In our last series, which kicked off with our post where we told you that you don’t need to read another state of procurement study for the next 5 years, we noted that Deloitte recently released their annual latest and greatest CPO Survey with the help of Spend Matters, that was designed to highlight, among other things, the latest and greatest “observations, challenges, and trends” in Procurement, but that, in reality, just highlights the same problems, priorities, and barriers it found in the past 9 editions, just like every other annual survey in Procurement.
There’s no embellishment here. We mean every other study that has come before for years because:
- the doctor has been reading them.
- the doctor went back through 15 studies in detail that were released in the past five years and a few other related papers published in the same timeframe.
As part of this in-depth review, the doctor pulled out, for each of these 20 papers (which included papers from the usual suspects like Kearney, CapGemini, E&Y, PWC, and Everest), the
- Top Barriers/Roadblocks to Success/Challenges
- Major Procurement Risks with High or Moderate Impact
- Primary Concerns/Strategic Priorities for Procurement Leaders
- Significant Skill Competency Gaps/Support Needs
After doing so, the results were that, for the Deloitte study, analyzing the:
- top barriers, of the 10 quoted in 2 or more of the papers, 7 are in the Deloitte study,
- major procurement risks, of the 7 quoted in 2 or more of the papers, 5 are in the Deloitte study, and
- primary concerns, of the 13 quoted in 2 or more of the papers, 8 are in the Deloitte study.
Moreover, if we were to abstract the barriers, risks, and concerns one level and start looking at the underlying systems or processes that would need to be addressed, the similarities would be even more significant.
More importantly, they aren’t changing much year to year, and aren’t going to change much for the next decade at least.
A year ago I penned a post where I pointed out that before you get all excited to learn about trends for fall conference season, with the exception of:
- Gen-AI being the new fluffy magic cloud
- Fake-take (sorry, intake) being the new dangerous and dysfunctional dashboard
the majority of trends that have been discussed for the past year are the same trends that were discussed ten years ago (and SI has the blog history to prove it, especially since it doesn’t purge over half of the blog history on a site upgrade and/or migration).
This is because the core purpose, and thus the core priorities, challenges, and risks, of Procurement haven’t changed in decades. The systems have evolved, the processes have become more complicated, and the global supply challenges haven’t been this bad since the nineties, but the core HAS NOT changed (and, to be fair, has NOT changed since the first manual was published in 1887 and has NOT changed much since cross-continental trade began thousands [and thousands] of years ago).
Which means we don’t need any more annual surveys on these issues (every 5 years would be more than enough, and even then you might find that the only movement is related to the hot tech of today vs. the hot tech 5 years ago, as SI did when it did its trend analysis last year).
In our last series, we also noted that we weren’t going to bore you by digging up two decades of studies and showing the same issue lists again and again, because that’s not the problem. The real problem is that these core issues still aren’t adequately addressed after decades of these “studies” being published, even though it’s the same issues again and again that come back year after year after year, sometimes with a vengeance when an unexpected natural disaster or pandemic strikes, a war breaks out, or a fan of the Gilded Age believes that tariffs are the cure-all and starts global trade wars.
However, before you can solve these problems, or anyone can put forth a solution, you need to understand what these issues are, why they keep coming back, and acquire some insight into how you might deal with them once and for all and finally move the needle forward.
In our last series, we focussed on the barriers to success. In this series we are going to address the risks. The seven risks that keep coming up over and over again, where five of them are top risks in the Deloitte study, from most referenced to least referenced, were:
- Loss of critical talent/limited talent availability. ([00], [04], [05], [12], [19])
- Natural/Man-Made Disasters ([04], [12], [14], [19])
- IP/cyber attacks ([00], [03], [10], [12])
- Rising cost/ spend pressures/inflation ([00], [04], [19])
- Supply shortages/constraints / Competitive Alternatives ([00], [04], [12])
- Regulatory compliance issues ([00], [04], [12])
- Corruption/Fraud ([02], [04])
It is hoped that you enjoy the coverage!
Finally, remember to review our article on why You Don’t Need To Read Another State of Procurement Study for the Next 5 Years! if you want to dig up the referenced papers.