Addressing the Digital Transformation Mandate: A Procurement Perspective

What if Jarvis from Iron Man was real, wouldn’t you want an assistant like that, the one that can help you with your day to day mundane task without complaining and give you the best possible result?

Although it seems slightly far-fetched, but not impossible. The world that we once knew is rapidly changing and few latest trends are sure marking a beginning to a new era of technology.

For starters Iphone has just launched the face recognition feature with Iphone X, the phone can now recognize your face and unlock itself.

Millennial today can’t imagine a world where phones did not have a camera feature. In fact almost all social media platforms have the AI to recognize your face from your picture.

With the new generation being more and more familiar with technology, the digital business tools are converging with employees and consumers who are increasingly comfortable with new mobile technologies and business models.

• A lot has been said about “digital transformation in procurement”, the latest The Hackett Group report states that the world class procurement organizations work at 22% less labor cost than their peers.

Typical purchase to pay organizations can reduce procurement process cost up to 24% by implementing robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and other digital transformation approaches.

• In such a scenario, a smart procurement organization needs to up their game to stay relevant.
• Technology alone will not deliver results, there has to be a larger strategy, a service delivery model which will not just look at technology but even at information, talent and organizational redesign.

With this let’s see what digital transformation really involves and how procurement can get on board?

According to Amy Fong from The Hackett Group, there are four things that one can look at — improving stakeholder experience, orchestrating procurement as a service portfolio, setting a foundation for insight driven analysis and technology usage to accelerate transformation.

Now how can one go about doing that?

1. Firstly to improve stakeholder experience an omni-channel can be created to procure goods and services from anywhere, while giving real time status for the same.
2. Similarly a balance portfolio of sourcing and P2P service offering is necessary, to build the procurement as a service portfolio.
3. Insightful analytics can be achieved by creating a center for excellence and using predictive forecasting to soften risk.
4. And to finally achieve complete transformation, find the best mix of suite and niche solutions.