How a Manufacturing Firm Reduced Procurement Delays by 40% Using Odoo for Purchase, Inventory & Vendor Billing

Client & Project Overview

We had this client based in Pune who is a leading mid sized manufacturing company basically working to produce precision mechanical components majorly for the automotive applications. They were producing these components for the industrial usage as well. Now, with time they saw a huge increase in their client base that made them to increase their production’s scale. But this had a negative effect to their backend systems as they were not able to keep up with this workload. Hence, resulting in impact of normal operation services.

Their procurement team were burdened by a large number of requests for approvals, blind spots in stock availability was making their storekeepers struggle. Also, there was an increasing delay in payments due to the fact that their finance teams were still using paper work leading to vendors being annoyed.

The client leadership had already realized that it was not their staffing problem but a problem related to their system and they needed a solution for the resolution.

So, here’s where we came into the picture and had a mission to delivery – an agile implementation of a scalable resource planning system where we made use of Odoo ERP, a modular and scalable system. So, we took the initiative of using the inbuilt modules like – purchase, inventory, and vendor billing altogether to achieve our goals.

With our expert knowledge and real life experience in ERP implementation this would transform how client manufacturing company handled – sourcing of materials, stock control, and vendor payments without disrupting ongoing operations.

Challenges & Objectives

Even though the client factory had the right resources – man and machines but due to their inefficient and outdated processes for operations were taking them back to square one. Let, me list the main problems within their core operations – 

• They were usually making use of verbal or late email approvals that directly brought delay to their purchase requests. 
• Non real time availability of the stocks levels was leading to halts in their production process due to missing raw materials or consumable on the product floor.  
• Due to disjoined vendor billings the finance team was taking a lot of time to find if there were any mismatches between the purchase orders, the actual goods received and the bills.
• There was duplicated data, workforce was making errors while doing manual entries, no history whatsoever was present due to the fact that they were using excel based tracking for the material procurement.

Let’s be clear the business risks were real as we checked them out and they led directly to losing production hours, poor vendor reputation, involvement of very high indirect costs were, along with no forecasting ability whatsoever.

 

We were provided with clear directives for our implementation to – 

• Enable and provide them with a real time and transparent procedure for material procurement
• Help them to improve planning and accuracy for their inventory
• Make sure to reduce and eliminate any manual billing errors 
• Add an approval system that reliable and works across teams

So, it was made clear to us by the construction factory leadership that they were not looking for an ERP as a kind of patch or something that could resolve the current situation but wanted a long term scalable growth enabler.

Scope of Work

Let me brief you on the scope of work that would engage and provide them with maximum ROI with minimalistic disruption in their on going operations. We sought to make use of three interconnected modules in Odoo. 

Purchase

So, to be more specific about this module it would allow them to –

• Streamline their RFQ to Purchase order process flows
• Apply approvals and workflows to help manage them in their current organization
• Monitor the complete time it would take for their suppliers to deliver goods after an order is placed, from when an order is placed to when it is delivered.

Inventory

This module was super useful in terms of –

• Digitizing their warehouses with real time actual material stock reporting.
• Streamlining the goods received notes which helped them in the complete process that would record and verify receipt of goods from suppliers. 
• Setup up notifications that would basically trigger whenever the quantity of a specific production materials item in their inventory reached a preset threshold value.
• Automatically trigger the replenishment of materials when their stock went under the preset threshold. 

Vendor Billing

This module has allowed the client to have –

• Synchronization between purchase orders, goods receipt notes, and bills.
• With the option of auto flagging of mismatches they can have quicker resolutions to the problems. 
• Have a clear visibility of the bills that are sue and can check the payment timelines for finance teams

The project also included –

• Cleansing and and migrating their master data that includes – vendors, products, and open orders.
• Mapping of their actual approval and fulfillment workflows for their operations.
• Providing training to their procurement, warehouse, and finance teams so as to get a hands on mapped workflows.

Solution Design & Implementation

Our first step was to simplify everything before we automated any of their workflows. We checked into each department’s process and using the best practices then we brought Odoo into the operations.

