iStock-1417858327-1

Procurement is one of an organization's most significant cost centers, yet support for procurement practices often falls behind that for other major functions. Companies that wait to implement an automated procurement process will likely suffer from overspending and lack transparency. Inefficient order processing and accounting systems also cause frustration for accounts payable staff trying to keep up with manual procurement strategies. 

Implementing a procurement solution before it causes such problems is a better option. Not only can this ease the burden on your stakeholders, but it can also:

  1. Power strategic sourcing and improve supplier relationships
  2. Surface cost savings and increase profitability
  3. Stabilize your supply chain and inventory management
  4. Automate cumbersome contract management processes
  5. Help procurement teams introduce business process improvements

If you’re feeling the friction of inefficient manual processes, it’s time to look at procurement management software. To help you make the right selection, we curated a list of the best procurement solutions for growing organizations. These procurement tools consistently rate four stars or above according to trusted software marketplace G2.

Further reading: Learn more about what procurement is and why procurement is important to your business.

What is procurement software?

Procurement software is technology that automates and streamlines the entire procurement process. The cloud-based software helps companies manage the purchasing process from initial request to final invoice, ensuring efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 

A procurement platform can help a business perform a range of functionality, including:

  • Supply chain management 
  • Purchase order creation
  • Contract management
  • Spend analysis 

Integrating intelligent procurement software helps companies achieve greater visibility into spending. It can also enhance supplier relationships and improve overall procurement performance. Procurement software uses automation to eliminate many of the burdens of manual procurement management.

procurement tech guide
Ebook

Choose the Right Procurement Technology With This Decision Matrix

Find 15 must-ask questions to narrow down your software search and make your research process MUCH easier.

Download the guide

What can procurement software do for your business?

Procurement software removes many of the downsides of manual procurement management. It sets a strong foundation for good practices, increases visibility without added work, and automates tedious tasks.

The following top features make procurement software a smart investment: 

Process optimization: Software helps businesses streamline purchasing, making it faster and more efficient. Centralizing purchasing lets buyers get items quickly and allows managers to approve purchase orders while controlling budgets.

Error reduction: Manual procurement practices introduce discrepancies through human error and data silos. Procurement software reduces mistakes by automating the data input process. Automation ensures accuracy and consistency across procurement activities while enhancing overall operational efficiency.

More visibility: Software-based procurement solutions centralize information, enabling real-time tracking of transactions and expenditures. Improved transparency uncovers spending trends, identifies opportunities for improvement, and facilitates informed decision-making. Centralized dashboards transform vast amounts of data into accessible, actionable insights.

Better business decisions: Procurement software provides in-depth analyses for understanding spending patterns and inefficiencies. Improved data access enables companies to strategically allocate resources, negotiate better deals, and optimize procurement processes for enhanced financial health and operational success.

Cost savings: Procurement platforms give businesses access to the most cost-effective suppliers. Their analytics capabilities also highlight areas for cost reduction, ensuring sustained financial efficiency.

9 Best procurement software solutions

With many options available in the procurement software space, the best choice for an organization provides the right mix of features without adding extra complexity to processes. 

The best procurement software options available today include: 

1. Order.co

This first-of-its-kind spend management platform helps finance and procurement teams manage fulfillment for every purchase. It lets users across departments and locations order the goods they need from a curated catalog of approved vendors. Order.co is regarded as a solid mid-market tool, specifically helpful to organizations buying for many departments or distributed locations. Order.co improves procure-to-pay technology with full order management, invoice processing, integrated payments, and data reporting functionality. 

Order.co’s G2-verified reviews are enthusiastic about the ease of ordering through the platform. Features such as dynamic search, past order favorites, and user-based item searches make it easy to get the items you need—whether placing a first-time order or replenishing your most-requested items. 

Pros 

Ease of use is consistently mentioned as one of Order.co's standout features. Reviewers enjoy having all their preferred vendors in a curated marketplace for fast and easy purchasing. They also mention that the platform's intuitive UI makes it easy for new users to adopt and employ the product. 

