E-commerce in the Face of COVID-19 Virus: How Digital Solutions Can Help Procurement Professionals

The Corona virus (COVID-19) has severely curtailed businesses in China and Europe and forced people to stay at home. The United States as well as other countries are now facing this situation. We are told to avoid gatherings of 50 people or more, or to just remain at home in some areas.

Even before this virus came upon the scene, technology advances, as well as environmental, economic, and sociological factors, have been driving more people to work from home.

e-commerce is already a significant and comfortable part of our lives with companies such as Amazon and even with supermarkets who can deliver our grocery list contents right to our door in hours.

Today, due to the spread of COVID-19, more and more companies have been urging employees to stay home for their health and safety, with many working from home. How nice, as a bonus, to save on gasoline, car wear-and-tear, added mileage, plus the wasted time driving to and from work, all that traffic and pollution, and no more driving stress!

Well, e-commerce may have been optional for most companies in the past but is now fast becoming a deciding factor for a company’s survival. Employees of forward-thinking companies that embrace e-commerce are surely going to have the advantage. Their employees will be using these new e-commerce tools more while working remotely. Suppliers who have prepared for this opportunity by developing new platforms that aggregate and simplify, will assuredly capture a larger market share than competitors not embracing e-commerce; especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. And I am sure that e-commerce will be a ever-increasing trend well after the virus is subverted.

Working from home and need to stay connected with your purchasing colleagues?

Enter Sourcengine which will help buyers working from home,especially those who cannot access their company’s ERP system, to make good purchasing decisions while working within a single procurement platform with all their colleagues!

How can this be done effectively?

Sourcengine has more than 3,000 sellers (distributors and manufacturer direct) who post their inventory on Sourcengine’s marketplace and enables you with access to over 530M components in one place!

One can map out their organization’s key stakeholders within Sourcengine’s e-procurement tools behind the log-in; procurement will be able to communicate and shop while being in control of every step in their buying cycle. Employee buying limits can be set as well. There can be pre-negotiated markup too.

The live pricing and availability data empowers buyers to shop for millions of components, identify alternates, download up-to-date datasheets and view parametric & compliance data, all within one platform.

Global pricing can also be compared as well as lead times on these millions of components with real-time data. Buyers will see a true global market snapshot and buy from the 3,000+ authorized, factory-direct, and traceable component suppliers in a single, trusted transaction where all parts come with a three-year warranty.

Buyers can quote up to 2,000 MPNs in less than a minute with real-time data feeds! We offer bonded inventory to keep production lines moving, scheduled deliveries up to 12 months out, and users only get invoiced for what is shipped.

How can my procurement team take advantage of Sourcengine’s e-procurement tools and how does it work?

1. Sign up for an account and ask your colleagues to do the same

• ·       You can do so by clicking on the “Sign-up”button from our home page
•         Complete our quick 3-step sign up process
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2. Log-in to Sourcengine and navigate to the e-procurement dashboard

•         Once you are logged in, click on the “Users” tab in the navigation menu
•         From there, you will be able to add new users, modify the existing approval limits OR create various roles specific to your organization.
  
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As a buyer, I am having issues with sourcing since people are out of office or out of stock due to COVID-19. How can you help me receive my products on time if I place an order through Sourcengine?

Once you place your order with Sourcengine, you do not have to worry about the quality and the logistics process. This is the feature our customers love! We take the responsibility of sourcing all your products through our global procurement and logistics team. We have warehouses on 4 different continents. After you checkout, our procurement team will receive a notification and immediately start doing the work for you; accessing the global inventory levels across our 3,000+ vendors/sellers. All of our vendors are pre-vetted, and your parts will “hit your dock” on time, with a 3-year warranty. It’s that simple. We take on the hard logistics work and let you shop with confidence.

To learn more about our quality, procurement and logistics process, please click here.

Companies can take comfort in the fact that doing business from home will also be a secure process. We all have Wi-Fi routers at home and if we have a WPA or WPA2 password, we are secure. Good/updated anti-virus protection in your home computer is essential and many of these programs have Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) within their software.

Give Sourcengine a try.

We wish you all a safe and healthy time in getting through this difficult virus as it spreads, but take heart, this too shall pass if we all observe the things that make sense. Like proper washing of hands and avoiding large gatherings as well as adhering to what the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and your local area authorities recommend. Stay well my friends, and hope Sourcengine can help you in making good purchasing decisions.