PROCUREMENT STRATEGY frustrations and , eventually , people leaving for environments where they can have the best tools . Professionals seek the type of cultures where they can best express themselves professionally . Tools save time from robotic tasks , freeing time for humanto-human collaboration , insights , planning , value-adding work and strategic thinking . BE : It is important to have the right performance indicators to shift procurement culture and drive value out of it ; employees must be held accountable for targeted performance . It is even more critical to think of procurement as part of the whole integrated process , which starts from the end-user identifying requirements until finance pays received supplier invoices .
Technology is also a critical enabler of procurement ’ s shift towards being a datadriven , value-creating function . As an example , the use of an AI application to extract bills of quantities from over 400 scanned contracts at one of our clients increased procurement ’ s productivity , enabling the extraction and classification of data with minimal human intervention . This use of technology allowed procurement professionals to concentrate on more value-adding activities , such as sourcing strategies , rather than the tedious task of manually extracting data .
“ WITH THE DRIVE FOR VALUE THROUGH PROCUREMENT , PROFESSIONALS ARE EXPECTING TO UPSKILL THEIR ANALYTICAL AND NEGOTIATION SKILLS , AS WELL AS TRAINING ON SOURCING STRATEGIES ”
DR . BASHAR ELJAWHARI CONSULTING PARTNER AT PWC MIDDLE EAST procurementmag . com 57