Between November of last year and January of this year, SI published a 35 part series on why you really DO NOT need to read another State of Procurement report for Five Years in order to save you the trouble of reading yet another report that was 95% the same as last year’s report, and 85%+ the same as the report you read five, if not ten, years ago.

The realty is that:

• the barriers to success never change (just their relative criticality based upon which ones are currently your biggest obstacles)
• the risks never change (although some go up each year while others temporarily go down)
• the concerns never change, with the exception of the tech-du-jour which just replaces the previous tech-du-jour when the hype cycle changes

And this is because

• the core function of Procurement HAS NOT changed since the first manual was published one hundred and thirty nine years ago, which means
• the issues Procurement is addressing today are essentially the same fundamental issues Procurement has always been facing which means
• the priorities have not changed either

And you don’t need to read 30 to 60 page reports to realize this. All that’s relevant is what climbed or fell on each list since last year since that tells you

• which challenges are coming your way if they haven’t hit yet,
• which technologies and trends are gaining hype status, and
• how your peers see their priorities for the year

Nothing beyond that is useful, as the functions, issues, priorities, concerns, risks, and barriers are the same (although some have rapidly climbed the charts with a certain World Leader randomly removing regimes, starting special military actions, and blocking trade routes with no warning).