The significance of the field of procurement and purchasing within companies has steadily grown in times of cost optimization. For this reason, the processes in this field have been grouped into a central division in order to achieve cost savings. In addition, processes should be better coordinated and the quality standard for related products and services should be increased. However, the pressure of global competition with regard to costs, time and quality is increasing day by day.

One approach is the reduction of costs in the field of effective material management. Minimization of storage costs and optimization of the procurement process within the framework of purchasing portals are of primary importance. Supply chain management solutions have already been able to secure improvements and contribute to cost optimization in companies. However, future potential lies in the provision of comprehensive information in relation to products and services and mapping of the entire supply chain across system limits and company limits. Comprehensive information from various data sources form the basis of substantiated decision-making in purchasing. This must be available at the right time and in the right context in a direct and rapid way. In addition, solutions for optimization of the procurement process are necessary with special regard to purchasing processes which do not relate merely to the supply of standard products. Supply of products which require explanation or individually tailored products can only be managed with difficulty with today's classical supply chain portals.

COI solution approaches support both optimization of existing supply chain management systems through archiving and long-term secure administration of corresponding data and documents, improvement of construction of optimized procurement processes for special parts and special manufacturing in the field of procurement. COI-BusinessFlow offers the possibility of integration of various departments and/or companies into a single process by means of platform neutrality, multi-layer architecture and far-reaching support of modern interfaces. Within the framework of this process you are able to administrate both existing documents such as specification documentation and documents which emerge in the course of the purchasing process.

All of this information is held centrally in a single information layer and made available according to your current requirements. Furthermore the content is archived on a secure and long-term basis and traceability of the entire purchasing process including the current decision-making environment is ensured.