From Spreadsheets to Strategy: Why SMBs Are Moving Beyond Legacy Procurement

Many small and midsize businesses still manage procurement the same way they did a decade ago—through email threads, spreadsheets, and verbal approvals. It might feel familiar, but this patchwork approach creates real risks. And in today’s market, the margin for error is smaller than ever.

Supply chains are more unpredictable. Vendor pricing changes rapidly. And finance teams are under pressure to do more with less. Procurement can no longer be a reactive, manual function. It needs to be a strategic lever for control, visibility, and efficiency.

Let’s take a look at why legacy procurement is falling short and what a modern approach looks like for SMBs ready to scale smarter.

The Problem with Legacy Procurement

No Real-Time Spend Visibility
If your team doesn't know what’s been spent until the credit card statement comes in, it’s already too late. Without timely insights, budget overruns are hard to prevent and nearly impossible to correct quickly.

Decentralized Vendor Management
Different departments using different vendors? No contracts, no standard pricing, no performance tracking? That lack of central control makes it nearly impossible to negotiate volume discounts—or even track who’s ordering what.

High Operational Overhead
Manual data entry, reconciling paper POs, and matching invoices by hand eats into your team’s time. These repetitive tasks slow down operations and increase the risk of mistakes.

Risk Exposure
Without built-in controls, it’s easy for purchases to fall outside policy. Whether it’s non-compliant vendor use or missing documentation, you’re vulnerable to audit issues, payment errors, and unnecessary costs.

Slow Approvals
Email chains and vague processes cause delays. Staff waste time waiting for green lights on critical purchases, and approvers don’t have the visibility they need to make fast decisions.

What SMBs Really Need

Procurement doesn’t have to be complex—it just needs to be smarter. Growing businesses need a structure that supports scale without slowing anyone down.

Control without Complexity
Approval workflows, catalog restrictions, and spend limits shouldn’t require a full IT build-out. These controls should be baked into the system and easy to adjust as your business grows.

Speed without Risk
Employees should be able to request what they need in minutes—not wait days for approvals or guidance. At the same time, guardrails should ensure the request aligns with budgets and vendor policies.

Visibility without Spreadsheets
Finance teams need to see what's been ordered, what’s been approved, and what’s already spent—all in real time. Dashboards and exportable reports remove the guesswork and support better planning.

How PREMIKATI Marketplace Solves It

Built on SAP Ariba Buying and tailored specifically for SMBs, PREMIKATI Marketplace provides the tools growing businesses need, without the need for custom integrations or internal IT resources. Most teams are up and running in days, not months.

Here’s what the platform includes right out of the box:

• Guided buying from approved vendors
• Role-based catalog access by department or function
• Built-in 3-way match between PO, invoice, and receipt
• Automated audit trails for every transaction
• Vendor consolidation and performance tracking
• Real-time spend dashboards broken down by user, category, and department

Legacy procurement might feel comfortable, but it costs more than you think in time, in lost savings, and in missed opportunities. The longer you wait to modernize, the more manual effort you’re investing in a process that isn’t built for scale.

PREMIKATI Marketplace gives SMBs a better way to manage spend, fast to deploy, easy to use, and designed to grow with you. It’s the strategic tool that helps your team stop chasing orders and start driving value.

Book a meeting with our team here.