
Dynamics 365
Bellwether Purchasing Software is an on-premise and cloud-based purchasing and inventory management solution. Primary features include requisitions, approval routing, purchase order management, receiving, invoice matching, invento...Read more
Kissflow Procurement Cloud is ideal for companies that are either transitioning from manual procurement management tools, implementing a solution for the first time, or replacing disparate point solutions. With Kissflow, businesse...Read more
Promena e-Sourcing is a cloud-based auction management, sourcing and procurement platform. It supports strategic solutions, such as request for information (RFI), request for proposal (RFP), request for quotation (RFQ) and e-aucti...Read more
The Slingshot Enterprise Business Suite is a web-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software suite designed to serve mid-sized to large businesses. The system serves retail, distribution, manufacturing, financial services, p...Read more
easyPurchase, created as an SaaS-based solution by ESM Solutions, streamlines procurement processes for any size business. It ensures effective utilization of resources while maintaining its flexibility and affordability....Read more
ProcurePort is a unique, customizable eProcurement and eSourcing solution that allows users to view and manage the entire procurement process in one interface. It is available on-premise or web-based, and can be used on an iPad....Read more
Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is an enterprise resource planning software with primary features such as real estate management, human capital management, environmental health and safety and commodity trading. What is JD...Read more
eBuyerAssist by Eyvo is a cloud-based procurement solution that caters to businesses across various industry verticals, which helps them to manage their purchasing routines, from requisition to fulfillment. eBuyerAssist featu...Read more
SutiProcure offers integrated applications for Procurement, Supplier Management, Strategic Sourcing, and Contract Management. It can be deployed either on-premise or web-based. ...Read more
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based CRM ecosystem for small, medium and enterprise organizations, with a focus on Sales, Field Service, Customer Service complete with strong integrations with Microsoft’s other Office 365 offer...Read more
Built for growing product-selling businesses using QuickBooks, Acctivate is a premium inventory management & multi-channel order fulfillment add-on that helps you focus on growth without operational limitations. Solve for QuickB...Read more
ShippingEasy is a cloud-based shipping and inventory management solution suitable for small to midsize e-commerce businesses. Key features include order management, label customization, integration with multiple seller channels, r...Read more
Purchase order software is a software tool that manages essential procurement processes. It creates and manages purchase orders (POs), can transmit POs to suppliers, and reconciles supplier invoices to POs, contracts, and more.
Purchase order software can be offered as a standalone software program or as an application within a supply chain management system or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software (more on this below).
In this buyers guide, we’ll examine the various types of PO software, the standard features, and the types of buyers in this space.
Here's what we'll cover:
POs are the beginning of both direct and indirect procurement processes. Direct procurement refers to the purchasing of goods and services used in an organization's products, whereas indirect procurement refers to the purchasing of goods and services used to support an organization's processes.
As such, there are various types of software that deal with purchase orders:
Procure-to-pay (P2P) suites are essentially all-purpose tools for managing all of an organization's procurement activities. Typically, P2P systems wade into related areas such as contract management, inventory management, supplier management, and strategic sourcing. They're the focus of this buyers guide.
Most P2P solutions are cloud-based.
ERP suites typically feature procurement modules, but primarily work in conjunction with other modules in the system—e.g., production planning. Moreover, these modules tend to lack the niche features as well as the user-friendly interfaces that encourage adoption throughout an organization.
Work-stream tools are stand-alone applications for managing highly specific procurement processes (telecommunications spend, temporary workforce spend, travel spend etc.). These tools offer dedicated interfaces and approvals workflows to streamline a single, highly important procurement process.
While these solutions are niche, they can offer major benefits when it comes to managing tricky forms of spending. Gartner notes in "Procurement Leaders Need to Deploy Work-Stream-Specific P2P Solutions to Maximize ROI" that “work-stream-specific P2P solutions deliver dramatic out-of-the-box improvements over basic tools in the granularity and degree of control over spending. They achieve this through improved compliance to contract, spend category, and/or project specific workflows and order process audit trail documentation.” (This content is available to Gartner clients.)
Typically, if you're looking for a work-stream tool, you're looking to control spending in a specific area, and you'll look to the niche vendors that specialize in this area. Hence our focus here will be on multipurpose procure-to-pay (P2P) suites.
P2P suites offer a range of modules with diverse functions. The below table homes in on some of the most important:
Rules engine for PO to invoice reconciliation (accounts payable automation) | One of the core features of any procurement solution. Automates the tedious process of reconciling POs to invoices by matching them via rules engines. |
PO to contract reconciliation | Automatically match POs to contracts. |
E-invoicing | Transmit and store invoices in an electronic format such as electronic data interchange (EDI). |
E-catalogs | Can be customized and managed to show, for example, prices based on contracts. |
Integrated spend analysis and reporting | Procurement managers can analyze spend using native reporting tools or export prepared and aggregated data for further analysis. Advanced solutions sport built-in data warehousing functionality. |
Expense reporting and management | Enables a rules-based approach to ensure compliance with organizational policies. |
Strategic sourcing | Some of the more robust P2P suites have built-in modules for strategic sourcing via reverse auctions and other mechanisms. |
ERP integrations | Since P2P solutions are sold as suites in their own right rather than components of ERP systems, they typically offer integrations with leading ERP systems. |
P2P solutions offer the following key benefits:
Potential issues include:
We've seen that there are many software options out there for managing POs. Let's take a look at which kinds of buyers should examine particular solutions.
Buyers primarily involved in direct procurement should explore procurement modules in ERP suites, which offer integrated features in other modules for making the most of data generated by direct procurement (e.g., production planning). Additionally, ERP systems offer strong functionality in areas such as vendor-managed inventory/automated replenishment, which are key to streamlining direct procurement processes.
Buyers dealing with both indirect and direct procurement should explore P2P suites, as these suites are robust and rangy enough to handle various types of purchasing.
Departmental buyers should explore work-stream specific tools that don't require the whole organization to move onto a new procurement platform.
Buyers seeking to control spend in a single key area should evaluate work-stream specific tools.
Buyers with advanced needs such as job costing and quoting need to evaluate niche solutions that can track POs against jobs and that can convert quotes to invoices. Such features are lacking in many all-purpose P2P suites.