The buzzword heard around Procurement this year is “Digital Transformation.” As the world undergoes a fundamental transformation in the services and manufacturing economy, fueled mainly by digital disruption happening both in our personal lives and within the industry, we are witnessing how digital technology is allowing companies to unbundle and re-bundle value chains, like physical goods, information, money and even people, in innovative ways. As a result, value chains become more valuable by not only making them smarter but by making them more personalized, flexible and on-demand for the client who demands for the ideal “perfect and now.”
In a recent webinar we hosted with The Hackett Group, we learned that digital transformation is poised to fundamentally change procurement. Respondents to Hackett’s CPO Key Issues Study have stated:
- 89% agreed or strongly agreed that talent and business needs of their business will be fundamentally changed by digital.
- A vast majority (84%) also thought that digital transformation will offer step change performance improvement of the procurement function and change the way procurement services are delivered over the next three to five years.
While we are all in agreement in what digital transformation really involves, the question is how can procurement get on board? What are the strategic priorities and initiatives of procurement leaders? Amy Fong, Associate Principal at Hackett group, pointed out during the webinar that while everyone agrees that our processes are changing, the challenge remains that procurement organizations often lack the strategy and resources to make it work.
In Hackett’s free report, Keeping Pace With and Enabling Enterprise-Level Digital Transformation, we learn that there are 4 areas worth examining, with the overarching theme being improving the stakeholder experience. The next 3 areas are “orchestrating a procurement-as-a-service (PaaS) portfolio,” “setting a foundation of insight driven analytics,” and “[using] technology to accelerate transformation.”
Read the Hackett Group’s Digital Procurement Transformation Report to learn:
- The 4 specific ways procurement can enable its own digital transformation
- Operational characteristics of world-class operations
- How procurement can close the digital capability gap in 2017
- Key sources of procurement value
- How to evaluate your digital transformation process
