ProcureTech hosted its 2023 Predictions & Purpose: a webinar revealing the way ahead for digital procurement as provided by the 2022 ProcureTech100 pioneers.
Joined by an expert panel of leading corporates, they discussed the 70+ predictions from the pioneers.
“We’ve invested in 3 joint ventures for closed loop recycling in Australia and Indonesia. The tracking and accountability that follows is key – it’s impossible to do without tech to support it.”
Vanya Petrovic, Director, Digital Procurement, Coca Cola Europacific Partners
The webinar elicited engaging conversations between the panel, each sharing their own experiences, successes and struggles of using and looking for the right digital solutions.
Separated into 5 categories.
Sustainability closely looks at how companies will need to focus on new solutions and practices in 2023. We asked them:
- What is going to share digital procurement in 2023 and beyond, and why?
- What is going to be most important for your category over the next few years, and why?
Even as economic uncertainty threatens resources and long-term strategic agendas, we see a not-so-distant future where sustainability is a consideration in every sourcing decision. Short-term pressures aside.
A thoughtful sustainable sourcing strategy is a competitive advantage—helping businesses ensure resilience, attract and retain talent, and generate new sources of value—even in times of uncertainty. Moreover, as Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act proves, governments are taking swift action to ensure companies no longer have the option of bypassing sustainability.
Ali Cohen-Mangold, Brand & Marketing Lead, Archlet
2023 will be the year of carbon reduction in Scope 3, driven by procurement.
As industries realize more and more just how much of their overall emissions are in Scope 3, it will become increasingly impossible to ignore this category. And at scale, this will only be possible with a digital solution.
Christian Heinrich, Co-founder, Carbmee
Sustainability remains a top priority, and much of the education and knowledge sharing has taken place.
In 2023, organisations will need to start implementing best practices and tracking their successes to report regular progress towards net zero. Continuing on the sustainability theme, conceptually circular supply chains are now well understood and organisations will launch projects that will encourage using refurbished, repurposed and recycled products. Not only will that support net zero aims, but will also help with the bottom line during slower market periods.
Ilya Levtov, Founder & CEO, and Seb Butt, Head of Global Business Development & GM, Craft
Procurement & Sourcing professionals will embrace the fact that they hold the currency of impact and the responsibility that comes with it.
This will have huge implications for the way technology can be used to leverage this responsibility in 2023 and beyond. 2023 is also the year when Sustainability progress ( – be it reducing carbon footprint or increasing diversity) will become an innate part of any Buyer – Supplier Relationship & Supplier Performance Management. Supply Chain sustainability will have to be managed rather than being tick in a risk and compliance box.
Malin Schmidt, Founder & CEO, Kodiak Hub
Boom in sustainable procurement
The SBTi’s third progress report, ‘Scaling Urgent Corporate Climate Action Worldwide’, shows that the initiative is “in a period of exponential growth”. This ever-increasing amount of global brands committing to time-sensitive, science based targets, means businesses are likely to focus more heavily on taking measures to decarbonize their supply chains. Businesses that don’t follow this path risk falling out of favour with consumers, customers and shareholders.
Action-led sustainable procurement
There’s a stronger feeling now, more than ever, that the majority of businesses want to take significant measures to address their impact on our planet. Data collection is simply not enough to do this – only digital procurement platforms that offer sustainable, actionable solutions can help them make inroads towards this goal.
Martin Chilcott, Chairman & CEO, Manufacture 2030
Increase in regulations related to sustainability and Covid will result in companies having to update procurement processes.
Lalitha Rajagopalan and Sudhir Bhojwani, Co-founders, ORO
New ESG compliance imperatives for monitoring ESG metrics, including supplier sustainability metrics, product carbon footprints (Scope 3) and human rights issues (due to emerging regulations, such as the German Supply Chain Law, EU Due Diligence/Corporate Accountability Directive and Uyghur Law), have become and will continue to be important.
Heiko Schwarz, Global Supply Chain Risk Advisor at Sphera and former CEO and founder of riskmethods (acquired by Sphera in October 2022)
Most companies will implement solution to Scope3 CO2 tracking.
Regulation and consumer pressure is forcing companies to understand their co2 footprint, and scope 3 is the most challenging part.
Today’s role of analytics is mostly to display insights based on data collected and enriched from various sources, requiring human interpretation and actions to carry value. In 5 years, analytics will drive actions directly by triggering events in operational systems and communicating with suppliers without any human intervention. This action-oriented analytics will not overtake strategic decision making by humans, but will take care of long-tail of decisions currently not worth taking, provides millisecond-level response times in the face of crisis, and helps humans make better strategic decisions.
This is happening as (a) there now starts to be wide enough data sets available for such analytics, covering both structured and unstructured data from internal and external sources, and (b) application of new advanced analytics technologies helps make sense of that data in scale.
Sammeli Sammalkorpi, Co-founder & CEO, Sievo
Digital transformation continues to be critical for both Procurement and Supplier Diversity programs specifically.
As support for supplier diversity continues to grow with business leadership, program managers need to find ways to operate more efficiently by leveraging external data sources and streamlined processes that scale. This is the journey many are on now, and will continue for the next few years.
Look out for the full predictions from the 2022 ProcureTech100 pioneers!
Want to make the predictions a reality? Contact ProcureTech to find out how:
ProcureTech StrategyLAB – Hot-house for your digital procurement strategy, operating model & roadmap
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