[Editor’s Note: Ardent Partners recently published its procurement-themed report, “Procurement 2021: Big Trends and Predictions”. Over the next few weeks, this site will feature articles highlighting the key discussion points from the report.]

While the procurement industry is consistently evolving and shifting, 2021 begins after a truly unprecedented year. In 2020, Chief Procurement Officers and their teams were forced to face massive disruptions, extreme threats, and entirely new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. By and large, procurement leaders worked valiantly to ensure business continuity, build supply chain resilience, and prepare their enterprises for the next economic phase. Against this backdrop, procurement has never been more important to business operations and business results.

In normal years, this prediction would mean that procurement is expected to expand its purview and in support of the business – getting involved in new business ideas, supporting M&A, helping expand into new markets, driving new product development, etc. But in 2021, Ardent Partners predicts that procurement will drive critical business strategies because CEOs and CFOs will be much more focused on controlling the “controllables.”

These “new” executive priorities will shift away from growth and expansion and instead hone in on initiatives that procurement can more directly control and impact – managing costs, driving strategies that positively impact cash, renegotiating contracts with suppliers to increase value, etc. In 2021, the critical business strategies at many enterprises will focus on matters that play to the strengths of procurement teams.

The second year of this new decade begins amidst great uncertainty and a global pandemic that will get worse before it gets better. 2021 will be a year of transition, as the world begins to operate in a post-COVID-19 world that will be driven by new ideas, new innovations, and new leaders.

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