Quality of customer service also earns consistent praise. Reports show the customer support team is highly responsive to questions and support inquiries, such as requests for custom product additions or help solving shipping issues.

Cons

While the UI is user-friendly and stable, some customers are eager for more robust filtering functionality when searching for products.

2. Planergy

Planergy is a SaaS-based procurement and spend management system that gives businesses more control over financial operations. The Planergy platform helps organizations administer their procure-to-pay cycle and manage inventory effectively. 

Reviewers find Planergy's extensive integration options to be particularly useful. The platform offers easy solutions for linking between many top accounting and ERP solutions, including Quickbooks, Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics. It also scores high for its supplier information and supplier management functionalities. 

Pros

Planergy consistently garners ratings of four or above in all general categories. It is easy to set up and use, and multiple reviewers noted the responsiveness of the customer support staff. 

Cons

Some users found issues with the platform's flexibility regarding search features, meaning errors like typos or syntactical changes may result in zero returned search hits. Other users report an inability to retain search parameters when paging back from a completed search result. 

3. Procurify

Procurify streamlines purchasing processes and workflows, helping organizations speed up the approval process and remove budgetary bottlenecks. With its simple procurement system, Procurify lets buyers submit purchase requests through a dynamic interface. It helps keep user spending on track through real-time, customizable budgets.

Procurify offers distinctive features, such as a virtual and physical spending card system that lets organizations issue cards to every employee, apply balances to those cards for corporate spending, and maintain full visibility into spend practices by user. The card also returns between 1% and 3% cashback for physical or virtual card purchases. 

Pros 

Procurify users point to ease of use and flexible and speedy approval workflows as this platform's major selling points. It's best for mid-market organizations whose needs are beginning to outpace less robust vendor management solutions. 

Cons

Users report that some of the platform’s accounting and budgeting features could be improved. In addition, catalog functionality is limited to simple ordering and does not provide information regarding order duplication or analytics like trend/usage reporting. 

4. Precoro

Precoro is an eprocurement software tool that simplifies procurement processes and user experience. While other systems rely heavily on integrations, Precoro promises out-of-the-box functionality, easy onboarding with short implementation times, and plenty of robust features.

Pros

Precoro focuses on delivering complete freedom from paper-based and manual processes to help companies save time and money. This flexibility makes Precoro a solid mid-market solution that serves a variety of business needs. Users enjoy the Precoro platform for its accessibility and financial insights, giving it high ratings on visibility, spend management, and purchasing automation functionality

Cons

Some reviewers pointed out limitations regarding flexibility improvements for building purchase orders. While Precoro offers integrations, some have experienced issues implementing them successfully. 

5. Coupa 

The Coupa procurement module is one component of the Coupa Business Spend Management (BSM) suite of tools and services. This large procurement tool, serving the healthcare, retail, and education space, has a host of use cases, including procurement of goods and services and administration of contingent worker spending. 

The platform offers guided buying, and some of its other top features pertain to purchasing functionality, spend visibility, and procurement sourcing. It is useful for organizations seeking an enterprise-class, all-in-one solution with a modular approach.

Pros

The Coupa procurement platform receives high marks for fast processing time and easy generation of POs and purchase requisitions. It offers enterprise-level features such as risk management, supply chain optimization, and travel and expense management. 

Cons

Some users say the UI has a steep learning curve. There are also comments regarding reliability issues and stiff reporting functionality that require workarounds. 

6. Airbase

Airbase is a mid-market spend management system that offers many useful features for larger organizations. The platform provides budgeting, expense tracking, spend analysis, and visibility tools. It also has sophisticated features for workflow automation and guided procurement (similar to Order.co) that allow administrators to control office supply procurement and purchasing of equipment and other essentials. 

Pros

Airbase offers next-generation features such as artificial intelligence assistance. It can support multi-location and multi-department ordering through an eprocurement solution, making it easy for organizations of up to 5,000 employees to order and track supplies. The system also supports procurement cards for on-the-go buying of non-physical items like software licenses. 

