Top 7 Platforms for Procuring Software in 2023

An effective procurement strategy includes analyzing costs, negotiating contracts, mitigating risks, and adhering to internal procurement standards. 

The process gets further complicated when your business grows and more stakeholders get involved in the procurement process. In such cases, procurement software can streamline the overall procurement process and helps to run the business smoothly.

Procurement software helps in managing the e-procurement lifecycle. It automates supply chain tasks such as the central management of purchasing, sourcing, vendors, and suppliers, invoicing, and maintaining optimal inventory amounts. Further, it streamlines the communication between stakeholders such as vendors, suppliers, and procurement officers. 

The procurement software helps you find inventory shortages before they hurt your bottom line, collects data that can help you make more money, and reminds you automatically about purchase orders or cancellations. 

With the right procurement software, businesses get more control over their budgets, making it easier to cut costs.

Overall, procurement software helps to reduce miscommunication, track supplier performance, keep track of documents, shorten the time it takes to buy things, and increase margins and profits on purchase orders.

The procurement tools automate and amalgamate the process of purchasing applications for business requirements. Also, it helps to reduce miscommunication, track supplier performance, keep track of documents, shorten the time it takes to buy things, and increase margins and profits on purchase orders.

In addition, procurement software allows organizations to administer all aspects of the purchasing process on one platform. 

Procurement tools have several benefits for a business. Here are some of the key benefits it provides:

• It focuses on purchasing, documentation, and invoicing processes that make organizations efficient and production-focused

• Manages suppliers/vendors 

• Manages invoices and other attached documents 

• Creates automated workflow for streamlining the procurement 

• Provides insights on the patterns of spending and management 

• Identifies spending that is wasted 

This article will walk you through the seven best platforms for software procurement in 2023. 

List of 7 Best Software Procuring Platforms

The two most important things about procurement software are: First, a sourcing tool can be used to create analytics based on how much money is being spent now and how well the supplier is expected to do in the future. 

After that, procurement software solutions can be used to optimize and close deals, including taking care of transactions. This lets businesses automate their supply chain management and make sure it helps them make more business profits.

Now, let's discuss the various tools for SaaS app procurement. 

1. Zluri

Zuri's SaaS buying services are essential to your procurement team during negotiations. We're here to assist you with procuring and renewing all of your favorite SaaS applications. Our SaaS procurement services save you time and money. 

We handle the negotiations on your behalf, saving you the time that your team would have spent negotiating. In addition, we get you the SaaS app you require at discount prices and help you get a better deal.

We have data on 1 billion SaaS transactions and know how much the average customer pays for an app of a specific size. Also, we know the accurate price to pay for different types of licenses for SaaS apps worldwide.

We help you manage your SaaS stack by removing redundant or duplicate apps, making you proactive with auto-renewals, downgrading to more appropriate license tiers, etc. This helps eliminate Shadow IT and get the most out of your SaaS spending.

We understand your purchase and renewal plan for the year. We combine the data on the Zluri platform with your purchase history and help you plan SaaS buying for the next 12 months.

Your teams or departments can pick the tools they want to make work easier. We help you get the best deal on the tools and take care of everything. 

Thus, We can help you save money. Moreover, we help you automatically eliminate any licenses or apps that aren't being used from your existing subscriptions.

We will not only give you better prices but also negotiate a better SaaS deal on your behalf. Once we understand your business requirements, we will choose the right software vendors.

Moreover, we have benchmark data on SaaS prices and bring data-backed insights with an in-depth knowledge of fair pricing. This will provide you with the software at the best price and keeps your business moving. 

Pros

• Zluri acts as an extension of your procurement team and negotiates on your behalf 

• It has benchmark data that helps in fair pricing during procurement

• A platform that acts as a bridge between IT, Procurement, and finance department 

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.8/5

• Capterra: 4.9/5

2. Kissflow Procurement Cloud

Kissflow Procurement Cloud is perfect for businesses that are switching from manual procurement management tools, putting a solution in place for the first time, or getting rid of a bunch of different point solutions. 

With Kissflow, businesses can make informed buying decisions without having to guess. It gives businesses the flexibility and tools needed to meet the needs for buying software and compliance needs. 

In addition, the tool allows users to create buy requests and orders, handle invoice processing and management, and onboard and maintain relationships with new suppliers from a single location. 

Pros

• Supports integration with other solutions

• With Kissflow, you can make a lot of applications on your own to automate the business processes.

Cons

• It can be a bit difficult to deploy for manufacturing companies.

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.8/5

• Capterra: 4.3/5

3. Vendr

Vendr is a SaaS purchasing platform that streamlines and improves every step of the SaaS buying process, from initial research and comparison to IT compliance and vendor relationship management. 

With Vendr, you can reduce your monthly SaaS spending to detect duplicate supplier spending and license consolidation options.

Procurement can be sped up while still being compliant, and agreements are routed to the relevant stakeholders with the help of configurable approval workflows.

Vendr's team of experts on buying SaaS can help you negotiate contracts and renewals and make purchase suggestions based on more than $1.5 billion in transactions that have already been processed.

