Recent research carried out by Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has shown that if more businesses would embrace every day technology, for example online procurement and cloud computing, the economy could look forward to a £100 billion boost. With this being said, when it comes to boosting productivity, the digitalisation of the procurement process delves deeper than online.
Across the whole of the digital business world, departments are having to take a look at their key skills to improve the way they use data to improve their daily performance within the business. Teams who are in charge of procurement have the task of managing suppliers and ensuring that they are the best choice for the business, while also doing everything possible to reduce overall cost and boost profit margins. There is a slow shift towards supply chain and procurement being a key part of executive decision making, and becoming a central part of the way a business operates.
The ability to predict trends and outcomes using analytic software brings with it the chance to enhance procurement and produce the key insights needed to improve performance as a whole.
There are key areas that these kinds of predictions can assist, and these are compliance, spend, performance, supplier and category. In the past, any analysis would have been done retrospectively, however now that there is the chance for live data to be used to the advantage of businesses, this means that strategies can be adjusted as and when needed, rather than having to wait until the end of a project or period of time. The use of data in this way means that businesses have a real chance of standing apart from their competitors and gaining the edge that they need.
Leaders of procurement are currently attempting to find ways to deal with all of the incoming information without being overloaded. Automation brings with it the chance to use information to gain insights in exactly this way, so it seems likely that more and more businesses will try to achieve this level of automation.