Cons

Some system features are reportedly clunky, with users mentioning that approval workflows for purchase orders and contract payments are difficult to use. It doesn't allow bulk uploads of expense documentation, and uploads don’t always pull over when downloaded, requiring manual fixes. 

procurement tech guide
Ebook

Choose the Right Procurement Technology With This Decision Matrix

Find 15 must-ask questions to narrow down your software search and make your research process MUCH easier.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

7. Spendwise

Spendwise is an easy-to-use spend management tool for small businesses that allows finance teams to route, approve, and report on spending. The cloud-based platform offers a role-based purchasing architecture for easy purchase order creation and approval. Its receiving features help accounting teams track orders for quicker reconciliation, and Spendwise also has budgeting and reporting features to maintain spend visibility. 

Pros

Spendwise's user-friendly interface makes it simple to produce new POs and research prior orders. It offers strong basic integrations, including Quickbooks, and provides 25 ready-to-use reports covering many basic business and stakeholder needs. 

Cons

Some of Spendwise's processes might need improvement as the company scales. For instance, overlap in the PO features creates the possibility of using the same PO number twice when two stakeholders access it. Also, reporting customization options would make it easier to see necessary information. Additionally, some users note it’s difficult to change notes or figures within the system.

8. Tipalti

Tipalti is a well-featured tool for mid-market companies that streamlines the procurement process. It simplifies procurement and expense management for real-time visibility into spending, and its mass payment features are useful for companies relying heavily on contractors and freelancers. Tipalti’s procurement operations tools help finance teams reduce maverick spend and maintain compliance even across a large number of vendors. 

Pros

The platform offers a clean, easy-to-understand interface. It simplifies routine tasks, such as adding payees, approving invoices, processing basic payments, and recording invoices. It also has robust integration options to keep information consistent between systems. 

Cons

Many users report issues with payment features, such as a lack of a quick settlement option. Payment effectiveness also varies depending on the currency, with some countries presenting more issues. The expense reporting features have similar shortfalls, requiring some manual entry in the absence of an uploader tool. 

9. SAP Ariba

Enterprise-level procurement platform SAP Ariba is a component of the SAP ERP suite of tools. It offers robust features for enterprises needing a unified solution to control budgets and increase organizational visibility. Its guided procurement model allows stakeholders to request and track supply orders. 

Pros

The platform is customizable for large organizations needing specialized workflows administered by teams with knowledge of SAP Ariba. It allows integrations with other top tools to unify data and is a strong option for organizations looking for an enterprise-level solution. 

Cons

The platform doesn’t offer the same easy-to-understand interface as other options. The solution is best for SAP-aware teams since customer service isn’t always available to respond to user questions. 

Choosing the best procurement software for your needs

While there are many choices on the market, Order.co consistently gives users the best combination of flexibility, visibility, automation, and cost savings. It’s a great option for small businesses, mid-market companies, and even enterprises. The end-to-end procurement and AP automation platform makes it easy to empower teams with independent guided purchasing, quick reorders, automatic GL coding, and full payment and reporting automation. 

If you’re ready to take the next step with a highly rated procurement platform, begin your evaluation process with a live demo of the Order.co platform today. 

Get started

Schedule a demo to see how Order can simplify buying for your business.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related articles

See all posts
Beat Sourcing Uncertainty with Order.co’s Tariff AI Tools

Order.co’s Tariff AI: The Key to Overcoming Procurement Challenges

2025’s tariff changes are projected to increase costs and disrupt supply chains. Learn how Order.co’s tariff AI tools can bolster your sourcing strategy.
5 min read
business man reviewing options between p-card and corporate cards

How to Choose a P-Card vs. Corporate Card for Your Business

Trying to decide on a p-card vs. a corporate card for your business? Use this quick comparison to learn their key differences and choose the best option.
8 min read
woman reviewing report findings

ChatP2P: How Back-Office Teams Are Using (or Wrestling With) AI

AI is everywhere right now – but how are back-office teams actually using it? Get exclusive survey insights on AI for procurement and its use cases.
5 min read