2025 Automotive Procurement Playbook: Tools, Tactics & Tech
2025 Automotive Procurement Playbook: Tools, Tactics & Tech
The automotive industry has (pardon the pun) a lot of moving parts. While recent talk focuses on the struggles of automakers, the larger automotive industry—including repair shops, car washes, and retailers—is also feeling the pinch.
In light of these challenges, you’re likely looking for ways to cut costs, avoid delays, and keep supplies on hand without stockpiling or scrambling for last-minute fixes. Fortunately, the right tactics and tools make automotive procurement easier to manage as you ride out bumpy economics.
Read on to learn more about the changes facing the automotive sector and how technology can help you simplify sourcing, boost cash flow, and automate your most repetitive procurement tasks.
Download the free guide: The Procurement Strategy Playbook for Modern Businesses
Understanding the evolving automotive procurement industry
Automotive procurement is becoming more complex every year. Once-reliable supply tactics and vendor relationships are shifting with the latest news and policies. Staying informed helps you respond quickly and avoid getting burned by cost increases.
Service and retail companies are keeping a close eye on these automotive procurement trends:
Tariff-aware procurement: Tariffs have long been a part of automotive procurement, with buyers shifting from global supply lines to nearshoring and onshoring where possible. With 2025’s increased tariff activity, buyers are looking for better ways to counter their effects.
Tariff-aware buying can be as simple as opting for domestic products wherever you can and sourcing supplies from countries with favorable tariff rules when you can’t.
Balancing JIT efficiency with access: Just-in-time (JIT) is a lean procurement strategy that helps you access supplies as needed instead of stockpiling every item. While it’s an efficient way to manage supply levels, it can be risky in the current procurement landscape.
To reduce potential problems, use JIT for easily accessible products to get the best prices, but stock up on mission-critical items to prevent shortages.
Boosting sustainability in the supply chain: Opting for sustainable suppliers can increase resilience and help you avoid disruptions caused by environmental or geopolitical changes. Sustainable sourcing may also help you save money through lower fuel and product costs.
Procurement technology can help you stay ahead of these trends and optimize your automotive procurement strategy to realize more savings. It aids you in sourcing supplies with tariffs in mind, maintaining a steady supply of critical items, and building strong supplier relationships for better outcomes.
The Procurement Strategy Playbook for Modern Businesses
Learn the key pillars of a strong strategy, valuable procurement metrics to track, and initiatives you can start implementing today.
5 common challenges in automotive procurement
Change and disruption bring new hurdles for retailers and repair businesses, but familiar obstacles like quality and availability remain top concerns. These issues make automotive procurement especially challenging for small businesses and service providers trying to control costs and deliver timely service:
- Quality control: Auto supplies are often subject to safety standards and regulations. This means you have to keep a close eye on the quality of products used in vehicles, as well as back-of-the-house and operational supplies you use to run the shop.
- Cost management: Prices are rising across the board. Due to their mix of indirect and direct supply needs, automotive retailers and service shops are especially sensitive to cost increases. Since indirect spend can quickly eat into profitability, managing these costs is a priority.
- Supplier reliability: Great suppliers are key to getting quality products on time, but building and maintaining those relationships requires effort and data. Measure how well your suppliers perform in areas like cost and service to ensure supply contracts stay competitive.
- Spend visibility: Working with dozens of vendors and processing hundreds of orders and invoices each month can overwhelm your accounting and finance teams. When they’re buried in paperwork, it’s easy to lose sight of spending trends, budget control, and data-driven decision-making.
- Environmental sustainability: Getting the right mix of sustainable options and strong pricing can take some legwork. But as customer demand grows and supply chain disruptions continue, sustainable sourcing is more important than ever. Technology can help you find sustainable vendors without doing hours of independent research.
While these challenges are common, they aren’t inevitable. Strong policies and tools can help you stay on top of your quality, cost, and reporting demands.
Key pillars for automotive procurement success
Adopting intelligent procurement practices, like using technology for supplier management and strategic global sourcing, can make a noticeable difference in your outcomes. These tactics simplify operations and increase visibility into your spending trends and efficiency.
Assess supplier location
Look for domestic suppliers or tariff-friendly offshore vendors to reduce logistics costs and lead times. Decreasing the distance between you and your supplies lowers costs, shortens the procurement cycle, and helps you avoid delays from customs.
Order.co gives you access to over 15,000 vendors for every procurement need, making it easier to find and connect with local suppliers. You can shop for goods with domestic vendors and choose products that offer the best price and total value.
Build visibility in procurement
Break down information silos to help you see what you’re spending. Centralizing your automotive procurement and purchasing data helps you find opportunities for savings and spot issues early. A tool with reporting and spend management features makes it easy to compare pricing, monitor vendor spend, and benchmark supplier performance. This data can help you create clearer audit trails and spend reports.
