Magnus Bergfors | VP of Research & Procurement Technology Expert

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

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 10:02:08 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Agentic AI Has Entered the Chat

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 10:02:30 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Ivalua Now EMEA 2025 — Realistic Innovations

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:02:13 +0000

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,…

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Magnus Mondays — Suites, Specialists, and IM&PPO

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 10:02:50 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Do We Need a Sourcing Toolbox?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 11:02:01 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Let’s Manage More Spend

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:02:57 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Build in Agility and Source More

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:02:01 +0000

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…

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

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:02:18 +0000

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…

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

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:02:24 +0000

[**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…

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Magnus Mondays — Charts, Ratings, Quadrants, and Classifications

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 11:02:15 +0000

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…

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Magnus Mondays — Four Things I Want to See in 2025

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 11:02:09 +0000

It’s January of 2025 and we’re back with a new Magnus Monday article! This time of the year there tends to be plenty of predictions flying around, so I thought…

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Best of 2024: Magnus Mondays — Contract Lifecycle Management: A Different but Critical Procurement Technology

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 11:02:54 +0000

Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2024 articles as we reflect on last year and begin tackling 2025. Contract Lifecycle Management…

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Best of 2024: Magnus Mondays — GenAI Is Cool, but Should Everything be Automated?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:02:48 +0000

Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2024 articles as we reflect on last year and begin tackling 2025. If you haven’t…

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Best of 2024: Magnus Mondays — The Two Levels of Supplier Management Tech

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 11:02:31 +0000

Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2024 articles as we reflect on the year and prepare for the new year ahead.…

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Best of 2024: Magnus Mondays — Navigating the Raw Essentials: A Primer on Direct Materials

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 11:02:44 +0000

Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2024 articles as we reflect on the year and prepare for the new year ahead.…

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Best of 2024: Magnus Mondays — Why Is There No “Mega Vendor” in the Procurement Space?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 11:02:29 +0000

Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2024 articles as we reflect on the year and prepare for the new year…

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Magnus Mondays — 2024: The Year in Review

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 11:02:24 +0000

While the year is not officially over until a few more weeks, we are getting closer to the holidays, and this will be the last Magnus Monday article for this…

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Magnus Mondays — Random Winter Rants

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 11:02:08 +0000

Here in Sweden, we are heading into the winter months, with our first snow occurring last week. As we get closer to the holiday season, I thought I’d treat you…

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Magnus Mondays — When Procurement Tech Projects Fail

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 11:02:14 +0000

A big IT project has been all over the news in Sweden recently. Two regions (a region is a fairly large public entity that is responsible for public healthcare and…

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Magnus Mondays — Flexibility or Control? Why Not Both?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 11:02:12 +0000

For the last decade or so, the go-to solution for automating the Procure to Pay (P2P) process has been … wait for it … P2P suites. The P2P process covers…

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Magnus Mondays — Why Not Generative AI?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:02:45 +0000

Like most of us in the procurement tech world, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about generative AI (GenAI) lately. While some critical voices have started to make themselves heard,…

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Magnus Mondays — Feature, Product, or Company?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:02:47 +0000

When I joined Ardent Partners a year ago, my very first article was about the proliferation of procurement solutions. My experience at the DPW conference and, perhaps to a lesser…

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Magnus Mondays — Services and CoEs in a Next-Gen Procurement Tech World

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:02:00 +0000

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve attended a few great conferences (shoutout to Zip, Keelvar, DPW and SAP). Several discussions and observations from these conferences point to how the…

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Magnus Mondays — SAP Spend Connect: Data, Intelligence, and Suite

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 10:02:22 +0000

I spent last week in Las Vegas attending SAP Spend Connect. Spend Connect is the evolution of the old Ariba Live and now covers the entirety of SAP Intelligent Spend…

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Magnus Mondays — Conferences, Innovations, and Sore Feet

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 10:02:42 +0000

This time of the year is always full of conferences and last week was certainly a whirlwind! Early Tuesday morning I flew down to Amsterdam for Keelvar Konnect and on…

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Magnus Mondays — The Supplier Management Tech Series — Part 5: Supplier Innovation and Development

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 10:02:32 +0000

Today, we are wrapping up our series on supplier management technology with an article on Supplier Innovation and Development (SI&D). This is an area with less attention from a technology-support…

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Magnus Mondays — Zip Forward 2024 — When Procurement Flows, Business Flows

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 10:02:04 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Zip’s annual user conference Zip Forward. It was hosted at the iconic SF Jazz in central San Francisco. It marked my second…

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Magnus Mondays — The Supplier Management Tech Series — Part 4: Supplier Risk Management

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:02:54 +0000

In our series on supplier management, we have now come to supplier risk. This is one of the most complex areas in the entire procurement technology space because risk management…

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Magnus Mondays — The Supplier Management Tech Series — Part 3: Supplier Performance Management

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 10:02:19 +0000

Three weeks ago, I started a series on the components of supplier management solutions. So far we’ve covered the platform capabilities (i.e., functionalities used across the other components/modules) and Supplier…

