the accounts function. It has also improved the process-design stage of the software implementation, ensuring sustainable progression.

Next Steps

Related information

Related Downloads