The paper presents important strategies used in practice at Indian industry to manage their inventory and procurement processes, and uses the software widely implemented in a number of Indian companies to demonstrate their implementation. Importantly, the unique rich data sources that have the potential to provide a wealth of information for a range of transaction-based operational research studies are not widely realized. We aim to build an awareness of what can be achieved in order to encourage future development. Although many of the companies have formal SOPs in place for managing procurement, not all are being used properly due to the inexperience of some staff and their business conditions. The aim of this brief paper is to identify the complex nature of businesses and to investigate the level of practical application of theoretical models of quantitative approaches to dealing with 'real-life' scenarios.