You Want Procurement Success? Put the Horse Back in Front Of The Cart – Webinar

The following Blog was written by Colom Colbert, guest panellist in the May 21st Market Dojo webinar; Evolution Before Transformation: How Procurement Will Best Leverage Digital On-Demand To Achieve Real Change.

The webinar will focus on providing you with a practical and in-depth roadmap to transforming your procurement practice regardless of where you are on your digital journey.

Click the following link to reserve your seat today.

A short time after I joined the Procurement team in my company, my new boss made a request; take us from procurement 1.0 to 2.0.

Considering that we were, as a company, a year removed from a merger that brought together multiple legacy systems, the prospects of such a request did not promise an easy undertaking. I remember my boss commenting at the time that our real starting point wasn’t procurement 1.0 but 0.5.

At this point one might immediately turn to technology as the driving force of procurement transformation, and why not. Digital advancements have put incredible computing power at our fingertips promising results within weeks if not days as opposed to months and years. But there is often a big gap between technology promise and said realisation, that has little to do with the technology itself.

The Cart Before The Horse

There are no shortages of empirical references to eProcurement initiatives that have failed to deliver the expected results. Of course, such disappointments do not solely apply to the automation of the procurement function. The fact that a recent IDC report referred to a large number of companies who after making a move to the cloud repatriate their data back to their traditional IT infrastructure gives testimony to this fact.

So is there something wrong with the technology?

The simple answer is no! The issue is leading with technology, or more specifically introducing technology to a procurement environment that is not mature.

As the below graphic illustrates, before you introduce technology, you have to have an internal alignment of “Policy, Process, and Systems.” When there is an alignment of these three key areas, you are then ready to identify the part of your procurement practice in which you are feeling the most pain and for which a technological solution will deliver the greatest benefit.  

In taking this approach, you are in essence putting the horse back in front of the cart. You will also be creating a foundation for procurement excellence that will set you in the right direction towards the meaningful transformation of your procurement practice. Or in my case procurement 2.0.

Now I do not want you to think that achieving procurement excellence comes down to a simple three-step process and voila you are there. There are numerous checks on the list, with many do’s and don’ts along the way, that quite frankly I cannot sufficiently cover in a single blog post.

For this reason, I am very much looking forward to sharing more with you about my journey and the specific role that Market Dojo played as a contributing partner in our company’s success.

Join me as a guest panellist in the May 21st Market Dojo webinar; Evolution Before Transformation: How Procurement Will Best Leverage Digital On-Demand To Achieve Real Change.

The webinar will focus on providing you with a practical and in-depth roadmap to transforming your procurement practice regardless of where you are on your digital journey.

Click the following link to reserve your seat today.