Project-based Procurement

FAS provides workflows for (i) procurement in project management and (ii) project delivery in procurement.

Procurement in Project Management

Since a project often involves material and service purchases, procurement is one of the ten project management areas defined in standards such as PMBOK. However, modern procurement concerns sophisticated digital processes and fraud prevention that traditional project management tools don’t support. Acquiring multiple tools and linking them together manually for use will increase costs and efforts. But the worst parts are the high inefficiency and weak ability to detect corruption because the tools are disjoint and not designed for the end-to-end process.

The following is the integrated workflow for procurement in project management provided by FAS.

Non-standard Product Acquisition

When a project acquires a piece of customized equipment or software, it might involve the following milestones:

The project team needs to do due diligence for a number of qualified vendors and each vendor needs to obtain sufficient information to qualify the opportunity. Both the buyer and the seller need to exchange a lot of information in multiple rounds in a fair and secure manner. What is worse, project requirements aren’t always certain and their changes might affect the procurement. If the project management process and the procurement process are disjoint and their connection is managed manually, things could easily fall-through-the-cracks.

Standard Material Acquisition

When a project is purchasing standard materials, it might consider the purchase flexibility (e.g., a standing offer that has no volume commitment), delivery time and value-added service in addition to cost. The project team needs to qualify a number of suppliers. Both the buyer and the seller need to exchange a fair amount of information fairly and securely. After selecting some qualified suppliers, the project team might want to conduct a reverse auction to get the best offer. Project requirements change can also affect the procurement of standard materials. If the project management process and the procurement process are disjoint and managed manually, mistakes could easily happen.

Project Delivery in Procurement

When acquiring sophisticated equipment, software or service (e.g., BPO, ITO), the supplier often needs to deliver via project. For example, a supplier delivering a software solution might involve the following milestones:

The buyer company needs to do due diligence for the initial set of selected suppliers and each supplier needs to qualify the opportunity. Both sides need to exchange a lot of information in a fair and secure manner. The change in procurement requirements would usually affect the procurement process. If the procurement process and the project delivery are disjoint and managed manually, things could be difficult to manage.

The following is the end-to-end integrated workflow for procurement in project management provided by FAS.

With FAS, both the procurement in project management and project delivery in procurement scenarios can be adequately managed.