Advertising cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners and help us to deliver personalized marketing content. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less relevant advertising.
Achieving procurement's strategic priorities in 2022
How do we do more with less?
Last year proved that the purchasing landscape would never be the same. Businesses are increasingly turning to procurement teams to keep their organisations moving like never before. Through the challenges of 2020 and 2021, we’ve seen inspiring examples of procurement teams that have worked tirelessly to support their employees to continue working, maintain business continuity, and provide much-needed supplies.
Procurement leaders will play a critical role in business recovery and growth that will happen in the years to come. As we look ahead to the rest of 2022, what should be the focus for these teams?
Managing procurement imperatives
Supplier risk management is now a key focus for the majority (74%) of procurement leaders1. Risk mitigation activities include testing supplier continuity plans, gathering more financial and operational data, and revisiting contract terms and conditions.
Mitigating supplier risks and expanding diversity-spending initiatives are just a few examples of procurement’s strategic objectives. Unfortunately, achieving these goals requires time that many procurement teams don’t have. Further, more than half (60%) of procurement leaders report greater cost savings goals compared to 20202. So as the old adage goes: how do we do more with less?
Gaining cost savings while achieving strategic priorities
Cost cutting and short-term reductions can impair your organisation’s agility, compromise performance, and affect your strategic focus. To be successful, procurement leaders must have a holistic approach to reduce costs while maximising business value.
One way to optimise costs is by deploying digital technologies that automate tactical work and generate insights from disparate data sources. This allows procurement leaders to:
- Identify new sourcing opportunities using big data analytics that evaluate internal spend and market data.
- Accelerate execution speed by enabling purchasing tools to process purchasing orders and reconcile invoices without human intervention.
- Increase savings rates by identifying opportunities to match prices across business units.
These capabilities can help procurement leaders make better data-driven decisions, reduce manual activities, and reinvest time and resources in deeper, more value-add initiatives for the organisation.
Contact us to talk about how Amazon Business can help your procurement strategy.
Sources:
1 Gartner COVID-19 Procurement Quick Poll, 25-29 May 2020.
2Gartner Peer Insights on Cost Optimization 2020.
