Myth-busting 2025 2015 Procurement Predictions and Trends! Part 2

Introduction

In our last instalment, we noted that the ambitious started pumping out 2025 prediction and trend articles in late November / early December, wanting to be ahead of the pack, even though there is rarely much value in these articles. First of all, and we say this with 25 years of experience in this space, the more they proclaim things will change … Secondly, the predictions all revolve around the same topics we’ve been talking about for almost two decades. In fact, if you dug up a Procurement predictions article for 2015, there’s a good chance 9 of the top 10 topic areas would be the same.

To save you the trouble of reviewing all of these articles, which are going to be 80% the same (as the 71 “predictions” and “trends” from the first 8 articles we reviewed all fell nicely into 10 “core” areas with not a lot of difference between them), we are going to discuss the 10 core predictions (and variants) that you are going to see over and over again, with some of them being the same predictions we have seen over and over again, and, where necessary, contrast the dream with the reality. Just for the heck of it, we’ll do take them in reverse alphabetical order, because, why not?

Technology & Digital Transformation

These predictions basically revolved around the rise of SaaS-based “Digital Transformation” with calls out to agility and integration. More specifically, these were the 10 predictions and trends from the first 8 articles we reviewed.

  • Cloud-Based Solutions
  • Digital Tools
  • Digital Transformation and Technology Adoption
  • Diverse Digital Transformation Technologies will Become the Norm
  • Emphasis on Digital Procurement
  • Integrated Procurement Systems
  • Proliferation of Procurement Technology Platforms
  • Rise of Agile Procurement Processes
  • Rise of Digital Procurement
  • Rise of E-Procurement

As you can see, they all revolve around SaaS/Cloud-based “Digital Transformation”, which should not be a surprise. The SaaS transition started over 15 years ago, and revved up in a big way over the last few years when COVID forced business to put more of their processes online for remote/home access. And even though a lot of big companies are forcing employees to return to work, now that they’ve realized SaaS is easier to maintain (someone else manages the data centre, does the updates, etc.), expense (you’re not paying huge one-time fees up front), replace if needed (provided you make sure, up front, in the contract, that you have the right to export all of your data at any time in an industry standard format), and mitigate you exposure in the case of a cybersecurity breach (as the provider is required to maintain agreed upon security and privacy standards and you can insist they indemnify you for their failures to honour the contract) they are going to continue to replace legacy systems with SaaS as time goes on. It’s just a continuation of what they have been doing for the past four years. Nothing new, exciting, or unexpected here.

And yes, the smarter companies, in addition to ensuring they own their data and have the right to extract all of it at any time, will look for solutions that are easy to integrate into their current/planned SaaS ecosystem as well as those that increase their agility. It’s just good practice to try and future proof your SaaS as much as possible, especially considering poorly managed SaaS subscriptions contributed significantly to 500 Billion in wasted Technology spend last year.

So, yeah, it’s a trend. But did it take any prognostication to notice it? Nope!

What Should Happen? (But Won’t!)

Companies should analyze all of their systems and plan to replace any systems that

  • are not being used / not delivering value
  • don’t integrate with their ecosystem
  • don’t support modern Sourcing & Procurement processes

And we use the word “plan” because:

  • it takes time to identify the right solution, which has to be done by YOU and not a salesperson, and then to implement that solution, which needs to be overseen by YOU and not a third party with no stake and who only cares about how many hours they can bill, and then needs to be adopted by YOU and used regularly
  • the company may be locked into the current system for another one (1) to four (4) years depending on the deal signed by your predecessor, and escaping early may be way too costly, so you might be stuck with it for a few years (and have to focus on finding solutions to make it more usable/valuable)
  • you can only replace one system at a time in any department without causing so much disruption that you risk the business (big bang projects always result in big bangs; just Google “worst supply chain disasters” and you’ll see the vast majority are caused by technology failures, and about half by ERPs alone!)

Once you have the list of systems that you need to acquire / update, prioritize them based on the value a new system can deliver and how soon you could implement / replace a current system, and then begin the to identify, select, implement, integrate, train, and use the first system (on the list) on a daily basis. You should only begin the process of identifying a second system once the first system is being used on a daily basis (and not begin implementation of a second system until you are sure all the bugs are worked out of the first system).

And always remember that your success or failure depends on you. As we have previously noted, digital procurement transformation requires strategy and design … your strategy and your design. After all, you don’t want to be the company that pushes the technology project failure rate over 90%. (It’s 88% now and climbing year-over-year.)

Anyway, that’s one trend myth down, nine to go.