Technology is two faced
Technology is two faced- innovative or disruptive. We all feel it, but sometimes can’t find words to describe it. Procurement is the best example to define it. Once considered as an expense for any company has now become a huge savings opportunity.
Keeping calm and quiet is not necessarily pushing the world forward. And here comes the opposite attitude. Technology brings the excitement, helps look into the future and makes us brave enough to try to shape it.
Albert Einstein said once, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
In the 15 or so years since procurement technology first made its way into procurement departments, the results secured have been remarkable: frequent double-digit savings in both direct and indirect categories, new process efficiencies, higher procurement contract compliance, dramatically lower savings leakage — and the list goes on. All this is happening not only because of a technology driven just for procurement but also because people adapting to such changes.
The best part about procurement technology is its flexibility and scalability. Flexible because you can create a solution based on the challenges faced by you, a solution created and implemented in your office based on your requirements and scalable because you can measure big numbers and data which was lying unused and not in a proper systematic way.
With technology developers stepping in just a few years later to automate tedious, complex and expensive procurement processes and to solve large business-intelligence problems for procurement and supply management, strategic elevation of the function has continued to grow and proliferate worldwide. It has spread from developed into emerging economies, and from very large, multinational corporations to mid- and smaller-sized companies and also to institutions of government, education and healthcare.
The whole idea is not about the choice between using and not using technology. The challenge is to use it right. It is bad procurement policy for any organization to unilaterally lock itself into one set of technologies for that matter just depending on ERP.
