A few weeks ago, I shared with you some of the BIG procurement trends that we at Ardent Partners, in conjunction with our sponsors, Beeline and Ivalua, shared on our “Procurement: Big Trends and Predictions” webinar that we hosted at the end of January. The webinar was jam-packed with ideas and content (or, in this case, six Big Trends and 12 Bold Predictions) as well as a great 20-minute Executive Roundtable with several highly-regarded industry leaders. In today’s article, I break down a part of the roundtable discussion between Alex Saric, Chief Marketing Officer at Ivalua, and myself regarding the key role smart procurement technologies will play in enabling a more agile procurement function in 2018.

Technology Will Help the Agility Agenda

The Ardent Research Team has been writing about business agility for procurement for some time now. In fact, it is our view that agility is going to be the defining characteristic of Best-in-Class procurement organizations going forward. It is important that CPOs and procurement leaders continue to develop a customized and forward-looking Agility Agenda that embeds the organization with agile and innovative characteristics while also maintaining discipline and efficiency. This must be done if the department is going to keep pace with the fast-changing needs of their enterprises and what will certainly be more volatile market conditions in the future.

For some time, many companies believed that by simply deploying a generic Best-in-Class solution they would be able to simply adapt their processes to it and it would maximize value. But as we have seen over the last few years, the constant changes in regulations, along with the basic fact that not all companies are the same, has meant that the best-in-class solution really hasn’t been a “one size fits all.” Technologies today need to be more flexible, providing all the benefits of SaaS, but also making it easier to meet the small percent of requirements that may be unique and require greater flexibility or change. As a result, a lot of companies are starting to re-architect their platforms to build in this flexibility and that’s something that we expect to see more of in the year(s) ahead.

Industry 4.0 Technologies Will Make “The Leap”

As companies continue to automate their processes, and as third parties begin to track more and more information, the amount of data can potentially become overwhelming. Identifying the data that is most important, and getting a way to process and present it in a context that is needed, is a real challenge today. If procurement is going to be effective and help manage the uncertainty and risk in today’s market, then it has to be able to operate smartly and better utilize the mountains of data available.

We feel that one of the biggest opportunities for procurement leaders lies in the second and third-generation Industry 4.0 technologies, like AR and RPA, that are becoming available. The ability to manage large volumes of data that current systems today may not be able to process and analyze means these technologies have the chance to really transform the supply management industry. Once organizations are able to identify the data that is most relevant, they can begin to process and analyze it in a way that will identify new and/or transformative value to the organization.

Final Thoughts

In regards to smart procurement and leveraging data, we may be at a turning point. Business goals and objectives are changing at a much faster pace, so it is important to have the right technology in place. The right technology can be an enabler of visibility, value and savings. The right technology should be modeled in a system that can be used as the default way of conducting an activity. If that is the case, process changes can cascaded in a more elegant and seamless way. Industry 4.0 technologies are able to provide more data and intelligence, and it is important that CPOs and procurement leaders be investigating these newer technologies in a more deliberate manner. Understanding what is available in the market is key to making sure the procurement function remains agile and provides business value to its organization.

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