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Announcing Ardent Partners’ 2024 Strategic Sourcing Technology Advisor Report

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 10:02:05 +0000

We are happy to announce the official launch of Ardent Partners’ 2024 Strategic Sourcing Technology Advisor report. This is a report designed to guide sourcing and procurement teams through the…

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Magnus Mondays — The Supplier Management Tech Series — Part 2: Supplier Information Management

Magnus Bergfors — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 10:02:26 +0000

Last week we started a series of articles on supplier management. In that article, we covered some of the functionality that’s needed across all the components of supplier management. This…

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Magnus Mondays — The Supplier Management Tech Series — Part 1: Platform Capabilities

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 10:02:48 +0000

Supplier management is a complex and critical activity for procurement organizations. A key problem is that many procurement professionals lack the tools needed to efficiently manage supplier relationships, information, performance,…

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Magnus Mondays — The Proliferation of eSourcing

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 10:02:09 +0000

A couple of months ago I wrote an article on innovation in the eSourcing space. New (relatively at least) solution providers like Globality, Pactum, Arkestro, and Fairmarkit have entered the…

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Magnus Mondays — A Couple of Truths on IM&PPO and S2P Solutions

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 10:02:29 +0000

This summer I’ve done considerable research into the Intake Management and Procurement Process Orchestration (IM&PPO) space. It’s a relatively new and exciting area and an example of the resurgence of…

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Magnus Mondays (Reprisal) — Category Management: All Talk No Action?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 10:02:49 +0000

[**Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running “best of” Magnus Mondays posts, reprising some of the most popular topics of the series. Magnus returns with new content in August.]…

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Magnus Mondays (Reprisal) — Three Areas Where AI Can Help You Today

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:02:48 +0000

[**Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running “best of” Magnus Mondays posts, reprising some of the most popular topics of the series. Magnus returns with new content in August.]…

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Magnus Mondays (Reprisal) — It’s Time to Improve eSourcing Adoption

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:02:35 +0000

[**Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running “best of” Magnus Mondays posts, reprising some of the most popular topics of the series. Magnus returns with new content in August.]…

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Magnus Mondays — Random Summer Rants

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 10:02:46 +0000

As I prepare to head out for summer vacation, I thought I’d wrap up the first half of 2024’s “Magnus Mondays” articles with a selection of smaller random rants. For…

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Magnus Mondays — The Procurement Data Paradox

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 10:02:29 +0000

“Data is the new oil” has been spouted as a truism for a number of years. This is primarily due to the promises of all the nice things AI will…

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Magnus Mondays — The Two Levels of Supplier Management Tech

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 10:02:47 +0000

Supplier management is one of the most critical aspects of procurement. But as is the case with a lot of areas within procurement, it’s complex. One of the biggest issues…

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Magnus Mondays — Procurement’s Early Involvement Problem

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 10:02:24 +0000

One of the longest-standing complaints from procurement professionals I’ve heard throughout my 20+ year career is: “we don’t get involved early enough.” The complaint certainly has merit. The earlier sourcing…

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Magnus Mondays — Don’t Leave Money on the Table, Optimize!

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:02:55 +0000

It’s always been a mystery to me why so few organizations use sourcing optimization. Yes, it can be complex to use but there is so much value to get from…

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Magnus Mondays — Supplier Portal Fatigue, a Supplier Management Issue

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 10:02:12 +0000

Having up-to-date information on your suppliers has become more and more critical over the years. Complex supply strategies coupled with increased regulatory requirements have made organizations more dependent on suppliers.…

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Magnus Mondays — Solution Provider User Conferences, a Sign of Maturity

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 10:02:15 +0000

As we’re heading into summer (at least here in Sweden), conference season is winding down for a couple of months before kicking off again in September. This spring I had…

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Magnus Mondays — Three Areas Where AI Can Help You Today

Magnus Bergfors — Tue, 28 May 2024 10:02:17 +0000

While generative AI is emerging and use cases are evolving, artificial intelligence in the form of natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and deep learning has been in use for…

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Magnus Mondays — What About That Spend Visibility?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 20 May 2024 10:02:50 +0000

Last week OpenAI released its new flagship model GPT-4o (o is for omni, as in working across audio, visuals, and text at the same time). GenAI news and hype is…

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Magnus Mondays — Are RFPs For Procurement Technology Really Effective?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 13 May 2024 10:02:18 +0000

Today’s topic might seem a little ironic given that analysts are infamous among technology providers for issuing long and demanding questionnaires about everything under the sun. But for a buying…

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Magnus Mondays — The Slow Evolution of eSourcing Is Finally Speeding Up

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 06 May 2024 10:02:25 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, my procurement technology career began years ago in eSourcing. I worked for a company called IBX (which was first acquired by Capgemini that later sold it…

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Magnus Mondays — Make vs. Buy: Procurement Tech Edition

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 10:02:56 +0000

Last week I tackled the question of what to do with a failed P2P implementation. This week I’ll be addressing another common question: Is it a good idea to build…

