Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Historically, it began as a day of being grateful for the blessing of the harvest of the preceding year. The ritual of thanking God is persistent even today in the form of performing holy services, as well as pronouncing the mealtime prayer before the Thanksgiving dinner. In American families, before praying, it is a common practice at the dining table for ‘each person to tell one specific reason they’re thankful to God for, that year’. While grace is said, many families hold hands until the prayer concludes, often concluded with an “Amen”.

Thanksgiving is said to be one of the best days of the year to be an American. It’s a day to count blessings, spend time with the loved ones, and enjoy some good food and some great company. But it’s also one of the worst days of the year to be a turkey. They don’t have it so good. A perfectly roasted Turkey is a vital part of the traditional thanksgiving dinner. The beautiful bird lives in the threat of being killed at the cost of someone’s thanks to the other. This Thanksgiving let us make manual processes in procurement our ‘turkey’, while we thank our buyers and suppliers with Automation.

There have been a lot of advancement in procurement technology. Procurement has seen changes in a lot of areas, right from artificial intelligence based data classification to supply chain management techniques.  Automation by far, has been the best thanksgiving gift to all, especially those in the procurement sphere. For it brought with itself authority, answer-ability and compliance across organizations. It resolved the prevalent problem of procurement chiefs who complained about teams spending too much time on administrative tasks. It increased the efficiency of low line procurement professionals, enabling them to take part in growth-enhancing activities rather than doing the monotonous and tactical tasks. Automation has regularized every step in the process starting from raising requisitions to final payment. Not only this, it can automate various projects or initiatives like contract life-cycle management (from contract authoring to the final sign off as well as utilization tracking). When it comes to automating procurement processes, the automation of invoicing receipt and processing are the most widespread and spoken about topics in the procurement domain.

Automation has conveyed a massive change in the functioning of an organization by taking over the administrative duties and giving back buyers their precious time. Automating processes at each level has streamlined the work, reducing delayed tasks and enabling real time tracking of operations. It ensures coordination among all team members by enabling them to implement change in a faster and efficient manner. Procurement professionals can now solve out their Big Data problems by understanding and interpreting the drivers of inclinations in pricing, and volumes of procured products and services just by introducing automation in their organization. Automation has truly blessed procurement professionals with a paperless workplace. The automated information or reports derived by professionals gives them an insight as to where they stand with respect to the market or industry benchmarks. It educates them about their deficiencies and helps them in forecasting strategic use of resources.

Automation has also contributed in the reduction of paperwork to a lot of extent. It promises the world of minimal consumption of paper. By adopting automation organizations contribute to a healthier and greener environment. Going green, looking for sustainability are all CSR activities of an organization. When the procurement team leads, it creates a gigantic impact organization wide, as procurement interacts with all the business functions. When these procurement professionals reduce paperwork, improvise better strategies and streamline their activities it sets an example for the organization to contribute for the greater cause.

Automation is needed to meet business objectives while saving time, effort, money and enabling procurement to make a greater impact on the bottom line. The recent market trends have revealed an increase in demand of automated strategic sourcing and electronic supplier commerce solutions in the procurement realm. SaaS companies like Zycus help professionals by automating their entire workflows and streamlining operations. This Thanksgiving, make your life simpler by automating procurement processes and witness how the ROI brings recognition to your team. Join us in thanking automation by sharing this blog