Purchasing: Strategic sourcing refers to continuous, long-term procurement of products and services. These products and services may be used in the enterprise's supply chain (direct products) or in business personnel (indirect products). Strategic sourcing involves the following activities: understanding the external expenses of the company, formulating an overall strategy for sourcing products and services based on an understanding of external expenditures, implementing an RFP/RFQ process, and signing contracts with suppliers to negotiate prices.

Expenditure Management: It is a method of overall planning and management of all expenditure budgets of enterprises--analysis of enterprise expenditure patterns to ensure optimal allocation of resources among multiple expenditure categories. Effective expense management enables timely updates of supplier data so that procurement managers have the right information to make purchasing decisions, while all supplier databases in the company are integrated to avoid duplicate suppliers. Expenditure management can also identify inefficient purchases and correct them. The main activities of expenditure management are: expenditure monitoring and analysis, expenditure planning and payment, and buyer management.