How procurement managers are making their lives easier with VenueNow

As a procurement manager, you are more than an operational guide. The procurement department is an integral part of a company’s structure. It’s your job to maximise value, minimise risk and establish procedure. Business operations rely on you for cost savings, vendor management, process improvement and compliance.

When it comes to event procurement management and meeting management, procurement managers' responsibilities become even more involved, complex and time-consuming. And in this tight economic climate, having a strategic meeting management and venue procurement process has never been more important for controlling your company’s spend and eliminating waste.

Organizations across all industries depend on the expertise of procurement management in seeking out and managing external supplier relationships to ensure these needed items are acquired at the best possible cost.

With this, the key areas to look for when comparing procurement management systems include:

Maximise value

Efficiency improves throughout the entire procurement management process: qualifying suppliers, speeding up negotiations, contracting, and monitoring purchasing activities. Having a systematic approach towards event procurement and meeting management is important. After all, it is through this streamlined approach that you’re able to optimise the process, tightly manage spend and get the most leverage out of venues, making the most out of the venue's goods and services. But if your procurement procedure currently consists of relying on your third-party travel management firm, or returning to those venues with whom you have a pre-existing relationship, you could be limiting yourself. Contract management is essential in today’s business environment.

Travel management firms may be experts when it comes to managing individual travellers and finding the best rates possible for flights and rooms. But when it comes to meetings and events, their interests lie in solidifying their relationships with existing hotel partners. That means limited choice for your team. Unlike an event booking platform like VenueNow which has thousands of venue partners across the country, travel management firms are likely to offer you Hotel 1, 2 or 3 for your event. Perhaps you want a unique, stunning, light-filled affordable venue for your offsite meeting in Sydney? Or a stylish warehouse venue for your networking event in Melbourne? VenueNow can put you in touch with a range of unique, individual venues and allow you to manage the event yourself, or negotiate on your behalf.

The average event takes an individual five hours to plan, negotiate and book. And when you multiply that by the number of meetings and events your company holds per year, it equates to entire business days, saved. Procurement professionals need to be able to source, qualify and negotiate with venues quickly, in order to maximise value. That’s where a procurement platform like VenueNow can help. Leveraging these venue partnerships, VenueNow can, on your behalf, negotiate the best rates possible, and take advantage of exclusive discount deals.

VenueNow also has a rebate program available for our corporate clients. And by choosing VenueNow as your exclusive event booking agent, your company can realise an actual cash benefit by streamlining this process.

So, between the cost savings, the rebate program, and the potential time resource savings, VenueNow can save your company money and time, while simultaneously sourcing the best venue possible for each event. The procurement teams of today need to make sure they’re getting the most out of each meeting or event. And VenueNow makes that easy. With our comprehensive suite of services, from sourcing and booking, to negotiating and managing contracts, your company can rest assured knowing you have the best option available for each individual event.

Minimise risk

The larger the company, the more events, the bigger the events and the greater the risk. Procurement managers may not be responsible for personally booking all events, but it is their job to ensure that when someone does, they do so in a way that is low-risk. VenueNow is free for clients. As in, it doesn’t cost anything. A free-to-use tool, the platform allows clients to enquire directly with venues, or submit a brief to the VenueNow Corporate Business Development team.

The Corporate Business Development and Venue Booking teams are your service agents throughout the entire process. From initial enquiry to the event date, they can negotiate between you and the venue, lock in the best rates, organise last minute additions or amendments, and troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Procurement teams work with you and for you, to ensure your event is seamless and memorable.

The VenueNow team can also help you to fully capture your company’s event spend. On average, a company only tracks approximately 20% of their annual event spend. Too often, procurement managers have to simply estimate the event spend for the financial year. By adopting VenueNow, you can track all events, from meetings to Christmas parties. Want to know which department booked the most events, or what your total spend was for offsite meetings last financial year? VenueNow can deliver fully customised reports.

Managing procurement doesn’t have to be a headache. With VenueNow, streamline the planning process with automated workflows for your team that make booking events easier than ever before.

Establish procedure

Adoption is often one of the biggest challenges procurement managers may face. When introducing a new product or tool to an entire company, it needs to be three things: accessible, easy to use and flexible. Procurement processes are sometimes seen as slow and inefficient. That’s why the VenueNow team works with you to deliver a workflow that is tailored specifically to your company’s needs.

The platform allows users of all levels, from junior staff to executive teams, to access whatever they need quickly and easily.

Every event planner is likely to have their own way of doing things. When presented with a new product, it needs to be obvious that this tool is easy to use, and can be quickly integrated into their role.

For corporate clients, VenueNow creates a personalised, branded microsite that can be accessed on desktops, via an internet shortcut, or even integrated into a company’s intranet. Having a flexible adoption approach means clients will be able to start using the platform quickly and easily. This modern procurement management software is designed to be simple and efficient.

VenueNow also allows for a degree of flexibility in the way individuals interact with the platform. Some event planners within your company may wish to maintain contact with the venue and manage the events themselves. VenueNow can simply send venue recommendations to the client (an incredibly time-consuming task), and allow the client to then communicate with the venue. Or, if the event planner is especially time-poor, VenueNow can send venue recommendations and begin negotiating, all the while keeping the client updated. This flexibility accommodates different planning approaches, resulting in a smoother adoption process. The procurement management systems on VenueNow are designed to be flexible and easy to use so that every user can find the approach that works best for them.

VenueNow is a simple idea and an easy-to-use platform that provides real value and solutions to its clients. By introducing VenueNow to your administrative and event planning colleagues, you can take the first step towards having a fully integrated, strategic meetings and event management process. The power is given back to your procurement team to focus more on value-adding activities to your company.

Want to start a conversation about how VenueNow can help your business' procurement managers? Head to our VenueNow Business Page to submit a brief or get in touch >>