Procurement today is complex. There are more suppliers to manage, tighter budgets, and mounting expectations for compliance and transparency. You have to work to reduce potential supply chain disruptions, while meeting institutional mandates and keeping a constant focus on cost control. Yet, manual processes are no longer keeping up with these demands, especially as many colleges and universities find themselves working with less resources, less staff, and a compressed timetable.
Procurement automation is critical to overcoming these challenges, and academic institutions are investing heavily to streamline systems. According to Verified Market Research, organizations spent $5.8 billion on procurement software in 2024, and that number is expected to more than double by 2032.
Procurement automation offers simplified workflows, faster approvals, and improved visibility into spend, so you can manage purchasing and reduce procurement costs.
Procurement automation is a digital system that helps you manage the full purchasing lifecycle from requisition and approval through payment and reporting. Automating manual steps in procurement provides standardization, accuracy, and speed.
Automation also helps in an era where we see reduced staffing and greater-than-normal turnover. Over the past decade, average turnover among top leadership roles has grown to more than 21%, a historic high. At the same time, staff reductions or hiring freezes have created more vacancies. That means doing more with less and working with people who need to learn your systems.
Automation helps by simplifying processes, even for new hires, employing the strategies and institutional knowledge that’s been embedded in the software and would otherwise be lost in staffing changes.
The biggest advantage of procurement automation is the reduction in administrative costs. Every manual approval, invoice entry, or contract review takes time and introduces potential errors. Automated systems streamline these workflows, eliminating redundant tasks and accelerating the purchasing process.
Organizations that have implemented automation are already seeing measurable benefits: 43% of those surveyed said automation reduced their manual workload by at least 25%. Automation also improves compliance and reporting, ensuring that purchases align with your budget and policy requirements. Over time, this reduces unplanned spending across the procurement lifecycle.
Here are some of the ways you’ll see results by adopting procurement automation across different stages of your process.
Process Stage | Manual Workflow | Automated Workflow | Result |
Requisition approval | Routed by email or paper forms | Automated digital routing with notifications | Faster cycle time |
Invoice processing | Manual data entry and matching | Automated three-way matching and validation | Fewer errors and delays |
Supplier onboarding | Individual review per supplier | Preapproved supplier lists and e-forms | Simplified setup |
Reporting and analytics | Spreadsheet-based tracking | Real-time dashboards and spend analytics | Improved visibility |
By reducing (or eliminating) administrative touchpoints, you can lower your workload and procurement costs. Some organizations see a reduction in turnaround time on requests by as much as 50%.
Transitioning to procurement automation does require a rethinking of processes as typical academic institutions. Many colleges and universities operate decentralized systems, or legacy ERPs may not integrate easily. Others face cultural resistance, where departments are accustomed to manual approvals and paper trails, and may resist a more centralized and digitized approach.
Your best strategy for overcoming these challenges is to adopt automation tools that reduce workloads. Consider:
Procurement automation can transform the way you work. Perhaps most importantly, it reduces the manual workload, allowing procurement teams to focus on strategy rather than procedure. When you automate, you get back time that can be used to analyze sourcing, spending patterns, and risk. You also gain insight that can help you improve supplier relationships and impact future purchasing roadmaps.
This process elevates the role of procurement teams from managing transactions to leading the way on meeting institutional needs for strategic cost control.
A survey of procurement teams, by Amazon, reported that 47% of decision-makers say their biggest challenges in procurement today are efficiency and complexity, two of the reasons why 98% of procurement professionals say they are planning investments in procurement automation and analytics. As you continue to deal with today’s norms of leaner staffing and tighter budgets, procurement automation offers sustainability and efficiency, allowing you to reduce procurement costs.
Your procurement team shouldn’t be chasing approvals- they should be driving strategy. Learn how E&I’s automation frees teams to focus on savings, not paperwork.