You know that one pair of pants that’s been sitting in your closet for, like, two decades? That you maybe wore one time on a Thanksgiving back in 2007, but they were a little itchy and a little snug and the folds fell in all the wrong places giving you that skinny-fat, oompa-loompa-ish appeal? But they’re cute, right? And one day you’re going to fit into them just right, right?
Those are your could-have-been pants. The intention is that they keep you hopeful, help you look toward a better future where you embody the person who wears those pants—whether that means you have the body, the confidence, or just someplace to go to wear ‘em(Thanks, Covid.). That’s an admirable intention.
But the reality is that they make you feel like sh*t. You shove them to the back of the closet in disgust, wistfully thinking of all the things that could have been, if only this, if only that, blah, blah, blah, pity party, Ben & Jerry’s, world’s smallest violin, blah.
The reality is that those pants that looked super good on the hanger and that you got a Great Deal™ on during that super sale—they were never right for you, and they’re holding you back. Just like everybody has (or, at least, has had) those could-have-been pants somewhere in their closet, so does every business have a little money gremlin screeching taunts about, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if you could have hired that new salesperson? Stash back a little savings? Upgrade to that swag new Keurig in the break room?” That’s your could-have-been gremlin, and it’s eating your business alive.
Don’t Feed The Gremlins
Gremlins, tiny little agents of chaos that like to dismantle good things at their source. They like to feed on things like lost receipts, manual processes, paper, lost time… all the subtle but pervasive inefficiencies in business that we’ve grown to overlook. But while we keep daydreaming about better business days, the could-have-been gremlin grows and grows. We build next-steps on top of shaky foundations, compound ineffective processes on top of ineffective processes, and, eventually, it all starts spiraling out of control. If left unchecked, your could-have-been gremlin will be dancing in the ashes of your hopes and dreams while you slap up a going-out-of-business sign and start sadly scribbling your way through layoff paperwork.
But maybe it hasn’t gotten quite that extreme yet. Maybe your gremlin is just a wee little guy snooping around for something to sink his teeth into. Maybe you can still save your business from a fiery death if you can learn these simple lessons:
- It doesn’t matter how cheap something is if it’s not the right thing.
- It doesn’t matter how great something sounds if it’s not what you need.
- And daydreams only happen for real, for real as a product of your continued, repeated actions. It’s a series of right choices—saying yes to the right things, and no to the wrong things—that take dreams from haunting hopes to full-on reality.
To go back on any of these lessons is more expensive than many people realize, because they’re fractal. They spiral. In life and in business.
If you want to succeed in business, you have to buy the right things at the right price, not the wrong things at a low price. And you have to think about the value of your time (and your employees’ time.) Time is the only currency you can only spend once. Dollars just breed like wild rabbits the more of them you have—there’s no shortage. So, when it comes to procurement, you should have an option that…
- Saves you time.
- Saves you money.
- Both
- Potato
If you answered C, congratulations! You’re on the success wagon already. So what does that look like in the ‘20s? First off, it means ditch the 90s tech. No fax machines. Fax machine bad. Give the fax machine to some Insta-famous vaporwave artist so they can repurpose into something cooler, because it is not serving you in your business. In fact, all the paper processes have got to go. Paper checks. Paper invoices. Get them out of here. Forget about them. They’re dead to you now. (Just like all those trees, ba-dum-cha!)
Digitization = good. Flex those techie muscles and get in on this automation thing, all the cool businesses are doing it. Things you can automate include:
- Expense reconciliation
- Receipt capture
- Supplier indexing
- Asking for signatures on contracts (P.S. e-signing is love. You def need that.)
- Spend forecasting by department or category
- Expense categorization
If you’re shopping on the Premikati Marketplace, you can set parameters for your suppliers. Got an eco-friendly hipster kind of gig going on? Shop local, no problem. Diversity filtering? Yes, ma’am, #shepreneur #girlboss. (By the way, we’re women-owned, too.) Do you need your specific suppliers that you already have but all the perks of Premikati? We’ll onboard ‘em, hakuna matata.
And it’s super easy to do all your procurement shopping on Premikati Marketplace too, because it’s setup with the same sort of intuitive interface that’s used by Amazon and other online retailers. We even do that virtual cards thing so you get full spend visibility, fraud security, risk reduction, and hella cash back because you can give literally everyone a spend-limited card because you have literally unlimited physical and virtual cards thanks to our partner, Ramp.
And we’ve got pricing plans to fit any budget, so you’re going to get the right thing at the right price, no surprises.
Kick the could-have-beens to the curb and take action on your dreams. Want a differently-shaped body? Diet and exercise. Want to boost your confidence? Join Toastmasters. Get a life coach. Want to go somewhere nice? Google that nonsense, make a plan, grab your mask (Thanks again, Covid), and take your happy behind on to the niceness. You want extra cashflow in your business, a boatload of extra time, and definitely internet cool points? Use Premikati for your procurement.
It’s not the outdated processes, it’s not the save a few bucks here or there one-off software solution, and it’s sure as hell not your could-have-been pants that are going to get you to your dreams. It’s you, and your choices, and you deserve better.
So here’s the plan:
- Out with the old, in with the new, breathe a sigh of relief. Get rid of the pants. Get rid of those kitchen gadgets that don’t work right while you’re at it. And get rid of your analog processes, outdated procurement software, and your business gremlins.
With Premikati, you can order what you want, where, when, and how you want it. No IT required. No commitment. And seamless scaling that grows with you (unlike a certain pair of pants). Ready to start with your one-stop procurement solution? We can have you going within hours. Reach out to us today.