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Magnus Mondays — Is Your Application Really the Problem?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 10:02:26 +0000

As a long-time procurement technology analyst, one of the most frequent questions posed to me is what solution an organization should pick after a previous failed implementation. Or, in other…

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Magnus Mondays: Zip — One App to Rule Them All?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 10:02:37 +0000

We’ve written about intake management and procurement process orchestration (IM&PPO) a couple of times previously. It’s certainly a topic and solution set that is gathering a lot of interest from…

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Magnus Mondays — GenAI Is Cool, but Should Everything be Automated?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:02:42 +0000

If you haven’t heard about generative AI (GenAI), or even been pitched some type of it, then you’ve been hiding under a stone. There are dozens of articles describing GenAI,…

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Magnus Mondays — Why Is There No “Mega Vendor” in the Procurement Space?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:02:29 +0000

During my years as an analyst, I’ve heard “We want to be the Salesforce of procurement” many times. Yet, procurement is one of the few spaces that lacks truly dominant…

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Magnus Mondays: Ivalua Now 2024 — All in On Generative AI

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 10:02:50 +0000

Last week I attended my first solution provider conference (as an analyst) since COVID-19. Ivalua hosted the European edition of Ivalua Now in beautiful Versailles just outside Paris. According to…

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Magnus Mondays — Category Management: All Talk No Action?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:02:30 +0000

When I started in procurement in what feels like way too many years ago, it was as a buyer. A few years later I got a new title, strategic buyer!…

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Magnus Mondays: Direct Materials P2P — Is That a Thing?

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 11:02:55 +0000

Today I’m wrapping up our mini-series on direct materials and what differentiates it from indirect by looking at the transactional side — also known as procure to pay (P2P). Because…

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Magnus Mondays — Direct Materials Supplier Management Presents a Critical but Disjointed Solution Landscape

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:02:28 +0000

In last week’s article, we looked at what makes direct materials special and their unique established requirements, particularly when focusing on eSourcing. In today’s article, we continue to investigate direct…

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Magnus Mondays — Navigating the Raw Essentials: A Primer on Direct Materials

Magnus Bergfors — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:02:57 +0000

In one of my articles about suites vs. specialists, I briefly mentioned dedicating a future piece to direct materials. Today’s article will do just that. I’ll look at direct materials…

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Magnus Mondays — Contract Lifecycle Management: A Different but Critical Procurement Technology

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 11:02:41 +0000

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) has come a long way in the last 25 years or so. The technology started as simple databases where some key metadata was collected to enable…

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Magnus Mondays: Don’t Believe the Hype! (Or at Least Apply Some Caution)

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:02:48 +0000

Back in 1996, Bill Gates wrote “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.…

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Magnus Mondays — Graphite Connect: Supplier Management, Network Style

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:02:57 +0000

As part of the Magnus Mondays series featuring the latest procurement technology trends and insights, we will also spotlight interesting briefings and updates that we receive from different solution providers…

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Magnus Mondays: It’s Time to Improve eSourcing Adoption

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 11:02:42 +0000

When I first started reading CPO Rising more than a decade ago, I remember Ardent’s founder and chief research officer, Andrew Bartolini, introducing the concept of eSourcing 2.0, which is…

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Magnus Mondays: What’s in Store for 2024

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 11:02:40 +0000

As we close in on the end of the year and I settle in at Ardent Partners, I wanted to take a moment to look toward 2024. Rather than an…

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Magnus Mondays: Procurement Tech — Suites vs. Specialists Part Five: The Final Factors

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 11:02:33 +0000

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve discussed the question of suites vs. specialists in the procurement technology space. As I mentioned in the first article, it’s not an either/or…

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Magnus Mondays: Procurement Tech — Suites vs. Specialists Part Four: How Your Spend Profile Impacts Your Strategy

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 11:02:33 +0000

Over the last couple of weeks, we have published a series of articles on the topic of solution suites vs. specialist providers in the procurement technology space. In the first…

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Magnus Mondays: Procurement Tech — Suites vs. Specialists Part Three: I Wish I Was Special

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 11:02:27 +0000

In part 1 of this series, we introduced and framed the familiar topic of suites vs. specialists in the procurement solutions space. And last week in part 2, we looked…

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Magnus Mondays: Procurement Tech — Suites vs. Specialists Part Two (Home Suite Home)

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 11:02:54 +0000

In last week’s article, we kicked off our discussion on suites vs. specialist providers by discussing the primary considerations in setting an overall procurement technology strategy. Generally, it is not…

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Magnus Mondays: Procurement Tech — Suites vs. Specialists Part One (Framing the Decision)

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:02:06 +0000

A question that keeps coming up in the procurement world is: What is the better technology strategy, investing in a broader suite (think source-to-pay) or a collection of specialist providers?…

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Magnus Mondays: The Proliferation of Procurement Solutions

Magnus Bergfors — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 11:02:33 +0000

A little more than a decade ago when I joined Gartner and started out as an analyst, there were basically a handful of vendors that mattered and another handful that…

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