As the organisation I work for has grown, we now have a handful of regional offices that are autonomous with regards to purchasing.  I have been tasked with reviewing this process to hopefully streamline it and achieve associated cost savings.  The price of supplies is not an issue, more the internal process.

At present:

Each office issues purchase orders and logs these in an Excel file for reporting purposes, as often there is lag between order and receipt of invoice.

Purchase invoices are received at head office where the finance function is based.

Invoices are forwarded in batches to the regional offices for authorisation against the original order.

Invoices are returned to head office for input to our Sage accounting package and subsequent payment.

As I see it, this process is inefficient due to being heavily paper-based, presents numerous opportunities for that paperwork to become 'misplaced' and can cause delay in timely settlement payments to our suppliers.

My poser to you in the CIMAsphere is to get a sense of how other similarly structured businesses do things.  Hopefully some of you will be kind enough to offer your thoughts.

Thanks in advance,

Ryan