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 them shaping the year ahead.
This 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 we hear from Atul Vashistha, chairman and CEO of Supply Wisdom.
Businesses need to prepare for supply chain problems
In the new year, early warning alerts for risk with a focus on location are a must-have business essential.
It’s been almost a full year since war in Ukraine started back in February of 2022, but global business impacts are still popping up as we enter the new year. The question on everyone’s mind; why haven’t we prepared better?
There’s no excuse in 2023, businesses have learned their fair share of lessons. Businesses will invest in technology that enables them to spot the earliest indicators of risk and automate actions for mitigation. More specifically, the top priority will be monitoring the locations that serve as the nexus of a commodity’s supply chain, starting with businesses creating an internal repository of all third parties, their suppliers and their locations for catching those early risk indicators.
Proactive mitigation and preventing cascading risk to this degree is a matter of continuity and resiliency – not simply risk management – to the point where businesses won’t work with a supplier without this level of protection.
We also hear from Muhammad Alam, President and Chief Product Officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.
Improving supply chain resilience
During the last two years of continuous disruptions companies were forced to realize the necessity of supply chain visibility. As companies shift to building more proactive strategies, they will make plans to adopt new technology for the purpose of achieving such visibility, helping them build resiliency within their organization. User experience will also remain a top priority for companies, allowing employees to accomplish the tasks they need across their spend management applications. As we look ahead, data insights and intelligence will also play a significant role helping end users do their jobs more effectively to deliver more value to an organization. Skill shortages will remain a concern amongst many industries. However, finding, onboarding, developing and retaining talent is what’s going to differentiate the successful organizations from the ones that aren’t.
Thanks to Supply Wisdom and SAP for being a part of the series, and look out for more insights for the year ahead.
If you need to find the right procurement technology and provider for your business needs next year, Spend Matters “Procurement Technology Buyer’s Guide” and 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.
