In 2021 Argon & Co surveyed a group of 200 procurement and finance professionals within the UK, France, Germany and the US on a range of topics within procurement, from the pandemic and Brexit to technology and sustainability.
eProcurement became the latest buzzword of the business world around 2014, hailed as a cure-all for the procurement industry’s many ailments. However, technology is not the solution it was thought of four years ago during the rise of eProcurement. In 2017, over 70% of survey respondents said that investment in technology until 2020 was a priority. Although four years on technology coverage was still relatively low, despite over two thirds of respondents seeing value in these technology systems. Possible reasons for this gap between ownership and sentiment include:
- Budget constraints especially when considering the strain that COVID-19 put on profit margins and budgets making technology investment low on the list of priorities for businesses
- There is no single key “procurement” technology, and different companies benefit from different systems, depending on their processes, strategies, teams, structures, and cultures, among other factors
While the adoption of technologies in procurement has been slow almost every procurement leader will, at some point, have to implement an eProcurement solution. The ones that will be successful will be the ones who can both articulate what they’re implementing and the value it brings and then deliver that value after go-live.