The Three Pillars of Digital Procurement

Procurement professionals have the same question looming over their head on a daily basis:

“How do you plan on dealing with digitalization?”

This past Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending EBG Network’s 8th AnnualSource to Pay Summit, which gathered some of the Nordic’s largest organizations and procurement profiles.

The day was filled with a plethora of interesting keynotes, roundtable discussions, and one-on-ones. Regardless of the sheer amount of content one could chose to consume, the theme for the day was apparent and held strong: Digital Procurement.

Mingling with procurement professionals, sourcing experts, category gurus and purchasing managers under the day gave me an incredible insight into daily challenges and pain points regarding their digital procurement strategies. The range of digital integration these professionals had in their organizations was astonishing. Some were already considering applications for Blockchain technology within their P2P systems, while others didn’t have a central supplier database. Some had their eyes towards the future, thinking platform outlooks and APIs, while others said regulations kept them from even bringing in external technology providers.

After a lot of talking, but more importantly a lot of listening, an underlying focus emerged from these procurement pros, regardless of their level of digital ambitions:

Finding a starting point.

Every organization needs to take into account it’s own reality, regardless of where technology is/where it’s going. Assessing wants and needs — from digital procurement integration — internally is the first step to moving forward. These discussions are the basis for developing a hypothesis for application in an organization. And, a hypothesis is the basis for piloting and eventually adopting digital procurement as an element of an overall procurement strategy; proving a business case.

As one can see from the statistics below, taken from Deloitte’s 2018 CPO Survey, procurement leaders themselves don’t believe in the potential impact of their digital procurement strategies. So, how do you teach an old dog new tricks?

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