How E-Procurement Apps Increase Mobile Productivity

How E-Procurement Apps Increase Mobile Productivity.

How E-Procurement Apps Increase Mobile Productivity

According to Pew Research, 81% of U.S. adults own a smartphone. The percentage goes even higher when you consider age groups. 96% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 years old and 92% of people between ages 30 and 49 own smartphones.

Perhaps what’s even more astonishing than smartphone ownership is the growing smartphone dependency. An estimated 20% of American adults are smartphone-only internet users. They rely on their smartphones without having a traditional home broadband service.

And what’s not to love about smartphones? we have email, texting, and voice calls right at our fingertips and there’s an app for nearly anything from tracking your daily water intake and exercise to keeping track of your finances and debt repayment schedule.

Why not use our phones to speed up the procure-to-pay process and keep things moving while we are traveling or otherwise away from the office?

The key is having the right mobile app. While PurchaseControl’s e-procurement system doesn’t have a dedicated mobile app, the service is accessible from your phone’s internet browser. Our responsive design ensures that you can access everything you need the same way you do from a desktop device in your office, with the interface automatically adjusting according to your screen resolution so everything is easy to see and operate.

This means you can take care of anything from viewing attachments and comments to approving purchase orders, requisitions, and invoices on the go. You can also set up other approvers to keep your workflow moving and contact others as needed.

While the majority of us are used to using smartphones in our everyday lives, not everyone in the workforce has made the move. Security concerns are a major reason why many companies have avoided making the jump, along with the conception that mobile applications don’t dramatically increase procure-to-pay efficiency.

Recent reports suggest that over one-third of organizations report having a highly mobile workforce and with the majority of North American businesses expecting their business travel to remain the same or increase in the future, using mobile devices for business activity will also increase. And because mobile devices aren’t just used by traveling employees but employees in all roles, they are predicting the U.S. mobile worker population to grow from 96.2 million to 105.4 million by 2020, with nearly 75% of the total U.S. workforce being mobile.

How Can Your Organization Support Procure-to-Pay Growth While Making Mobile Work For You?

In a survey conducted by Paystream Advisors, top uses of mobile devices included:

  • Expense reporting
  • Expense report approval
  • Purchasing
  • Invoice approval
  • Payment approval
  • Invoice routing

PurchaseControl can help with all of these things – whether you’re sitting in your office working at a computer, or on your daily commute using your smartphone. Every part of the procurement process you can do with PurcahseControl at a desktop – supply chain management, contract management, invoicing, and so on – you can do from the user-friendly procurement portal on your smartphone or another mobile device.

Recent studies show mobile apps save small business employees 725 million work hours per year, and save those managing operations more than 370 million of their own hours. Those Time Savings translate to an average of more than $14,000 per year in savings on the number of employee hours and average pay. Research shows two-thirds of small business would fail without wireless technology and that two-thirds of small business owners rely on mobile devices to manage operations.

“Research shows two-thirds of small business would fail without wireless technology, and that two-thirds of small business owners rely on mobile devices to manage operations.”

Using mobile apps saves businesses time spent on monotonous tasks, which can save small business owners an average of $377 per month or more than $4,000 per year. Considering the study only included firms with 20 or fewer employees, these estimates are conservative. Larger enterprises stand to save even more money.

The survey also indicates that nearly half of the owners said their organization was able to spend more time on increasing sales and creating additional revenue streams while 36% of them said app usage allowed them to cut overhead costs. And just over half of them said that mobile app uses allowed their organizations to become more competitive and better able to maneuver through uncertain economic climates.

Beyond addressing those six most common uses, PurchaseControl’s procure-to-pay solution operates on a single platform to provide a common user experience with a shared data model that eliminates the majority of data entry errors.

Our cloud-based service ensures the mobile experience is secure and updated in real-time whether someone is accessing the purchase control app from their web browser on their computer or their smartphone. You get full functionality so your team members, whether in the procurement or the finance department, can submit and approve purchase requisitions, purchase orders, invoices and more. Everything follows along with the automated workflows you set up when you begin using PurchaseControl.

You and your organization do not need to consider mobile applications as an add-on feature of procurement and AP. Instead, you should consider your procure-to-pay solution’s mobile offering when you’re choosing the system. Because the PurchaseControl app is available regardless of which device you’re using because it relies on internet browsers only, there is no additional installation or training time. You don’t have to worry about the types of devices your team uses and there’s nothing to download, so there’s no additional strain on your organization’s information technology department.

Once you’re set up with PurchaseControl, you can automatically start using the app on your mobile device so you can handle your procure-to-pay tasks on the go.

PurchaseControl’s mobile app access can improve productivity in your company.

Find Out How

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