Stop Trying to Find “The Best” Procuretech Solution

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Hi readers,

Last Friday was the first demo of the 2025 ProcureTech Cup season.

This new weekly show is the best way for procurement professionals to get exposed to "the art of the possible” in Procurement Technology.

In it, you’ll see procurement technology demoes but, more importantly, you’ll see the ideas, frameworks and principles from this newsletter come to life.

If you like reading this newsletter, you’ll love watching the show.

I hope you’ll join me on this new (parallel!) journey.

Onto the newsletter!

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 👨‍✈️ Tonkean’s Enterprise Co-Pilot (sponsored)

• 📋 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye

• 🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup : Episode 3

• 🌙 Stop Trying to Find "The Best" ProcureTech Solution

Let me know what you thought in the poll at the bottom of this email.
Your feedback shapes the content of this newsletter.

ICYMI 👀: My best Linkedin post of the week:
Standing up a new centralized Procurement department is crazy hard.... Here's what you need to know.

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🏆 Road to the ProcureTech Cup

This Week’s Episode

Join me as Creactives comes on the show to demo their material data governance, cleansing and enrichment platform.

I’m excited for the show to have some Italian flair this week! 🇮🇹 🇮🇹 🇮🇹 

Let’s do it!

Last Week’s Episode

Airbase demoed their Procure-to-Pay platform on the show last Friday.

If you missed it and want to watch the replay, pick you poison:

🌙 Sunday Night Note

Stop Trying to Find “The Best” Procuretech Solution

This title is strange coming from me, no? This newsletter is all about giving you the tools, frameworks and reflexes required to get the most out of ProcureTech...

But hear me out...

Depending on how you define ProcureTech, the consensus is that there are now 400-600+ ProcureTech solutions out there, trying to generate value for procurement organizations while vying for your technology dollars.

Even analyst firms, who cover this market full time, have given up on trying to cover all of them...

And yet, when I meet with new clients, most of them ask me:

This is the whole point of today's post...

Given the current state of the ProcureTech market, this is the wrong approach/question...

The right question is rather:

The difference is subtle but it makes all the difference…

The first question implies that you want to explore every available option, weigh pros and cons and make the optimal decision.

This is a fool's errand in a market with 400-600 solutions... The 'paradox of choice' will manhandle you and make 'paralysis by analysis' inevitable.

When on this interminable quest, you'll start feeling like you're going backwards...

The second question flips the dynamic.

To find an answer to the second question, you need to be clear on:

• Your objectives

• You strategy

• The required capabilities to execute on your strategy

Let's take a simple, cliché example to illustrate:

• You have a savings target (objective)

• You think allotting resources to having more sourcing activities run by the business in a "center-led/center-guided" model is the best way to achieve your objective (strategy)

• You need business requesters to develop the ability to run X sourcing events per year independently, while respecting your policies and business rules in order to meet your objective with this strategy (capability)

(The validity of this strategy can be debated in another note 😅)

Being clear on what you're trying to accomplish, you can then turn to the ProcureTech market and ask: "Hey - Who can do this for me?"

This makes market research much easier by making it binary...

• Yes?

  • Ok, show me what you've got.

• No?

  • Talk to you next time I'm developing a new capability.

And given the size of the market, you will absolutely find good candidates for most procurement capabilities.

If you don’t, that’s when you know you’re either in:

• True innovation territory (“world first”)

• Off your rocker because you’re trying to do something nobody else is doing

(The difference may not always be obvious 😅)

The old days of picking between the only 5 ProcureTech Suite providers that exist are over... You can (and should) have a “best of both” tech strategy.

This means the old “brute force”, “divide and conquer” market research approach is also out…

It’s time to seek out technology that will enable your strategies instead of having to settle for what the market can offer… Because it offers everything today…

Note: Just make sure you price risk into the picture (e.g. Is a ProcureTech market consolidation wave on the way?).

Am I missing any questions? Let me know in the comments below 👇

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