Optimizing the Procurement Process: From Online Store Chaos to a Centralized Ordering Platform

Twenty suppliers, twenty online stores, twenty logins, and at the end of the month, a stack of invoices that no one can match to an order. This is what the procurement process looks like in many medium-sized companies. This guide shows where time is being wasted, what solutions are available, and how you can consolidate your orders into a single process in five steps—without giving up a single supplier.

Optimizing a procurement process means routing all orders through a single channel. Instead of placing orders individually through multiple supplier online stores, integrate your existing suppliers—along with their catalogs and terms—into a procurement platform. There, you’ll have a single shopping cart, fixed approval rules, and an interface to accounting.

The most important points at a glance:

• The problem isn’t the suppliers—it’s the multitude of ordering channels. Each online store requires its own login, its own customer account, its own invoice, and offers no consolidated overview.
• The effort involved is measurable: According to HTWK Leipzig, placing an order at the reference company takes 38 minutes. Only 15% of companies have fully digitized, integrated processes.
• A procurement platform consolidates existing suppliers via catalogs or OCI punchout. Framework agreements and special terms remain in place.
• Approval rules and budgets run automatically in the background. No one has to send an email for every order.
• The path to achieving this involves five steps: conducting an inventory, prioritizing suppliers, onboarding them, defining rules, and integrating with ERP and key performance indicators.

At simple system, Andy Freund works with procurement teams at midsize companies that are exactly at this stage. In this article, you’ll learn how to identify an overburdened ordering process, how the seven phases of the procurement process are interconnected, and which solution approach fits your situation.

What does it mean to optimize the procurement process?

Optimizing the procurement process means designing every step—from identifying a need to making payment—so that it takes less time, is transparent, and runs smoothly without any gaps in the workflow. In indirect procurement, the greatest leverage rarely lies in the item price, but rather in the number of ordering channels and manual steps involved.

Definition: Optimizing the procurement process refers to the analysis, simplification, and digitization of all steps from the request for procurement to payment, with the goal of reducing lead time, process costs, and errors in procurement.

In indirect procurement—such as office supplies, tools, occupational safety equipment, IT accessories, or replacement parts—individual order amounts are small and the number of orders is high. That is precisely why every minute saved per transaction is worthwhile here. Our article on procurement management describes how the procurement function is structured overall.

How to Tell If Your Ordering Process Is Reaching Its Limits

An ordering process is overburdened when the procurement team spends more time following up, sorting, and correcting errors than dealing with suppliers and terms and conditions. These symptoms almost always appear first:

• Multiple ordering channels: Employees place orders directly through supplier online stores, via email, by phone, or using their personal credit cards.
• No holistic view: No one can say at a glance what was ordered from which supplier this month.
• Approval via email: Orders sit in managers’ inboxes, and follow-up questions are handled via chat and verbal requests.
• Invoices without order references: The accounting department has to search for the corresponding transaction and cost center for each invoice.
• Excel as a management tool: Order lists and supplier overviews are maintained manually.

If three of these points apply, the problem lies not with individual people but with the structure. According to the study “Managing Indirect Procurement” by HTWK Leipzig, around 40% of companies in indirect procurement still use tools like Excel, which are not designed for this task.

Many supplier web stores, no overview: Why chaos ensues

Chaos arises because each supplier’s online store works well on its own, but none of them are connected to the others. Twenty online stores mean twenty logins, twenty customer accounts, twenty invoice formats, and twenty places where order history is stored.

For the individual buyer, this is convenient. For procurement and accounting, it’s like flying blind. No approvals are required, no budgets are checked, and terms from the master agreement only apply if someone places an order using the correct account.

Key Fact: According to HTWK Leipzig (Prof. Dr. Holger Müller, 2025), a reference company with 2,500 orders, 3,000 goods receipts, and 3,000 incoming invoices per year spends approximately 5,600 hours on indirect materials, at an average of 38 minutes per order.

The solution, therefore, is not to eliminate suppliers. The solution is to replace the many ordering channels with a single one through which all suppliers remain accessible. The following comparison shows exactly what changes as a result.

An overview of the 7 phases of the procurement process

The operational procurement process in indirect purchasing consists of seven phases that are interconnected as part of the purchase-to-pay process: from identifying needs to payment. Each phase has a typical bottleneck and a digital lever.

The biggest time drain usually occurs in Phase 4. Our guide to the approval workflow in purchasing. The article on Procure-to-Pay provides a more in-depth look at the relationship between Phases 5 through 7 .

Which solutions bring together multiple suppliers in one place?

There are essentially four approaches to consolidating orders from multiple suppliers. They differ primarily in whether you retain your existing suppliers and in the amount of implementation effort required.

