As organizations continue to face the challenges from the pandemic, the outlook of the procurement industry has emerged more vital than ever. Increasing pricing pressures, changing industry regulations, consumerization, and other factors have made procurement practitioners rethink and reassess their business strategies. A common question that may arise among procurement leaders today is ‘how they should manage the right balance between business value and risk while improving customer experience.’
Common Procurement Challenges & How to Overcome Them?
Procurement leaders wear multiple hats as they need to manage several roles from vendor and supply chain management to needs identification and more. Let’s cover some of the typical procurement challenges faced by organizations, both large and small, and solutions to overcome them:
- Need for Visibility of Realized Cost Savings
Businesses of all sizes need their procurement department to consider realized cost savings as one of their primary objectives. L&D leaders are now focused on delivering effective procurement solutions to ensure the visibility of realized cost-savings which leaves a direct impact on the bottom line. A trusted managed learning partner can adopt an ROI-driven approach, enabling organizations to have a clarity of their cost-savings during the entire procurement process- from identifying savings and coordinating with suppliers to risk mitigation and invoice management.
- Need for Transparency
It is essential to create transparency and visibility of costs, risks, and operations in procurement. L&D sources must incorporate AI technology to undergo predictive analysis to address and mitigate risks using collective data. They must also collaborate with suppliers to design a new framework for effective planning and executing strategic business goals. Automating the entire process through AI may help procurement practitioners to create transparency and visibility.
- Need to Become More Customer-Centric
With the changing business scenarios, customer needs have also evolved. For procurement practitioners, customer-centricity remains at the forefront in every aspect, whether people, processes, or systems. L&D sources can reach procurement partners who can add value to their business. Customer-centric procurement can help companies to transform by:
- Taking long-term decisions that benefit customers as well as organizations
- Focusing on managing risks and mitigating costs by leveraging digital technology
- Setting benchmarks for continuous improvement
- Delivering scalable on-demand solutions to achieve measurable outcomes
- Need to Change Status Quo and Manage Risks
Today, procurement is considered an agile business function to drive innovation and transformation while embracing risks and digitizing existing models to impact the bottom line. Procurement leaders have always handled methods revolving around cost efficiency and risk management. But moving ahead in 2022, they need to become the champions of innovation and digital transformation. Leaders need to take calculated risks that will ultimately drive business change and optimize growth. For this, procurement teams must partner with startups, suppliers, stakeholders, and other partners to embrace innovation and drive change.
- Need to Adapt Technological Changes
Today, many organizations are adopting new technologies through sourcing and purchasing to keep data in place for the procurement department. Two-thirds say their existing operating model is designed more on data and less on experience. As per a recent report, 68% of procurement officers automate processes with IT applications, and 59% extend digital procurement tools to suppliers and stakeholders. Also, at 59%, analytics was seen as the most influential technology over the last two years[1].
Today, procurement leaders consider technology and automation as the two significant aspects that can boost overall business efficiency. They are replacing manual tasks with digital technologies, thus creating more value for suppliers, partners, and customers.
Why Do You Need a Trusted Managed Learning Services Partner?
During these uncertain times, most organizations are relying on an external managed learning services partner to enable business success. They collaborate with a trusted partner to seek optimum quality services, cost-effective training, and other processes. It is important for any learning organization and their procurement function to choose a reputed partner that caters to their evolving business needs by adopting an outcomes-driven strategy and an innovative mindset. Do you know how can a trusted learning services partner help? Here’s how:
- By centralizing your L&D functions and managing diversified business needs on a global scale
- By enabling continuous improvement of business processes through adaption of new technologies, innovative methodologies, and outcomes-aligned approach
- By introducing capabilities and showing expertise to the learning organizations
- By managing multiple suppliers and streamlining different business processes
- By adopting customer-centric solutions to tailor custom needs driven by digital transformation
Wrapping Up
With the current business changes, the procurement function’s role has evolved more than ever. Procurement leaders play a pivotal role in business success by building fruitful supplier relationships, disrupting the status quo using new technologies, and leveraging AI and data analytics for making better decisions and ensuring sustainability. L&D sources that collaborate with procurement leaders can gain an extra edge through greater customer focus, risk management, and improved agility to drive business transformation.
So, here are the two essential questions you must consider:
- How to enable your L&D teams to partner with procurement function?
- How can procurement leaders adopt new technologies, create transparency, and create a customer-centric experience to drive business outcomes?
