Nicolas Walden , Senior Director , Hackett Group , discusses the importance of investing in people when realising intelligent procurement practices
HACKETT GROUP :
SHOULD PEOPLE
BE AT THE TOP OF
CPOS ’ AGENDA ?
Nicolas Walden , Senior Director , Hackett Group , discusses the importance of investing in people when realising intelligent procurement practices
WRITTEN BY : GEORGIA WILSON
In today ’ s modern organisations , the procurement function is expanding . Merely a few years ago executives in the function were primarily focused on sourcing and contracting suppliers ; a much narrower , basic approach , with technology lagging behind many other functions .
“ We lacked that investment , and the investment that we did have was often in limited or difficult to use tools . We found that many procurement teams were actually resisting the use and the adoption of technology . But moving forward to where we are now , from 2021 going into 2022 , there has been a huge amount of investment . All
these startups , private equities , fundings , tens of hundreds of millions have gone into a whole raft of new modern tools with all these great new features and functionality and a majority of procurement functions realise that they really do need to accelerate the adoption towards these modern tools , right ? So it ' s a very big change to where we were from only a few years ago ,” reflects Nicolas Walden , Senior Director , Procurement Executive Advisory Membership Programmes , Hackett Group .
“ These days robots , AI and smart intelligence are becoming embedded into the features and functionalities of these platforms . So where are we going next ?
44 January 2022