While legal, healthcare, and marketing are benefiting from advancements in cutting-edge technology, procurement still has to take baby steps before it can use AI, Blockchain or Chatbots, according to new research from Ivalua.
Alex Saric, Smart Procurement Expert at Ivalua, says "AI can be the catalyst for procurement transformation, with clear use cases for processing data, driving automation, creating actionable insights, and informing strategies to augment procurement and supply chain operations. But poor-quality data will limit the insights produced by AI. Organisations need to walk before they can run, and this starts with digitisation."
The Ivalua research shows more than half (53%) of procurement and supplier management processes have yet to be digitised.
Saric says, "Organisations are wasting millions in staff time every year on manual processes. This is bogging teams down in low-value tasks, limiting their ability to focus on more strategic priorities.”
Additionally, the study reveals that half of procurement leaders (50%) think that the rate of digitisation within procurement is too slow, while 47% say existing procurement systems are not flexible enough to keep up with constant change and deal with market and economic uncertainty.
This is having a major impact on procurements ability to work on strategic tasks, as a lack of digitisation:
- Limits organisations ability to make quick, informed decisions regarding their suppliers (47%).
- Prevents organisations from tackling rising inflation and spiralling costs (46%).
- Makes it almost impossible to attract and retain the best talent (41%).
