Magnus Bergfors | VP of Research & Procurement Technology Expert

Magnus Mondays — Zip Forward Europe 2025: Risk Orchestration in the Limelight

By Magnus Bergfors April 7, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Events, General, Process, Solution Providers, Technology

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Zip’s inaugural European version of its user conference, Zip Forward. Held in London, the one-day event hosted more than 200 attendees from…

Magnus Mondays — Agentic AI Has Entered the Chat

By Magnus Bergfors March 24, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology

For the last couple of years, generative AI (GenAI) has been a staple in procurement solution provider marketing as the savior for overwhelmed procurement departments. But during the second half…

Magnus Mondays — Ivalua Now EMEA 2025 — Realistic Innovations

By Magnus Bergfors March 17, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology

My 2025 conference season kicked off last week with Ivalua Now EMEA. The conference took place in central Paris at the Carrousel De Louvre, a larger venue than last year,…

Magnus Mondays — Suites, Specialists, and IM&PPO

By Magnus Bergfors March 10, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Solution Providers, Strategic Sourcing, Strategy, Technology

About a year ago, I wrote a series of articles on the topic of suites vs. specialists (click here to read). In today’s article, I return to that topic and…

Magnus Mondays — Do We Need a Sourcing Toolbox?

By Magnus Bergfors March 3, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Strategic Sourcing, Strategy, Technology

Recently, I’ve talked about the need to manage and source more spend— and source it more frequently. And last year, I wrote an article about innovations in sourcing and how…

Magnus Mondays — Let’s Manage More Spend

By Magnus Bergfors February 24, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Strategic Sourcing, Strategy, Technology

At Ardent Partners, we have researched procurement metrics and performance for almost 20 years (Andrew Bartolini started tracking it before he founded Ardent). One of the key metrics we follow…

Magnus Mondays — Build in Agility and Source More

By Magnus Bergfors February 17, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Solution Providers, Strategic Sourcing, Strategy, Technology

The fact we are living in times of uncertainty should not have escaped anyone at this point. It’s been pointed out continually by pundits, with most CPOs aware of it…

Magnus Mondays — Don’t Over-Complicate Your CLM Implementation

By Magnus Bergfors February 10, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, General, Process, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology

A while back I wrote an article about Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) that looked at the two major parts of these solutions and why it’s so important to set a…

Magnus Mondays (Reprisal) — Make vs. Buy: Procurement Tech Edition

By Magnus Bergfors February 3, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, Complex Categories, Process, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology

[**Today, we're running a "best of" Magnus Mondays post, reprising a popular topic of the series. Magnus returns next week with new content for February.] In a recent article, I…

Magnus Mondays — Charts, Ratings, Quadrants, and Classifications

By Magnus Bergfors January 27, 2025Articles, Chief Procurement Officers, General, Strategy, Technology

So, apparently a popular (at least in some circles) figure in the procurement technology space retired last week. Dr. Elouise Epstein created the so-called spider chart back in 2017. I…