Streamlining the purchase ordering process

Streamlining the purchase ordering process

By Rex Nye, digital director at NMBS

Our industry has made significant progress in digitalisation and e-trading in recent years, driving improvements and streamlining many processes. However, there are still opportunities to further enhance ordering systems and operational efficiencies. This should be a focus to any business who wants to improve efficiencies and squeeze every bit of profit from the year ahead.

Merchants manually send order emails and PDFs to suppliers, even for recurring product requests. This method encourages manual information duplication from merchants and suppliers, making it unnecessarily time-intensive.

This is where a fully electronic order process could make a big difference in 2025.

A fully electronic order process allows a merchant to place an order through its ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. This request is automatically digitised, verified and sent to the supplier. The system then automatically inputs the order into the supplier’s own ERP system for them to fulfil, without any manual inputs or intervention.

NMBS plays an important role in the ordering process of our merchant members and suppliers. We saw more than £2.25bn of trading happen through NMBS in 2023, which places us in a unique position to improve ordering efficiencies to save the industry significant time.

We have created a fully electronic order process, located in OnePlace, which is accessible for all our members and suppliers. This digitalised process creates efficiencies on both sides, saving time and money across our sector.

Reducing errors

Many suppliers also have a set of rules that orders must meet to be fulfilled. This can include a minimum order quantity, a specific wait time on delivery dates, and a check that the price that was stipulated is correct. Normally, if one of these rules is not met, merchants and suppliers start the back-and-forth emails to rectify the issue before the order can be approved. This adds unnecessary time to the ordering process as the two parties wait for email responses, phone calls and confirmation.

A fully electronic order process puts the time demands on NMBS instead. Straight-through ordering automatically checks to see if orders comply with the supplier’s rules and flags the order if there are any errors. One of the NMBS team will then assess the order and only contact the merchant or the supplier, whoever can answer the question the quickest, leaving the other party out of the discussion until the order is compliant.

Duplicating information can also create an increased risk of human error in the process. This can raise the chance of incorrect products being delivered and the added costs and time that is needed to resolve any issues. By automating the input process from the merchant’s EPR system to the supplier’s, the opportunity for human error is drastically reduced.

Boosting awareness

The traceability of orders can be challenging with a manual order process because it depends on the efficiency and accuracy of the people making notes of the orders and managing the delivery process. It can be time-intensive for suppliers to update merchants at every step, but many merchants will require this information to update their customers and build dependable relationships. This creates a challenge.

A fully electronic order process allows the supplier to provide merchants with an order status at every step, without any manual updating or intervention. This ensures their customers are kept up to date on delivery times and don’t have any unrealistic expectations about when they will receive their products.

The construction industry is often criticised as slow to adapt to new methods of working and technology, but when the time and cost savings are so apparent, independent merchants need to innovate. Streamlining and automating the ordering process is a simple step that many can take on this technology journey.

Learn more about NMBS’s fully electronic order processes on the NMBS website https://www.nmbs.co.uk/oneplace/.