Lack of automation across core process areas leaves procurement organizations susceptible to the failures of the past and constrains each group’s ability to gain and maintain credibility and optimize operations and performance. Technology alone will not win the day, but it is frequently the difference-maker that gets procurement performance to the next level. While innovation in the market continues to make the technologies more accessible, affordable, and easier to deploy, the procurement solutions market remains competitive and nuanced. Before a procurement team begins its automation/transformation journey, it should be armed with the latest research and insights on the technology market. It should also know where it wants to go and have a map to get there. Several years ago Ardent Partners
Why Technology is Important
Chief Procurement Officers (“CPOs”) and procurement teams across the globe are riding a wave of innovation that has transformed business processes and operations and has forever changed the face of the modern procurement department. Innovation has lifted many procurement teams out of the past, where manual, paper-based processes were the norm, and has delivered them to the future of procurement, where automated processes and digital technologies have all but reinvented the profession. The digital era, where tactical, transactional business processes can now be automated, repeatable, and scalable, enables the modern procurement organization to tackle strategic planning, relationship building, and collaboration, and to become agile vis-à-vis constant and sudden global change. It enables them to collect reams of business data, convert it to intelligence, gain visibility into operations, performance, and risk, and enhance their performance. In short, cutting-edge procurement technologies are guiding CPOs and procurement teams on their own paths to reach their full potential and deliver maximum value to the enterprise.
For these reasons, a majority of CPOs and procurement leaders recently surveyed by Ardent Partners regard new or improved technologies as top drivers for future success. Automated, digital procurement technologies enable staff-constrained procurement teams to do more with the same or fewer hands, thereby increasing their speed, efficiency, and productivity and enabling them to deliver more value to the enterprise. Cloud-based technologies that are offered “as-a-Service” provide teams of all sizes with robust capabilities but without the associated overhead costs of on-premise technology infrastructures and IT departments. And mobile-first or mobile-enabled procurement applications enable CPOs and their teams to be agile, and to operate virtually anywhere at any time and respond to emerging or routine events as needed, improving response rates and turnaround times.
But, despite the potential that modern procurement technologies hold for the average procurement team, there are several things to consider before diving headfirst into the digital wave. For starters, 90% of CPOs and procurement leaders believe that their teams can and should be performing better. For a full decade, CPOs have consistently decried the talent challenge (staffs are both too small and lack important capabilities) as the primary reason for this underperformance, but that is starting to change. Today, “people” remain an issue, but it has quietly been displaced by an issue involving technology.
New Research and Tools from Ardent Partners Coming in 2021
On that front and/or to that end, Ardent Partners began publishing its Technology Advisor reports in 2018 to help leaders in procurement (and finance and HR) make smarter technology investment decisions. In early 2021, Ardent Partners will expand its focus and begin to roll out a series of research and tools designed to guide technology buyers through the technology landscape. Watch this space!
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