With all the uncertainty businesses are facing, you never know what the next crisis will be or when it will occur. It’s more important than ever before for companies to be able to quickly make informed decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information. However, many don’t have the ability to do so. Here are some key facts to know:
- 55% of procurement leaders say they have insufficient insights into supplier performance.
- 65% have no visibility beyond tier-one suppliers and have little-to-no understanding of underlying cost drivers.
- 48% have limited digitization or are underutilizing digital technologies and are unable to identify spend anomalies.
Smart procurement offers a solution to overcoming these types of procurement challenges.
What is Smart Procurement?
Smart procurement refers to a variety of different strategies as well as technologies like AI, data analytics, machine learning, IoT and robotic process automation used to automate and simplify complex and time-consuming procurement processes. Smart procurement doesn’t necessarily mean everything is put in the control of a machine, fully replacing a person. Human oversight is still required. It simply allows humans to do their jobs more effectively.
Smart Procurement Benefits
Simplified Operations
Analyzing data and turning it into meaningful actions can be extremely complex and it’s long been a major challenge in procurement. Very often, data is spread out across different systems and a lack of normalization between systems makes it difficult to use data to its full advantage. Things can get even more complicated for large companies that have sources of data located in different geographical regions.
Smart procurement solutions can simplify matters by taking all sources of data and making it available in one central location, which eases accessibility and arms users with the ability to make informed decisions. This simplification also increases transparency throughout the value chain, which facilitates the timely sharing of information and can help ensure the entire chain complies with regulatory requirements.
Opportunity Identification
With so much data available to access and work with, smart procurement can use it to efficiently identify new opportunities to help organizations save money or increase revenue. For example, smart procurement might help a business take advantage of early payment discounts or identify suppliers that could offer cost savings across categories.
Advanced Planning Capabilities
Planning ahead is a key risk management strategy and smart procurement can help businesses stay ahead of the curve. With access to real-time data, smart procurement can enable you to anticipate problems that could affect the supply chain and develop plans to reconfigure if necessary to avoid costly disruptions.
Value-Added Initiatives
Since smart procurement can be so effective at streamlining complex, transactional processes that are time-consuming to handle manually, they have the benefit of helping to free up procurement resources to better focus on value-added initiatives, like building better supplier relationships, and other strategic matters rather than mundane procedural tasks.
Smart Procurement Solutions
Driven by a commitment to helping customers achieve speed, transparency, connectivity and resiliency, Bristlecone offers smart procurement solutions for the connected supply chain. Our solutions help you thrive on change and can meet your needs today and well into the future. Interested in learning more? Let’s talk.
