Did you miss Ardent Partners’ recent webinar, Cast a Wider Net: Leveraging Innovation to Expand Procurement’s Influence and Impact, that shed light on how procurement can deliver greater value by focusing on user experience and operational agility?
Moderated by Ardent Partners’ Andrew Bartolini, the session featured industry experts, Magnus Bergfors, VP of Research at Ardent Partners, and Sudhir Bhojwani, CEO of ORO Labs, who explored strategies to enhance procurement’s impact amid increasing complexity.
In this three-part series, we provide some of the webcast highlights and this link to the full event.
Let’s begin with Part One and the key takeaways around the crossroads that procurement finds itself.
Procurement’s First Impression Matters
A user’s initial interaction with procurement often sets the tone for the relationship. A seamless and efficient experience builds trust, encouraging continued engagement and enabling procurement to provide greater organizational value.
Navigating Complexity in Procurement
Procurement processes are increasingly intricate, marked by zigzag workflows that involve multiple stakeholders, systems, and compliance requirements. As Bhojwani highlighted, this complexity hinders scalability, creates inefficiencies, and burdens procurement teams with project management tasks.
Challenges Facing Procurement Leaders
Research from Arden Partners underscores that chief procurement officers (CPOs) face four major challenges:
- Engaging stakeholders to enable proactive collaboration.
- Aligning disconnected processes and systems across organizations.
- Operating within budget constraints while delivering value.
- Addressing staffing and headcount limitations.
The Role of Innovation
ORO Labs’ orchestration platform provides a solution to many of these challenges. Designed as an intelligent intake and workflow automation tool, it integrates seamlessly with existing systems, enabling smarter, more efficient procurement operations. Its no-code platform ensures compliance, improves user and supplier experiences, and simplifies complex workflows.
Regulatory and Market Pressures
Regulatory requirements, such as Germany’s Supply Chain Act and evolving GDPR rules, are adding to the complexity. Organizations must adapt to these changes by implementing scalable processes that ensure compliance while maintaining operational efficiency.
The Path Forward
Bergfors and Bhojwani emphasized the need for procurement teams to modernize their approach by adopting collaborative, tech-enabled strategies. This includes aligning processes, leveraging data, and prioritizing user experience to expand procurement’s influence and impact.
Procurement is at a crossroads, balancing growing challenges with opportunities to innovate. By focusing on user-centric approaches and leveraging intelligent orchestration platforms, organizations can navigate complexity and drive sustainable value. Arden Partners’ ongoing research and thought leadership, complemented by tools from ORO Labs, offer a roadmap for procurement teams to thrive in this evolving landscape.
Part Two will explore how intake management and procurement process orchestration (IM&PPO) serves as a bridge to the future of procurement.
