In today’s business world companies are cognisant of the cost of procurement. Traditional procurement processes tend to exacerbate the cost of purchasing company supplies. One government department realised, after doing an assessment of its procurement costs that it was incurring an expense R730 to obtain a padlock worth R9,80.
Modern organisations are moving towards the use of corporate procurement card solutions to streamline their procurement processes and save costs. Procurement cards offer corporations the opportunity to have world class procurement processes in place, giving them better control and visibility of business spend, thereby highlighting cost-cutting opportunities and increasing efficiencies.
A procurement card solution is available to medium and large businesses generating an annual turnover of R5-million or more, according to Privesan Naidoo, Head of Business Development for Corporate Card.
“The Nedbank procurement card solution enables an organisation to set daily transaction or weekly spend limits, and even limit the number of transactions allowed. Usage can be set up in such a way that cards are only accepted by preferred suppliers or preferred industry types, thereby eliminating the misuse of funding.”
“If a cardholder is authorised to purchase only at a stationery supplier, or even only at suppliers on the supply chain, then cards can be restricted accordingly. This, along with the cash-blocking feature, ensures that company funds are not misused,” said Naidoo.
The Nedbank procurement card solution is set up according to the organisation’s reporting structure, so that transactions are not only reported on to the cardholder, but also to the department and to a central area in the company.
The solution is customised to meet the organisation’s billing policies, offering a 40-day interest-free payment term to either the cardholder or the company, whichever is specified by the company’s expense claim policy.
“Nedbank’s procurement card solution ensures constant visibility through highly advanced reporting mechanisms, which includes interactive electronic statements with item-level detail,” says Privesan.
Cardholders receive electronic statements that are consolidated to have a snapshot view of all the cards in the company. The user can drill down into each individual cardholder account and/or transaction and see how many pens the cardholder bought, for instance. Clients have the convenience of an online reporting and expense management tool, where transactions can be reported on a dashboard of their choice. The expense management package means a transaction can be validated as an in-policy transaction or out-of-policy transaction.
Nedbank Corporate Card strives to assist organisations to drive savings and maximise control of their expenditure, with direct savings of up to 60%, and its procurement card does just that.
For more information on Nedbank’s procurement solutions please send an email to cardsales@nedbank.co.za.
SmartProcurement is hosting a breakfast session on the business case for Procurement Cards at the Atlantic Imbizo, Cape Town on 22 August 2012. To register email events@smartprocurement.net
