Nail it, then scale it: Showcasing innovative digital procurement solutions for leading corporates
- Lizzie Black
- July 1, 2022
As part of the ProcureTech ACCELERATOR programme, we hosted our first Digital Procurement Innovation Showcase, giving innovative digital procurement solutions a unique opportunity to perform demos for corporates and attendees.
The session was full of insights from procurement leaders at Roche, Fidelity and Walmart, where they shared their experiences on how innovation is transforming procurement and breaking down barriers.
User experience matters
During the Showcase, Marielle Beyer, Head of Global Procurement at Roche, talked about Digital Procurement Transformation, Open Innovation and Trends. She discussed the role of digital innovation and partnerships at Roche, and how they go hand in hand with strategy when there is a smart operating model.
“When leveraging digital tools for value adding properties, consider: who are you doing this for? Who is your audience?”
In the end, it helps create a wonderful user experience (UX). She notes there needs to be a material amount of investment in digital adoption in order for the ‘magic’ to happen. Teams can be more flexible with the resources they have, spend more time co-creating with customers and continue to add value to their customer segment.
“There is a lot of innovation out there, but it has to all work together.”
Digital solutions can be an enormous enabler to becoming customer-centric and help make life easy for procurement practitioners and the business. She revealed how organisations need to be able to transition and make the shift for the workforce to drive change and implement digitalisation. What is your plan when you’ve freed up work capacity?
“We still have master data problems that we’ve been trying to solve for at least the last 20 years! It’s the same problem for a lot of places.”
Building on from UX, Marielle emphasised you have to put yourself in the shoes of the end user and think about solving their issues with the right tools, to make the mission a success.
Innovative digital procurement solutions
Selected from 100s of digital solutions, 5 innovative digital solutions shared how they are solving corporate challenges, and progressing from pilot to successful digital procurement partnerships on the ProcureTech ACCELERATOR. Zylo, Kore.ai, ProcessUnity, Cirtuo and Lhotse Analytics provided demos of their solutions, where they have been working with the corporates to help solve their challenges through co-creation.
‘Digital is a fundamental enabler’
Patrick Foleck, Head of Strategy & Transformation Procurement and Head of Professional Services Procurement, shared how Roche’s procurement function is often referred to as an ‘enablement function’. He explained that digital is a fundamental enabler, where it ties in to managing customer expectations and addressing needs they have, in order to provide the right UX with ‘great technology that drives useability’.
Chris Stevenson, Head of Global Procurement at Fidelity International, spoke about the importance of culture and where an organisation is at in its digitalisation journey.
“Some people aren’t incentivised in the same way to make a change.”
This means using an integrated approach, by looking at how the solution matches the corporate’s vision, roadmap and operating model. How does it complement what you have instead of sitting separately?
Furthermore, he stated that user acceptance is critical, and pace matters, as some stakeholders inevitably react differently.
Travis Johnson, Senior Director, ISM Procurement & Technology Enablement at Walmart, broke Procurement and Sourcing digitalisation down into 3 key steps to achieve great success when scaling innovation:
- Early adopters are a foundational part for driving change
- “We need to nail it and then scale it” – executing the pilot to get value
- Measuring and tracking adoption. Are we scaling and exploiting the technology in a way we need to?
What next for the future of digital procurement?
Sign up for the ProcureTech Sustainable Procurement ACCELERATOR!
Check out the ProcureTech ACCELERATOR, the catalyst for smarter stronger digital procurement partnerships. Here, you can submit corporate challenges and innovative digital solutions as part of the next 7-week programme.
If you’d like a recording of the event or to find out more about the ProcureTech ACCELERATOR programme, email us at hello@procuretech.co
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