For the scenario “many supplier web stores, no overview,” the key question is: Do you want to switch suppliers or just simplify the process of ordering from them? If you’ve negotiated good terms with your regular suppliers, you don’t need a new vendor—you need shared access to the ones you already have. You can find an overview of specific providers in our e-procurement software comparison.

Tip: Ask every procurement platform provider whether your ten most important suppliers are already integrated and who will handle the integration of new suppliers. This answer determines the implementation effort more than any list of features.

5 Steps to a Streamlined Ordering Process

A consolidated ordering process is established in five steps: assessment, supplier prioritization, integration, rules, and connection to the ERP. For the first steps, you don’t need an IT project—just an afternoon with your invoices from the past twelve months.

1. Record ordering channels and suppliers

List all suppliers from whom you placed orders in the past year, and note the ordering method for each one: online store, email, phone, credit card. The accounts payable list from your accounting department is the quickest place to start. The result is an honest figure: that’s how many different channels currently lead into your company.

2. Prioritize Suppliers by Volume and Frequency

Sort the list by order frequency, not just by revenue. A supplier that generates ten small orders every week creates more work than one with a single large annual order. The rarely used suppliers at the bottom of the list are your tail spend. You’ll need a controlled, simple ordering process for them later on—not a separate framework agreement.

3. Connect suppliers to a platform

The most frequent suppliers are connected first, either via a catalog containing your customer prices or via punchout. With the OCI punchout integration, the buyer is redirected from the platform to the supplier’s online store, adds items to the shopping cart, and transfers the cart back to the platform. The online store thus remains in place; only the ordering process becomes centralized.

4. Define approval rules and budgets

Specify the threshold amount, product categories, and cost centers for which approval is required. Orders below these thresholds from approved catalogs are processed immediately. This also prevents maverick buying, because the official route is faster than the workaround.

5. Integrate with ERP and Measure Key Metrics

Connect the platform to your ERP or accounting system so that orders, cost centers, and invoices are imported automatically without manual data entry. Then regularly track a few key metrics:

• Percentage of orders placed via the platform: shows whether the new process is being adopted.
• Lead time from request to order: indicates whether approvals are causing delays.
• Invoices without a corresponding purchase order: shows where orders are still being placed outside the system.
• Number of active suppliers: indicates whether consolidation is successful.
• Process costs per order: indicates the economic impact.

Where the economic leverage lies: process costs rather than item prices

In indirect procurement, the costs of the ordering process often exceed the value of the goods ordered. According to surveys, a manually processed order costs around 146 euros, while a digitally processed order costs around 86 euros. The difference of 60 euros applies to every single order, regardless of whether a package of cable ties or a laptop is ordered.

That’s why a discount of just a few percent on the item price yields less benefit for small orders than a streamlined process. Our article on the Processing Costs per Order.

Here’s how simple system streamlines your ordering process

simple system is a neutral procurement platform for indirect purchasing: It consolidates your existing suppliers in one place without acting as a retailer itself. There are no private labels and no proprietary product range that is given preferential display.

• Existing suppliers remain: Framework agreements and negotiated terms are replicated exactly. If a supplier is missing, simple system handles the integration.
• Over 1,000 suppliers are already connected, including major providers of tools, electrical equipment, occupational safety products, and office supplies. The public supplier overview shows a selection of them.
• Custom catalogs: Suppliers set specific prices for your company that remain invisible to other customers.
• One shopping cart, clear rules: Approval workflows, budgets, and roles are integrated.
• Integration with your ERP: via OCI to SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, and other systems—from the shopping cart to the invoice.
• Quick Start: Basic functionality is available in one to two weeks; companies reach full productivity in about 30 days.

The use case below shows how companies with multiple parallel procurement channels can implement this change in practice Centralizing Procurement.

Checklist: Is your procurement process ready for the next step?

• Do you know how many different ways orders are placed in your company today?
• Is there a list of all active suppliers with their order frequency?
• Are your framework terms automatically applied to every order?
• Are approvals handled according to fixed rules rather than via email?
• Does every invoice have a unique link to a purchase order and cost center?
• Can you view your expenses by supplier and cost center without using Excel?
• Do you know your process costs per order?

If you checked fewer than four boxes: Then your greatest leverage isn’t in the next price negotiation, but in the ordering process.

Conclusion: One ordering process instead of twenty

The procurement process in indirect purchasing isn’t accelerated by more control, but by fewer ordering channels. Those who consolidate their existing suppliers on a neutral procurement platform retain their terms and partners, but gain a clear overview, fixed approval rules, and invoices linked to orders. The first step is an honest assessment: How many different ordering channels are currently in use?

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Optimizing the Procurement Process