Food procurement
Do you work with large food procurement contracts? Then you know how challenging it can be to ensure that thousands of items contain the right requirements and specifications - not to mention pricing. There is a better way. With a smart, digital solution, you can gather everything about your procurement process in one place, set clear goals, and automate the bid evaluation.
The benefits of digital food procurement:
Save time
Automate processes and free up time from manual work.
Achieve your goals
Automatically customise positions based on goals and quality requirements.
Communicate smoothly
Respond to supplier questions and ensure full transparency.
Evaluate with ease
Automatically compare bids and make secure, data-driven decisions - faster.
Replace manual work with digital precision
Preparing the documentation for a public food procurement process has traditionally been an extremely time-consuming task. Needs and requirements must be collected from various people and functions within the organisation. Each item must be checked and verified against budget and goals. Excel files are sent back and forth, risking multiple versions being created. The result? A slow process lacking central oversight and control.
With a digitised and automated process, you can instead:
- Generate procurement documentation automatically based on your organisation’s purchasing statistics.
- Collaborate to update and validate the documentation in a shared, user-friendly solution.
- Customise items and requirements according to your goals with a simple click.
Customise food procurement to meet requirements and goals
There are often many dimensions to consider in a food procurement process. Of course, budget is key – but so are quality requirements and the organisation’s stated goals, such as the share of organic products, locally sourced items, or CO2 equivalents per portion. In a manual procurement process, keeping track of all these parameters is difficult – if not nearly impossible – especially when the tender includes thousands of line items. This is where a digital solution helps you bring order to the chaos.
A digital procurement solution helps you to:
- Adjust line items automatically based on your organisation’s goals and quality requirements
- Gain an overview of how the overall tender aligns with your climate and budget targets
- Understand how your requirements and goals affect competition – and therefore pricing – for specific items
Communicate seamlessly with suppliers
No matter how much time you’ve spent preparing a well-structured procurement document, questions from suppliers, wholesalers, and producers will inevitably arise. Do you accept 49% berries in the jam even though the requirement states 50%? Is it acceptable to offer a larger package at a lower price per kilo? What exactly do you mean by “locally sourced ingredients”?
Answering these questions not only takes time and resources – you also need to ensure that all suppliers receive the same information to keep the procurement process fair and transparent. That’s where a digital supplier communication portal becomes invaluable.
With a digital portal, you can:
- Communicate with suppliers in a user-friendly interface where the latest version of the procurement document is always available.
- Ensure full transparency – all suppliers can view all questions and published answers.
- Automatically send clarification questions to bidders, who respond directly in the portal.
- Simulate how an adjusted requirement would impact availability and competition before making a final decision.
Ensure the quality and consistency of bid evaluations
Who won? Reviewing, evaluating, and comparing bids that include thousands of line items is incredibly time-consuming. It’s also critically important. A poorly grounded decision can mean missing key sustainability targets or incurring unnecessarily high costs. There’s simply no room for error. With a digital solution, you can rest assured that decisions are based on data – never on gut feeling.
A digital procurement solution helps you to:
- Automatically compare all bids against your requirements and goals at the line-item level
- Generate a clear, consolidated overview of all bids based on your chosen evaluation method
- Make smart, data-driven decisions that deliver better long-term outcomes
“The system is easy to work in, and much of the work is pre-prepared, which provides strong support throughout the procurement process. For example, many requirements and attributes are predefined, allowing me to quickly add the relevant ones with just a click.” – Lena Bergström, Head of Food Services, Habo Municipality, Sweden.