Moreover, IT leaders should know who is buying what and make sure that any new products bought to follow the company's software policies. The tool simplifies the process of getting software and bringing on new vendors so you can get back to leading your team. It plans for contract renewals and ensures that SLA (service level agreement) rules are followed.

Pros

• It can make the legal work with the vendor easy

• With this tool, you can quickly raise tickets for software procurement

Cons

• Sometimes, the tool's complicated process can lead to a miscommunication between you and the vendor. 

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.7/5

4. Procurify

Procurify is a platform for SaaS buying needs that provides streamlined workflows and approvals and increases communication speeds. It tracks and analyzes every part of the purchase workflow.

With the help of Procurify you can easily create purchase orders, request purchases, reconcile payments, notify the approvers and receive your items. Furthermore, it can generate purchase orders with personalized branding and fields automatically. This platform also helps designate buying permissions per department and location. 

Purchasing, procurement, and Finance teams have been able to use Procurify across departments and teams to make a better Spend Culture because it has a full workflow, mobile apps, and an easy-to-use interface. The tool is easy to Set up in two weeks and can help you change how you procure software.

Procurify also provides virtual and actual purchasing cards, both of which may be managed from within the app itself. Here you may track money spending, connect purchases to requisitions, and limit access to the purchasing system based on user roles or other criteria.

In addition, it allows integration with Quickbooks, NetSuite, and more.

Pros

• It provides you a view of request status and updates 

• Also, it gives you an in-depth reporting 

Cons

• The functionality of budgeting has limitations

• The request orders can be a bit difficult to fill up

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.6/5

• Capterra: 4.5/5

5. Oracle Procurement Cloud

Oracle procurement is a cloud-based software that simplifies the overall complex buying process and maximizes user adoption with smart guidance. For example, Oracle's intuitive search identifies products and services in a minimum period, shows products with negotiated prices, and ensures a cooperative purchase. 

The platform has an intuitive search that allows the user to locate services and goods that the buyer needs within their budget and negotiable ranges and assists in compliant SaaS purchases. 

It utilizes Artificial Intelligence and natural language processes to provide potent insights about vendor relationship strength and alerts where possible threats appear. This procurement software primarily centralizes collaboration and automation. It allows for gaining complete control and visibility over expenditures and vendor details. 

Further, Oracle automates electronic transactions, providing real-time status and visibility of errors. Its automated invoice eliminates errors and accelerates the payment process. 

Pros

• Supports integration with various payment and authorization tools 

• Easy to setup and configure 

Cons

• The support team may take time to resolve issues 

Customer Rating 

• G2- 4.1/5

6. GEP Smart

GEP Smart is a smart cloud-based procurement software that helps in meeting your business expectations. It is a complete purchasing platform that is created for procurement teams. In addition, GEP provides a detailed solution for automating and streamlining the buying cycle in the organization. 

The solution has a set of tools built primarily to help procurement leaders for managing source-to-pay processes with detailed information. 

Besides Procurement, GEP offers services like inventory management, supply chain outsourcing, and procure-to-pay process management. Also, it provides full spend analysis and is a powerful tool with both direct and indirect spend management capabilities. 

Here are some of its other key features:

• Alerts for spending compliance and contract management 

• Surveys scorecards and status updates for supplier management purposes

• Savings tracking and full spend analysis

• Identification, evaluation, and qualification of new vendors

The tool allows the users to monitor supplier performance and automate the source-to-pay process along with other tedious tasks. Supplier performance helps with the renewal of contracts and determining whether or not the purchased tools are still performing as promised or if it is time for them to be terminated.  

Pros

• It can generate reports quickly as per your needs 

• Supports seamless integration with Microsoft-native products like SharePoint, Office, Outlook

Cons

• Needs customization for sourcing modules to meet the complex needs of organizations.

• A bit time-consuming to configure, test, and deploy the platform

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.3/5

• Capterra: 4.6/5

7. Coupa Procurement

Coupa Procurement tool's main objective is to simplify the purchasing process for the IT procurement team in your organization. Its key features are purchase requisitions, spend management, tracking budgets, and identifying fraudulent activities. 

Its visibility features offer detailed and valuable insights about planning and demand for purchase items. 

Moreover, the simple purchase requisitions and process of the orders are trackable in real time. Therefore, the IT procurement team never misses an update. 

Additionally, this helps the IT teams and the supply chain leaders provide more transparency, monitor spending, reduce risk, and increase flexibility. The unified platform mitigates the complex integrations of IT and helps in performing better to achieve the business goals. 

Coupa offers maximum visibility into the Procurement and purchase cycle in order to have augmented spend under management, gain control and guarantee overall value. 

Some of the features that Coupa include:

• The software purchasing process 

• Inventory management for tracking on-hand inventory and warehouse

• Managing and creating contracts and catalogs that include pinch-outs, approvals, etc 

• Approval of budgets and cross check budgets to make cost-effective choices 

Pros

• Sometimes the vendor portals show the status of purchase orders and invoice

• It creates new dashboards and reports to help in decision making 

Cons

• The platform is complex to configure. 

Customer Rating 

• G2: 4.1/5