And that you don’t need modern procurement technology. (No SaaS. No fluffy magic cloud.)

Or classical technology. (No Microsoft Back Office. No ERP.)

All you need is pencil, paper, and a good old fashion fax machine based on the classic 1966 Telecopier (that compacted the Xerox LDX).

Last year, Asahi proved it when they were hacked by the Ransomware group Qlin. The hack took all of their factories offline, and when they managed to get them back online, their computer systems were still down. Most of their global competitors would have remained completely shut down until the computer systems came back online, but instead Asahi rolled up their sleeves, powered up the fax, took out a pad of paper and a pen, and got to work. They placed orders, took orders, shipped out what they were able to produce to their largest distributors, and kept going. While it was a slow start at first (with some customers only receiving about 20% of their usual orders), at least they were able to start up again right away and maintain part of their revenue stream.

Could your organization do the same? Likely not!

It’s shameful because we’re one of the world’s oldest professions, possibly the second oldest, and early professionals were doing their jobs with reed pens and papyrus just fine!

The fact of the matter is that if you can’t do your job without technology, you can’t do your job with technology. True Procurement is human judgement. Judgement requires the expertise necessary to do the job — the entire job. Technology is just the execution that automates the tactical drudgery which allows us to focus on what’s truly important and spend most of our time on strategic activities. Nothing more.