PwC's Digital Procurement Transformations - What's the key to get to true benefits!?

How time flies; it’s almost the end of January!  One of my team’s 2020 resolutions is to share our experiences from working on numerous digital procurement system implementations across the country.  I have the honor to share our first edition for the year (or decade!). Stay tuned from other brilliant minds on the team on a monthly basis!  

Current trends in digital procurement system implementations 

Digital procurement systems are becoming more broadly adopted across public and private sectors globally. Traditional approaches these implementations have focused solely on the “go-live.”  This siloed mindset neglects unfortunately how these efforts truly deliver their full potential benefits.  

Have you seen implementations like these: 

• Sourcing and contract modules being used for electronic transmission of attachments only, where data is not really captured in the systems to enable automations such as scoring and detection of deviations from approved contract clause, to name a few… 
• Procurement activities not being connected to negotiated commercial terms and associated product / service catalogues which ultimately leads to benefits leakage from category management and strategic sourcing efforts

...So how do you avoid being one of these examples? 

Leading approaches to digital procurement system implementations have shifted towards business-led transformation enabled by technology with an emphasis on engagement of end-users (e.g. consumers/end-users, procurement professionals, executives, and suppliers) throughout the design and implementation cycles.

These approaches recognize that the environment in which end-users interact with these systems has to be taken into account to diagnose and address potential barriers to adoption (aka realizing benefits). 

For example, a field worker who often initiates a purchase request, or requisition, may need to be enabled with mobile technology that is intuitive, provides easy access to available product and service catalogues. This empowers the field worker with the “easy button” to get the right product that is compliant with the standards, with negotiated rate and commercial terms with preferred suppliers. 

That same journey for a Project Manager who works out of their home office and needs qualified contingent workers to support deliverables for their project is fundamentally different!  For one, that interaction is likely to be on a laptop and will need to allow the Project Manager to define the skill sets they need. Making sure the workers engaged pass through all security measures are likely critical as well.  

Engaging your end-users to understand the nuances around these journeys is critical to help you design the required differentiated experiences!  After all, streamlining of the procurement process should really be viewed as an enabler to more effective delivery processes for your organizations!  

When thinking about how to best understand and design for these journeys, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who are my targeted user groups, and how will they react to this implementation? 
2. How do these users interact with the procurement process today, and what will that look like in the future? 
3. What external stakeholders will I need to engage with and do I have a strategy to engage with them?

Please tune in again next month as our team shares more lessons learned from our work across the country. Over to you Ajay!