For several years now, Spend Matters has been collecting and publishing a series of articles about predictions and insights on procurement, supply and services trends for the year ahead from expert tech and service providers in the market.
This year is no different and we’ve framed the subject around “insights,” highlighting providers’ observations from the year they’ve left behind and how they see these observations shaping the year ahead.
Our series will run from mid-December to mid-January, then our analyst Bertrand Maltaverne will wrap up with his own take on the key themes that emerge.
In no order of preference, other than by the date they dropped into our digital letterbox, today let’s hear from Rujul Zaparde the co-founder and CEO of Zip, an intake-to-procure solution specialist.
Automation will be the hallmark of procurement in 2023
My insights tell me that forward-looking procurement teams will continue to lean into automation in the coming year to achieve greater efficiencies and increase their ability to scale. As purchasing becomes more decentralized, procurement professionals will simply be unable to handle the sheer volume of purchase requests and approval workflows without automation in the intake-to-procure lifecycle. Intake-to-procure solutions are critical for employees to easily initiate purchase requests and maintain ongoing visibility in the process for new software and services. Without automated systems, companies can face a significant backlog as well as overburden their procurement team with time-intensive, manual processes. The only path forward is automation.
Low-code and UX will be top of mind for procurement and B2B purchasing technology
In 2023, procurement and B2B purchasing technology vendors will need to prioritize low-code functionality and seamless user experiences to keep pace with the evolving purchasing landscape. As the volume of purchase requests and the complexity of approval workflows continue to increase, businesses need solutions that their employees actually want to use to initiate purchase requests. Otherwise, employees may ‘go rogue’ and bring on new software outside of the proper channels, which carries significant risk. Furthermore, the teams implementing procurement technology — finance, accounting or procurement teams — are often not technical professionals, which means any SaaS solution they choose to implement should require as little coding knowledge as possible or face significant IT backlog.
Thanks to Zip for being a part of the series.
Look out for more Spend Matters Insights for the year ahead over the coming weeks.
If you need to find the right procurement technology and provider for your business needs next year, Spend Matters “Procurement Technology Buyer’s Guide” TechMatch can help.
For granular analysis and comparisons of procurement technology solutions, subscribe to Spend Matters PRO.
And if you are looking for procurement services providers to help you with your 2023 decisions, look no further than our Procurement Services Market Landscape Directory.
