What is Purchasing?
Purchasing comes from the verb purchase which means to acquire (something) by paying for it, in other words, to buy.
While selling is a transactional act, where the seller awaits for the counterpart to acquire the goods or service, purchasing is a complex operation where the buyer needs to elaborate a strategy, evaluate several offers, manage the future implementation and so on.
Purchasing is far more complex than Selling.
There are several steps to the Purchasing process:
1- Define the need and specifications
2- Sourcing (finding potential suppliers)
3- Send Request for Proposals or Quotations
4- Negotiation
5- Contract Definition
People responsible must take the best decision by combining the lowest cost and the best quality.
It strikes me that until today a lot of companies do not acknowledge the complexity of this function, which they usually mix up with Procurement. At Ravacan, we help people who work in Purchasing departments to reduce the time they spend on repetitive and non-value-added tasks to free time for strategic ones. No more unmanageable spreadsheets, no more emails, connect collaborate directly with your suppliers on Ravacan.