Purchase Process Redesign

• Created a tiered approval structure based on order value
• Enabled auto-generation of POs for recurring raw materials
• Built vendor-specific catalogs to avoid manual price entry

Inventory Setup

• Set up multi-warehouse structure with live item counts
• Linked GRN to PO lifecycle to reduce paperwork and speed up validations
• Introduced barcode-based check-in/check-out to reduce stock misplacement

Vendor Billing Flow

• Integrated three-way matching (PO, GRN, Invoice) to prevent billing errors
• Setup dashboards for the finance team to track pending bills and disputes
• Integrated the payment release process with real-time accounting entries

Implementation Timeline: 10 Weeks:

• 2 Weeks were given for mapping of business processes
• 4 Weeks were set for configuration along with customizations
• 2 Weeks were for migrating data and then testing
• 2 Weeks were given for user acceptance testing and going live

We checked and tested each module with real live scenarios and provided them with support until teams were fully confident.

Execution Challenges

Kindly note that even after solid planning the implementation came across various execution challenges that we had to overcome on the ground level – 

User Resistance to System Changes

The procurement and workers in the store were a bit hesitant as normally they were just making things work using excel, Whatsapp, and manual approvals.

Using empathy we helped them make the transition. We helped the teams by making them understand the actual pain points and showed them how they using automation could reduce the stress of the workflows.

Inconsistencies in Data

We checked and found variations in the vendor names, item codes were duplicated, and also the price data was missing at some places, these inconsistencies slowed down much of our mapping procedure.

So, we went ahead and created data templates, cleaned the data sets by including various involved teams and validated them in the pilot phase.

Jotting Everything on Paper files

We saw the store team members using hand written goods receive notes and this led to billing detail delays due to paper based confirmations.

So, we added goods receive notes using mobile devices and added barcode scanning that allowed them to directly synchronize the data with their purchase and billing departments.

Results & Impact

The transformation has created real time result outputs within the first quarter after they went live:

Metric	Before Odoo	After Odoo	Impact
PO Approval Time	3–4 days	<1 day	70% faster
Procurement Delays	Frequent	Rare	40% reduction
GRN to Bill Processing	12–15 days	3–4 days	73% faster
Inventory Accuracy	78%	95%+	Improved
Vendor Disputes	8–10/month	<2/month	80% drop

Strategic Wins:

Now the leadership is able to easily move further, so they can –  

• check and have visibility into the vendor performances and procurement cycle in real time. 
• Save hours for procurement team that were lost in coordination.
• Visibility for the finance teams allowing them to track their bills accurately.

Client Feedback & Innovations

“I used to spend 3 hours a day just chasing approvals and following up with finance. Now, I get notifications, I approve POs from my phone, and vendors call to thank us for timely payments. This changed our daily life.”
— Cirus Manoranjan, Procurement Manager, Client Firm

Innovations Introduced:

Let, me brief a bit on the innovations we introduced –  

• For directors and other leadership people we add approval flows through mobile app.
• Based on minimum stock threshold we set up their auto replenishment alerts. 
• With the vendor billing workflow we introduced dispute reduction tracker.

These weren’t out-of-the-box features but we have created for real users.

Key Learnings & Project Team

There were a lot of things we learnt with this implementation for the manufacturing industry, to point some of them, we have –  

• Even implementing a top reliant ERP system it can fail if the user who is using the system has a low confidence, hence adhering and complying to changes is a must.
• Always involve finance early in the implementation process as the rest of departments are interconnect with each other(procurement, inventory, and billing).
• Always provide the end users with real data as test case data is not efficient enough for preparing the end user teams for real life exceptions.

Project Team Composition

Client Side

• Procurement Head
• Stores Supervisor
• Finance Controller

Our Team

• ERP Consultant (Manufacturing Vertical)
• Functional Analyst (Procurement & Inventory)
• Technical Architect
• Change Management Trainer

Finally, if you’re a manufacturer facing issues like slow approvals, messy stock, or billing problems we can assist you. Let’s create your ERP experience focused on outcomes, not merely on features.