The activation of a The purchasing and contracting process starts from a request or requisition stage where what is planned begins to take shape at an actual moment. where it is necessary to have clarity at an internal level of the requirement in order to launch it to the market in a later step and obtain the offers adjusted to the real needs.
Context on budget requests and requisitions
In the past, requests or requisitions corresponded to a purely budgetary step where through the ERP or control system used by the companies (even manual), a validation was performed to ensure that the purchasing and contracting resources related to the requirement were available.However, although this step is required today, it is not the central issue for an effective purchasing or contracting process.
Now, the most relevant issues are the technical specification conveyed in a complete and clear manner in addition to the policies and guidelines of the organization at the contracting level that complement the specific need.
In this way, it is necessary to generate spaces where the technical, strategic supply, environmental, legal and even safety inputs are amalgamated to have a clear and complete result of the documentation of the process that will be exposed to the market to obtain the best offers. Likewise, it is important to guarantee, based on the information of the process, that the rules of the purchasing or contracting process to be carried out have the appropriate evaluation criteria to ensure that the selection of the supplier meets the holistic needs.
Technology: an ally
Nowadays, technology has become a powerful tool allowing the systems to generate spaces of understanding and discussion to obtain as deliverable the clear documentation of the process in a traceable and organized manner, including the approval stages that must be carried out internally.
Thus, it is important to explore good practices at a procedural and support level in order to strengthen this process activation that will surely bring satisfactory results to our management.
