Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, shows how to set up a purchase order system in two to three weeks instead of six months. Reuse existing data from your accounting system, hire an implementation specialist, and start with a small pilot group of 20-30% of staff. Launch when the system is 80-90% ready, not perfect.
I would like to implement a purchase order system, but I don't have time. That's a common phrase I hear from many growing companies. Whether I'm talking to a CFO or a controller, they're dealing with the growth pains, right, in terms of surprise expenses and so on. But they don't have time to implement a proper process. And most of the time they think that it's going to take a long time. Well, it's like a lot of time. People think it's three to six months. And when I tell them it can be done in two to three weeks, they are pretty amazed. Right. So in this video I'm going to walk you through how simple it is to implement a purchase order system in your organization. And second, you know, I'll share like one bonus tip in terms of things that you must avoid, otherwise you'll kill the adoption in your company. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I am the founder of procuredesk where we help growing companies automate their purchasing and AP processes. So let's jump right in. So number one is most companies think they have to have a lot of data to start with, right? So I gotta pull my chart of account suppliers, I need to think about approval process and so on. Reality is you already have that data. If you have a good delegation of authority policy or a purchasing policy that captures pretty much what you are supposed to do, whether you're doing that or not, that's a different process or problem. And second is all your data as far as your chart of accounts, your suppliers, suppliers, email list, all that is in your accounting system. So a good procurement system like procuredesk should be able to easily connect and pull the data from there and your purchasing policy provides the workflow that needs to be configured. Right now comes to the second point is who should do the configuration and that is where you need a implementation specialist. So when you're working with a, or when you're looking for procurement software options, look for our companies who provide like a fully done for you service so you don't have to worry about thinking about even implementation. Provide them with the requirements on what you want and find somebody who has done implementation in your industry. Right? So if you are a biotech, find somebody who works in biotech or construction or schools or whatever the case might be, right. And you know, having a dedicated implementation specialist speeds up the process because they know what are the best practices in your industry and they've done it many times. Right. So number three is start small and then scale. You don't have to start with everybody in the organization using the system, right? So really think about it this way. If you have, let's say 50 employees, in our experience, generally 20 to 30% of employees, so that would be 10 to 15 employees are involved in the purchasing process. And that is what you should focus on. Start with small with who are the main people who are involved in the purchasing process. And the idea here is that you want to start small so you can get feedback, you can make sure you are understanding what is coming in between as far as adoption is concerned, right? So start small and then iterate over, understand what is going on, what we need to modify and things like that from there. So those are the three things that can really speed up your implementation process and you can implement a PO system in two to three weeks. Now coming to that bonus tip, that pretty much kills the adoption and that is trying to perfect everything. We see it many times when we work with our clients is they have a tendency to ensure that every possible workflow is configured or looked at before they roll it out. They test it forever and they are trying to perfect it for like the 10%. You're already there, 90%. So the easiest thing I would recommend is as soon as you close to 80, 90%, roll it out, get it out in front of your employees, take your friendlies, get the feedback and then optimize the 10% there. Don't wait for a go live, otherwise you will be testing it forever trying to perfect the system. And honestly, in my opinion, it's not worth it. So just to summarize the top three things to kind of speed up your implementation, right? So you don't have to start from scratch. That's number one. Look for dedicated support from an implementation standpoint. Number three is start small and then scale to rest of your employees. If you found this video helpful, go and hit the subscribe button. We greatly appreciate it and thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
