Procurement Leaders are Getting Deeper Into Sourcing Strategy
Consider that the 8th and 7th most visited posts are on aligning procurement strategies to business goals. Not only are leading Procurement organizations adopting deeper sourcing strategies, but they are looking to better align those strategies with business goals to extract not just savings, but value. The leaders are realizing, with inflation coming back, the days of savings in a mature Procurement organization are numbered.
Moreover, the fact that the 9th most visited post is on the direct procurement challenge, this indicates that not only are Procurement leaders looking for value, but they are beginning to realize that in order to capture that value, direct procurement has to be done correctly and requires more depth than just a simple auction for office supplies.
Then we have the 4th most visited post being part of the series on how Trade Extensions is redefining sourcing — again indicating that leaders want to do better.
Analytics is Taking Center Stage
The fact that the 6th and 3rd most visited posts of the year are deep dives into not only modern analytic technology, but modern analytic technology that is beginning to apply machine learning in adaptive and useful ways, means that many organizations are not only realizing that they not only need good analytics, but good analytics support.
Supply Chain Finance is On Leader’s Minds
The 2nd most visited post is our post on how the death of factoring will be highly exaggerated. Even though this isn’t really supply chain finance, it’s sold as supply chain finance, and companies that are still relying on it (and trying to figure out how to advance) want to understand what it is, where they are, and how long they have to advance.
Training is Still an Issue …
… even if the budget’s haven’t been restored. The 10th most visited post is on training a procurement team. Leaders recognize that their talent has to be trained to get top results, but with limited budget, they are starting to think about holistic team training vs. individual training.
But Technology is pushing to the forefront.
The 5th most visited post of the year is our rant on how driverless delivery is nothing more than a tantalizing theft target (and how over-investing in automation is not always going to save you money). And the foremost visited post of the year, part of our procurement sustentation series, is our post on IP and Patents. People want to understand technology, the protections around it, and how to tread the issue.