Goal Setting and Procurement - What's the Link?

Having goals is good. That's it. That’s the kind of philosophy to stick with in life, work, business, play and... Of course, it needs a little more to it. It needs some actual flesh on those useful bones, but the idea is there.

And procurement is no different. Setting goals will allow you to get the best out of your procurement strategies, but a whopping 80 percent of UK businesses don't link the two. Yet that link can save time and money. It can even make a business more productive. It can certainly make things more streamlined and effective. So why are so few businesses implementing the idea if it's such a good one? If it will make a big different to their bottom line, why is it being ignored?

There are a few reasons - we're not convinced by any of them.

It's Too Hard

There are lots of things in life that are difficult, but therein lies the challenge. Running a business is hard, and there will be tricky things to deal with as part of that role. The thing is, this linking of procurement and goal setting can be done pretty easily if you use a good contract management tool (like... intelligentcontract for example!).

The initial set up of data might take a little while - although even that isn't necessarily so if you have an easy to get to file of information that can be uploaded; it's the searching that takes the time - but once it's all on there, automation takes over and you can set your goals to match. Need to set your procurement timetable over the coming year? Now you know you can. Need to make sure suppliers are hitting their set performance targets? Need to set a target for the number of SMEs with which you do business? Sorted.

I Don't Need To

Ooh. Okay. Technically that's right. No one has to link up their organisation goals with their procurement strategy. No one has to use a contract management tool to make life easier for themselves. But why would you not want to? Saving time and money are probably some of the goals that you want to set for your organisation anyway, and using a contract management tool will get you there a lot quicker. Plus it will show you how much more you could do with your business.

So no, you don't need to link everything up and have it all automated and dealt with efficiently, but it does seem to make a lot of sense...

We Don't Have Goals

If your organisation doesn't have goals, then there is something not quite right. Even if you haven't set any goals for your own productivity, the government has plenty of legislation that you need to be following that, for all intents and purposes, are goals that your business needs to hit. Recycling and reducing your carbon footprint is one. Health and Safety at Work is another. How you hire people - and how you fire people - is yet another. So you do have goals, even if you don't realise it. It's a good idea to get all of that information in one place, with automation to help, using a contract management solution.

It's Too Expensive

Goal setting isn't expensive. What's expensive is not goal setting. Why? It's because you can so easily forget things, not renew them or let them run on too long. You can miss appointments, you can let good prospects slip through your fingers... Paying for a contract management system that will stop all of that and keep you up to date on those all-important goals is utterly priceless.

With a contract management tool such as intelligentcontract, goal setting and monitoring can be built quickly and efficiently.

intelligentcontract is a highly customisable solution that provides a hub to store all your important contract paperwork plus you get loads of useful tools that make your contract management process a breeze. We don't have a limit to either the size of documents of the total amount of storage - so you don't have to worry about extra bills if your central store of documents gets big.

Licences start at £9 per user, per month. For more information, to get a free trial or to organise a demo give us a call on 0333 344 3905 or visit www.intelligentcontract.com