Use strategic sourcing practices
Many automotive businesses take a transactional approach to procurement, but that's rarely the most cost-effective option. One-off purchases often cost you more in the long run than building a partnership with a trusted supplier. What’s more, long-term partnerships can help you when the journey gets rough.
With a strategic supply partner, you can:
- Unlock better pricing through discounts and volume deals
- Negotiate stronger contract terms for better service outcomes
- Extend your net terms agreement for improved cash management
- Find solutions for stockouts or delays
Strong supplier relationships benefit both parties. They provide vendors with more reliable income through higher-volume deals, while you get better pricing and more consistent service.
Make your supply chains more sustainable
Make sustainability a priority in your procurement function, both for its potential cost savings and its ability to reduce supply risk. A more sustainable supply chain builds resilience by ensuring you won’t have to scramble to get what you need.
There are many ways to create more sustainability in procurement, from choosing the right suppliers to opting for more environmentally friendly products:
- Focus on buying eco-friendly materials
- Reduce packaging for lesser environmental impact
- Simplify logistics to reduce fuel use
- Assess sustainability factors during vendor sourcing
- Opt for renewable energy use for eco-impact and cost efficiency
- Source remanufactured parts and recycled materials for automotive repairs where appropriate
The Procurement Strategy Playbook for Modern Businesses
Learn the key pillars of a strong strategy, valuable procurement metrics to track, and initiatives you can start implementing today.
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Automate automotive procurement with the right technology
Manual processes don't help you scale or save money. The extra hours spent managing spreadsheets are better used creating revenue opportunities and refining your procurement automation strategy.
Automating procurement and accounts payable (AP) takes the clutter out of operations workflows, reduces manual errors, and makes your finance and procurement teams more efficient.
The ROI from reduced operational costs makes investing in an automotive procurement software tool well worth it. Automation helps you pay vendors on time to enable volume and early-pay discounts, maintain supplier relationship management to unlock competitive pricing, and get real-time visibility into spending to spot savings opportunities.
Introducing digital procurement tools for efficiency
Modern procurement platforms make buying supplies easier and more organized. The right tool eliminates repetitive tasks like purchase order processing, invoice management, and analytics. These time savings take the burden off accounting teams as you scale, so they can focus on creating value instead of putting out fires.
When you’re ready to upgrade your procurement process with a digital tool, take these steps to make selection and implementation easier:
Look at your current procurement process: Dig into your existing process to see what’s working and what’s not. Map out the steps, from requisition to payment, and look for places where maverick spend, bottlenecks, or errors crop up. Performing a process audit gives you a clear picture of where digital tools can make a real difference.
Set specific goals for procurement: Decide what you want to achieve with a procurement tool. Identify any areas in your current procurement function that most need attention.
Goals for implementation could include:
- Improving order tracking and transparency
- Cutting down cycle times
- Managing spend controls
- Saving costs through efficiency
- Building stronger vendor relationships
Choose the right digital tools: Research eprocurement platform options based on your goals, budget, and how well they’ll fit with your current systems.
Look for benefits like ease of use, customizable workflows, reporting tools, supplier management functions, analytics, and strong customer support. Also, consider how your shortlist of tools uses procurement AI to improve purchasing and payment workflows.
Roll out and refine: Once you’ve picked a platform, create a detailed plan for implementation. Many top-tier tools like Order.co offer implementation support to handle the heavy lifting.
Lay out a timeline, organize training sessions to get your team comfortable with the system, and prepare for data migration if you’re moving from manual processes.
Track your results: After onboarding, keep tabs on how the platform performs against your initial goals. Establishing KPIs can help you track the most important aspects of your procurement management.
Gather feedback from your team to pinpoint any issues or opportunities to improve. Review your performance metrics over time to ensure the platform continues to deliver results.
Following these steps sets you up for success in your technology search and ensures you get a platform that meets your needs and helps you adapt to change.
Move forward with next-generation automotive procurement
Order.co helps automotive companies and service providers unlock efficiency, transparency, and innovation in their procurement processes. Its supply procurement and reporting features make it easier to source supplies at the right price, manage vendors, and make better decisions for your business.
The easy-to-use procurement platform offers features not found in other tools:
- AI-driven sourcing that helps you find the best price for items and replacements when a product is out of stock
- Time-saving purchasing options so you can get the products you need quickly, instead of running out to buy last-minute supplies at retail prices
- Integrations that allow you to build repeatable AP workflows that reduce processing costs and manual labor
- Reporting features that help you make better spending decisions and close the books faster, with full visibility into your automotive procurement performance
Schedule a demo with Order.co to see how implementing efficient and cost-effective tools can help you run your business smoothly in any economy.
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