Continuing our series of procurement and supply chain related predictions for next year, we have gathered a variety of predictions from leading vendors in the procurement and supply chain space, and will add our own sprinkling of endorsement from analyst Magnus Bergfors in our own roundup piece to follow.
Today let’s hear what UK-based global procurement management solutions and systems consultancy State of Flux has to say:
Supply Chain as a competititve advantage
Global trade wars and supply chain uncertainty will drive organisations to restructure their supply chains and to have closer and more collaborative relationships with their suppliers. As countries become more inward-focused we believe organisations will leverage their supply chain for competitive advantage relying on supplier and supply chain nimbleness, innovation and resilience as key competitive weapons.
The importance of SRM Technology will grow
SRM technology will start to be seen as just as important as CRM – with 86% of organisations still using excel spreadsheets to manage suppliers and excel being seem as ‘the hacker’s tool of choice’ we predict that CEOs will start to look for SRM technology as a must have single data hub within their organisation, integrated to third-party data sources to ensure data is shared up and down the supplier chain. Organisations will be tested on how efficiently and quickly they are managing the quality, the volume and the sources of data.
Procurement must focus on supplier innovation
Innovation remains an untapped opportunity for many organisations, so enabling and harnessing supplier innovation will become an increasing focus for procurement, as a critical source of competitive advantage. The need to build an innovation funnel and pipeline, and to shorten go-to-market times – both with large strategic suppliers and niche providers and start-ups – will become a priority. Organisations will need to become adept at building a coherent approach between multiple internal business units and functions, and at developing metrics to track and report on the business benefits. We also believe technology will play a critical role in scaling supplier innovation, through automating activities and milestones, and providing a single data hub for companies and their suppliers to work collaboratively.
Thanks to State of Flux– and look out for more solution provider predictions over the next few days. It will make interesting writing for the end of 2020 to see which were most accurate!
Please note that the order of vendor predictions in this series is based entirely on the order in which they dropped onto our digital doorstep, nothing more.
