Monthly Top 5 - December 2024

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Hi Readers,

Usually, December is a slow month for Procurement content…

Everyone is wrapping up their year and running “best of” or “prediction” articles which leave the other topics high and dry… (I was very guilty this year… 😂)

However, this year, December was cracking! There were a number of great pieces of Procurement & ProcureTech content published since my last Top 5. I’ve tried to collect the best ones here.

I hope these are useful as you settle into 2025.

Onwards!

Every month, I comb through 1000+ articles across 40+ sources to bring you the best free procurement articles published that month.

I sort through the noise so you don’t have to.

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 📄 2025 Procurement Outlook Report (sponsored)

• 🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup: Episode 25-18

• 🔝 December 2024 Top 5

  • No. 1 - Is Procurement Smart Enough to Automate Procurement?

  • No. 2 - The ProcureTech Market in 13 Slides

  • No. 3 - An Executive’s Guide to AI in Procurement

  • No. 4 - We Always Forget About Suppliers in Digital Transformation…

  • No. 5 - How to Make your Procurement CV Outstanding

• 🎁 Get access to my links database

Let’s dive in!

Note: Some of the content above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.

🏆 Road to the ProcureTech Cup

The Journey Continues…

Join me this Friday, January 17^th at 12pm ET as Graphite Connect comes on show to demo their Supplier Management Platform.

Graphite Connect is working to drive business forward with secure, centralized data, and automated relationship management.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun:

Last Week’s Episode

Veridion was on the show last Friday to demo their AI-powered business/vendor data platform.

If you missed it, I’ve made ALL the replays available for you on YouTube:

What is the ProcureTech Cup? Start Here.

No. 1 🥇

Is Procurement Smart Enough to Automate Procurement?

It seems the rest of the c-suite is doubtful… 😵

It’s great to see a procurement trends report come out of a publication like The Economist (and with survey responses from 2,307 global c-suite executives no less).

This is an interesting survey-based report because the people surveyed are not CPOs… But rather other c-suite executives about procurement.

Here are 5 key takeaways to see if it’s worth digging further:

1. Procurement reporting is pivoting towards Chief Operating Officers (COO). In 2024, 44% of procurement teams surveyed reported to the COO.

2. Perceptions of procurement’s ability to manage technology and spend reflect poorly on the function. Only 32% of executives are highly confident in procurement’s ability to automate procurement and even fewer (16%) are highly confident in procurement’s ability to manage spend, compared with higher levels of confidence for other KPIs.

3. Procurement teams are seeking a balance between centralized and decentralized operating models.

4. Businesses look to reduce supply chain risk in the long term by prioritizing supplier diversification — a priority cited by 40% of surveyed executives.

5. Procurement’s success in digitalization increasingly rests on its ability to adopt and master emerging technologies.

And 2 quotes that stayed with me:

• “CPOs who did well are those who went and found new sources of supply or who focused on protecting revenues or margin, rather than focusing exclusively on cost.”

• “[We] also observed a rise in the number of CPOs presenting to their board of directors—another sign of increased prominence. That was very rare two or three years ago.”

Maybe we can stop talking about “that seat at the table” 😂

Across the Procurement-Verse: Changing Trends in the Procurement Function
by The Economist

No. 2 🥈

The ProcureTech Market in 13 Slides

James Meads has been working tirelessly over the past couple years on compiling easily accessible, free data on the ProcureTech market.

He recently released a 13 page slide deck with key stats on the ProcureTech market and it is GOLD. I’d be curious to know what the evolution looks like from 12 months ago…

Maybe he will cover it in his now weekly newsletter coming out tomorrow? 👀

Let’s see!

How Does the Procurement Tech Market Look Right Now?
by James Meads at ProcurementSoftware.site

No. 3 🥉

An Executive’s Guide to AI in Procurement

This report is a master class in relevance… In 10 pages, you get 28 AI-supported use cases for procurement across the entire spectrum (Spend Analytics, Sourcing, Contract Management, Procure-to-Pay and Supplier Management).

When any question about “AI use cases for Procurement” comes up in the future, this is the best “answer key” I’ve found so far. Look no further.

An Executive’s Guide to Evaluating AI (Beyond Just Generative AI): Use Cases and Adoption Strategies
by Spend Matters

No. 4 🏅

We Always Forget About Suppliers in Digital Transformation…

With many pieces of ProcureTech, supplier adoption is crucial to realizing the business case. I often see organizations underestimate what success entails…

In this article, we get a glimpse of what it took for a customer electronics company to be successful with its supplier network rollout.

Here are few excerpts to give you a taste:

• “[PO] confirmation rate has gone from 30% to 88% for those on the Network. But getting there was not easy.”

• “[Previously], it took 7 days on average for a supplier to get a PO. We chopped that down by 4 to 5 days.”

• “The chief procurement officer has been made aware of the 10% of suppliers not participating. It will certainly be a subject of conversation…”

• “[For supplier training], we took a “YouTube approach”. We created bite-sized videos. And we had visibility to who took training and who did not.”

How you rollout technology is often as (if not more) important than what you rollout…

P.S. Logistics Viewpoint had another excellent article this month: Potential Trump Regulatory Changes and Their Implications for Supply Chain Compliance

Supplier Onboarding is Core to a Digital Supply Chain Transformation
by Steve Banker at Logistics Viewpoint

No. 5 🎖

How to Make your Procurement CV Outstanding

I can sadly confirm what is stated in this article… Most hiring managers are reading your CV quickly and diagonally between other tasks… If you’re on the job market right now, you need to “play the game” and make your CV stand out.

Tom goes into details, with examples, on how you should:

• Ditch the professional summary for bullet points

• For past jobs: what you did, not what you were responsible for…

• Using specific numbers instead of percentages (specific to procurement!)

• Don’t “bury the lead” → Impressive qualifications and achievements at the top!

• Keep your CV to the shortest possible length while getting your message across

• Have interesting interests (if you add them at all)

These are all good tips I agree with.

Your CV is A MARKETING DOCUMENT. Treat it as such.

2 tips I would add to Tom’s list?

• The first triage step for a mountain of CVs is often automated… Ensure you have the key words from the job posting directly in your CV (change existing terms for synonyms as needed) to ensure a human reads your CV.

• Take the time to make it a visually appealing/beautiful document… If I have to psyche myself up to get through the document when reading, there’s an issue…

Check out My CV (and Make Yours Outstanding Now)
by Tom Mills at ProcureBites

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