Pokemon Go has changed the world — What Procurement can learn from it?

If you are a human who hasn’t banished himself to the mountains, I bet it would have been really difficult for you to not notice the frenzy that engulfed the world in last few weeks.

Yes! I am talking about the abnormally popular game called “Pokemon GO”. People all around the world have now taken up the challenge to “catch them all”, as they walk around their neighborhoods with their mobile phones pressed to their nose, searching for Pikachoo and Bulbasaur.

For those of you who still don’t know what I am talking about, Pokemon Go is a game that lets its players catch virtual creatures called “Pokemons” using their mobile phones.

The game sure did catch my fancy as well, as I started reading more about Niantic, the company which developed the game, I came to know it took approximately 20years to finally make something this big.

Not just big the game also happens to take ones perspective to a new level.

Earlier Nintendo was the owner of the Pokemon series. No one ever thought it is even possible to take a cartoon series and make a virtual reality game out of it.

The makers took 20 years to build the game but it took hardly any time for the people to adapt to it.

This brings me to a very important subject that I wish to address in this blog.

“Change” is something all of us are scared of and most of us don’t even wish to stop doing what we do normally.

But it’s only when you put time and effort to make something new, you see a whole new thing in front of you. I am trying to address the issue of “Change Management”here.

The procurement departments of organizations are like Nintendo who still don’t know that they need a change.

The manual procurement processes need to be developed and something revolutionary can only make its way when the procurement professionals realize that the age old systems are redundant and they need to develop processes and systems more robust and user friendly.