Monthly Top 5 - June 2023

Dear readers,

I hope you’re well.

I don’t usually include a whitepaper in the top 5 unless it is really good (they can get quite salesy). My test is always: “Does a Procurement professional get actionable insight from the read?” When the answer is yes, I’ll consider it against everything else on the chopping block that month. Well, this month 3/5 items on the list are whitepapers because the quality was so dang high.

In other news, I’ve restarted recording on the Pure Procurement podcast. I’m trying a new format called “Source-to-Pay Office Hours.” The concept is simple: I take questions from listeners about Procurement transformation and Procurement systems and answer them live. Here are the first 2 episodes in this format:

• Episode #8 - S2P Office Hours: Supplier Relationship Management & S2P Deployment Plans

• Episode #9 - S2P Office Hours: Supplier Due Diligence & Using Your Existing Technology

You can also follow via Apple, Google, Stitcher and Spotify. I’ll record 10 episodes in this format go from there based on feedback. If you appreciate the format, content and want me to keep going, do let me know! You can also submit your questions HERE to be featured on an upcoming episode.

As always, I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I enjoy the writing.

Have a great month,

Joël

Top 5 Source-to-Pay Articles - June 2023

#1 - 2023 Deloitte Chief Procurement Officer Survey

The yearly Deloitte CPO Survey has become the gold standard of Procurement whitepapers. It’s always such a treasure trove of information to help CPOs set their priorities. It’s also well sourced. This year, “nearly 350 senior procurement leaders from more than 40 countries” participated in the survey.

If you have any of the following priorities, have a read to see what leaders are doing to achieve them (or ‘orchestrators of value’ as Deloitte calls them):

The biggest barriers for Procurement organizations trying to move these priorities forward is conflicting priorities, talent capacity and the talent gap.

When reading this, it is clear to me that leading organizations (those who are able to deliver the most value) prioritize ruthlessly and cultivate talent internally. The survey team confirms on the talent dimension:

This only scratches the surface of the insights in the report but give you a taste… Full report below.

2023 Global Chief Procurement Officer Surveyby Deloitte

#2 - It’s Difficult to Prioritize Without Quality Data

In the following report, we get a sense of why the conflicting priorities identified in the previous report are hard to manage… Many organizations either don’t have good data on which to base decisions or don’t trust the data.

That’s why I always recommend that spend cubes and spend analysis tech should be the highest priority item on your digitalization roadmap. You need to be driving with the headlights on to know where you are going.

While the stats provided in the report are about the As-Is (e.g., nearly 75% of respondents doubt the accuracy of the data they present) rather than benchmarks to help justify a business case, it is still a useful read.

From Insights to Impact: Driving High-Performance Procurementby SpendHQ and Procurious

#3 - How to Build a Business Case for Supplier Diversity

Contrary to the previous whitepaper, this one give you a framework to develop a business case for your supplier diversity initiatives that leverages the following value levers:

• Increased savings

• Workforce attraction and retention

• Winning new business on the sales side

• Risk reduction

• Compliance

• Social license to operate

• Innovation

• Greater collaboration

Full report at the link below.

Making the Business Case for Supplier Diversityby Procurement and Supply Australasia (PASA)

#4 - Gartner’s Procurement Transformation Report

Gartner is currently working on a Procurement transformation survey and report that seeks to give organizations the tools to be successful in their transformation initiatives (expectations are through the roof!). This is not a new topic but is very much still a nut that needs cracking as the organizational transformation failure rate has remained steady at 80% for the past 20 years…

Gartner defines Procurement transformation as [a fundamental change to how the function performs its responsibilities or a big change to what its responsibilities are]. In his Q&A article, Tom goes into the details of the study with Ryan Tandler who is leading the study at Gartner to get more details about what will be included.

Results will be out in October and you’ll get a free copy if you participated as a respondent. Otherwise, you’ll have access to this report through a Gartner subscription.

The survey link is at the top of Tom’s post.

Functional Transformation in Procurement - We Can Do So Much Better.by Tom Mills at Procurement Bites

#5 - How to Think About Generative AI

The Generative AI bubble is slowly deflating to proper levels after the initial hype period of the last 6 months. As we wrap our heads around how it works and how we can apply it to different Procurement use cases, one thing is clear to me: quality data remains the key success factor required for any sort of meaningful results.

I personally think we won’t see widespread adoption of generative AI in the business world until we can co-mingle a large public data set with a small contextual private data set. But that’s a topic for another time…

In the meantime, Anders does a great job in the following article of laying out how you should be thinking about the core components that will give you results when good opportunities to leverage generative AI come your way.

What to Consider Before Making Generative AI a Part of Your Procurement Strategyby Anders Lillevik at FocalPoint