Effectively managing the purchases of a company is, mainly, to buy the necessary quantities of raw materials or intermediate products with best quality at the lowest price at a rate that satisfies the supply chain while not excessively overstocking. When this does not happen, the company loses money for one of the following reasons: it stores more stock than necessary, doesn’t have enough stock to respond to orders, or isn’t buying the best quality/price available at that time in the supplier market.

To optimize purchasing decisions, it’s necessary to correctly calculate the stocking policy of the company, as well as its material needs according to the orders collected. To more agile than the competition, an important tool are mathematical algorithms that can estimate the volume of orders in the short or medium term before they are made, based on different variables.

Finally, purchases involve a multitude of administrative tasks such as budgets, orders, waybills, receipts, invoices, payments, and records. It is necessary to rigorously manage all this documentation and its different versions to avoid errors that may cause economic repercussions, delays in the delivery of materials or simply deteriorate the image of the company to its suppliers. As well, considering the relationship of purchases with other areas of the company (such as entries in warehouse or generation of accounting records), correct integration will automate many of these tasks and therefore save time and effort.