Puridiom eProcurement is Solid Where it Counts

Based out of Mechanicsburg, PA, Technical Services Associates (TSA), better known today as Puridiom, has been serving its clients by specializing in eProcurement software for over 30 years. Puridiom’s customers include Mutual of America, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, Western & Southern Financial Group and Kroger. Puridiom has clients with 5 users to 40,000 users, and the organization has been recognized by Gartner Reports, Supply Demand Chain Executive and Ardent Partners.

Puridiom is named after their eProcurement software suite, which we recently had the chance to demo courtesy of Dennis Toohey, Puridiom’s Director Procurement Solutions.

Puridiom eProcurement has a Salesforce.com look and feel while retaining superior functionality. While Puridiom’s eProcurement solution won’t win any awards for aesthetic beauty within its software GUI, it is straightforward to navigate, especially thanks to the clickable, numbered workflow on the screen at all times during most processes. Having worked with many complicated ERP systems in the past, we can’t stress enough how convenient and helpful having eProcurement’s labeled workflow available on-screen is. It allows you to easily review workflow processes and make changes as you go along without getting lost in a complicated maze of screens.

A huge plus Puridiom eProcurement offers integration that fits easily into a customer’s ERP or HR system, allowing for a single set of data to be used. Thus, Puridiom eProcurement works with the customers’ current data without the need for a separate, standalone database. This type of real-time availability from a single data source is a great selling point of Puridiom eProcurement.

The user doesn’t have to worry about which cost center they are in or particular commodity codes. Business rules interact with the AP/ERP system, which can be checked against a cost center or budget. These budgets are loaded by a spreadsheet, web service or regular interaction.

Puridiom offers a supplier portal where potential vendors can be searched for various criteria, including commodity code. Buyers can easily convert an approved requisition into a sourcing event or order. The sourcing capabilities include a reverse auction option, with supplier notifications routed through the system.

While Puridiom does maintain relationships with a network of suppliers that they make available to their buying organization clients, the suppliers are always chosen by the buyers. These buyer-selected suppliers can then sign up to be included within Puridiom’s catalog offerings free of charge to the supplier. Suppliers can self-register on the supplier portal and manage their own particular settings and codes such as Walmart certification, W-9, insurance certifications, etc.

According to Toohey, Puridiom eProcurement is “a fully auditable ‘procure-to-pay system’ and very much a spend management system” used to control administrative spending or services. The audit trail includes tracking by user, date, time and IP Address. He further elaborates that “every good or service that is being requested and acquired in the system is trackable, traceable and reportable in various ways for everyone within the organization (with the appropriate permissions) from the requester to the buyer, to AP and management.” Toohey believes the high levels of visibility, intervention and control based on these analytics are a big difference between Puridiom and other spend management systems.

Configurable workflows are permissible depending on how customers want to enforce spending from requesting, approving, procurement and review by the legal department through contract stages.

The goals of the Puridiom eProcurement system include:

– replacing manual processes
– achieving procurement best practices
– gaining efficiencies
– reducing maverick spending
– changing operation processes to support policies, procedures and controls
– aligning procurement, AP and operations
– allowing customers to collaborate with suppliers

Overall, we view the Puridiom eProcurement system as a “source-to-pay” system with a strong eProcurement component and basic sourcing capabilities.

Puridiom eProcurement also has many reports available, and those reports are highly configurable, which is especially useful for executives who love to run detailed, unique reports.

Puridiom is ahead of the curve of some of its competitors by offering Puridiom Mobile, an app that allows the user to approve requests, order, acknowledge receipts and enter invoices from their mobile device. This app is offered for Apple and Android devices.

The use of a real-time single data source is a huge win in our book. By offering this flexibility to integrate with any ERP or HR system, Puridiom sets itself apart from many vendors (beyond the procurement realm) who cannot offer such seamless integration.

By far, our favorite part of the system was the numbered workflow on the screen at all times during most processes. At the end of the day, eProcurement is all about achieving compliance with procurement policies. And achieving compliance is all about making things easy for the end-user. We think Puridiom eProcurement is solid where it counts in the areas between “req” and “check.”

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