Procurement

Procurement is a lot more than just purchasing. It involves selecting vendors,

establishing payments terms, strategic vetting, and negotiation as well as the
actual purchasing of supplies.

All of these processes are essential components of what is referred to as

the Procure-To-Pay Cycle.

Source
A streamlined procurement process brings many benefits to business
performance.

Firstly, you want to build strong, trusting relationships with your vendors.
Doing so will eliminate a huge amount of frustrating and costly
misunderstandings arising from poor communication.
Furthermore, strong vendor relationships are much more likely to enable you
to explore potential advantages like year-over-year price reductions, quantity
discounts, and improvements in quality.

Secondly, a well-documented and executed procurement process will enhance

your ability to continuously identify and evaluate opportunities for a more cost -
effective strategy, as well as the ability to foresee potential shortcomings that
risk slowing production and/or will require additional staffing or external
assistance.

In other words, it allows for the monitoring of the procuring process to

determine how actual performance compares with planned activities, and
alerting the relevant departments accordingly to make adjustments.