A recent article over on the Supply Chain Quarterly (which launched about the same time as an article on the Supply Chain Management Review) quoted the newly released 2024 State of Procurement Data Report from Amazon Business (whose PR team was working overtime) that was revealed at Amazon Business Reshape. The report, which surveyed 3,000 buyers, procurement decision makers, and organizational leaders, had a number of interesting statistics.

The ones quoted by Amazon Business on their site included:

• 95% of decision-makers acknowledge that there’s room for procurement optimization
  (which says to the doctor that 5% of decision makers are clueless and need to be replaced)
• 85% of respondents say the difficulty of sourcing suppliers that follow sustainable practices prevents their company from setting or achieving strategic sustainability goals for procurement
  (which is totally logical because when there is a national demand for something that is in extremely limited supply, most companies will fail; it’s like demanding gender equality in STEM organizations in North America; on average, women are 25% of STEM workers; this means that for every STEM organization where they manage to fill more than 25% of their positions with women, there is an organization of equal size that won’t)
• 81% of respondents had mandates to buy from certified sellers, which might include sustainable, local, or disadvantaged group-owned businesses
  (and it would be nice to know what percentage achieved those mandates; the doctor would be surprised if more than 25%, at most, succeeded)

The SCQ and SCMR picked up on different statistics, and you can read the articles to find out, but the most interesting to the doctor is:

• 53% of business respondents in the survey expect their budgets to increase in 2024.

Go West, Young Man, Go West and pan for the gold! As far as the doctor is concerned, you’re the King(s) of Wishful Thinking. And, if you really want to, you can call me a bitch like it’s a bad thing for suggesting you’re so far out of this world that you’re a space oddity, but it doesn’t change the fact that you need to sit back, have a deep think, and accept the reality that it’s not going to.

Before you find new offensive adjectives to describe the doctor, ask yourself: When was the last time you received a significant budget increase that was above inflation? And when did it include even a dollar more than what was needed for the new hire(s) you fought nine months for or the system that your CFO decided he or she liked best? And if so, was it enough to actually acquire a new system or an extra hire you didn’t have to fight nine months for? In other words, when was the last time an increase you received was truly significant?

Procurement needs to remember that, in most organizations, it is still looked at as a cost center even though it may be the only profit center a company has left in an inflationary economy with declining consumer demand. As a result, with budget scraps are few and far between, those budget scraps are going to continue to go to sales and marketing hoping that the closers and the mad men will save them, and we all know that’s not going to change anytime soon in most companies.

Expectation is not always reality. And wishful thinking is just that. To succeed, don’t plan for any increases beyond specific increases for specific headcount or CFO friendly systems you have already hard fought and negotiated. This way, you won’t feel let down and you’ll be setup for success.

And while my gloomy glass more-than-half-empty outlook on the situation may not be very gladdening, remember that you are Procurement Pros, you always have sour lemons (and nothing else), and when challenged, you still find ways to make the best lemonade. Prepare for tough times and, on the off chance they are a little less tough, you are guaranteed to succeed.