Lack of procurement investment blamed for companies’ slow innovation
Companies are at risk of losing out in the race for competitive advantage and innovation because they are allowing their procurement processes to become outdated, according to new research from Vertice, the SaaS and cloud spend optimization platform.
Vertice surveyed 300 global procurement leaders and discovered a correlation between an organization’s procurement maturity and the business’ overall commercial performance. Only 1 in 6 businesses (18%) have optimized their procurement processes – making them customized, transparent, automated and intelligent – and these organizations are seizing the competitive advantage by being 32% more able to implement new initiatives and 29% faster in bringing new products and services to market.
Meanwhile the remaining 82% of businesses – whose procurement teams rely instead on decentralized, reactive and manual procurement processes – all perform worse.
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Vertice’s report found that this problem is more acute in the US, where almost half of businesses (44%) are in the lowest maturity levels, in comparison to the UK where two-thirds of businesses (67%) are in the more advanced stages of procurement maturity with more reliance on automation, AI and integrations.
Despite the significant benefits that procurement maturity brings, many leaders are actively prevented from building high-performing procurement functions. 37% of respondents say that procurement is not seen as a strategic priority and 35% say their organization is not willing to invest in the skills to tackle the issue.
To help procurement teams accelerate their maturity and deliver strategic impact quicker, Vertice has launched Intelligent Workflows, a procurement orchestration tool built to simplify and accelerate purchasing processes, and ease the manual burden on busy procurement teams.
Intelligent Workflows introduces smart, pre-emptive decision-making into the procurement process – including automated pre-approvals and routing, and simplified but accurate compliance – and also granular control and visibility into every ongoing purchase, renewal and intake.
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Eldar Tuvey, CEO and founder of Vertice, said:
“Modern procurement teams’ roles are increasingly broad and complex. And in fast-growing or rapidly-changing businesses, procurement processes aren’t always keeping up – meaning procurement teams are finding themselves filling in the gaps manually. It’s a step back for procurement when the business is trying to make leaps forward.
“Intelligent Workflows is the boost these teams need. Our new procurement orchestration tool brings automation and intelligence to the purchasing process, by eliminating manual approval routing and re-routing, anticipating bottlenecks, and reducing the daily workload for procurement teams – all while improving control and speed of outcomes.”