Autonomous Procurement - what do I need to know for me and my business?
- Lizzie Black
- September 1, 2021
We’ve heard of RPA, AI and automation.
But there’s a new kid on the block that’s gaining status. Its name: Autonomous Procurement.
The latest whitepaper from Jaggaer, ISM, ABBYY, EdgeVerve and Tableau provides a practical guide to autonomous procurement to guide procurement professionals and their companies towards a successful digital transformation with better tools to help them remain competitive.
What key picks did we find from their advice?
The Golden Triangle of Digital Transformation
- People
- Process
- Technology
Having the right balance of people, processes and technology contributes to a healthy implementation of digital transformations in organizations to maximise efficiency, adoption and ROI. These assets can be overlooked; when embraced with innovation, companies will witness themselves moving forward towards a positive future as they find new ways to deliver more value and better experiences for customers, particularly as digital transformation are set to accelerate over the next 5 to 10 years.
At ProcureTech, we recognise that the ‘golden triangle’ has been a cornerstone for transformation for a number of years and we also typically incorporate mission, performance and partners into the transformation mix.
We’ve distinguished between the different types of ‘digital’ before. Yet now, Autonomous Procurement defines itself as the pinnacle of digital transformation, where its main intention is to automate repetitive, ‘low-level’ tasks to leave more time for strategy, suppliers negotiations and relationships or other value-adding activities.
‘Autonomous procurement is built to augment people, not replace them’
What steps are involved to achieve Autonomous Procurement in an organization?
The whitepaper provides a streamlined guide as to how organizations can achieve Autonomous Procurement, which is not a process that happens overnight. This process requires time, money, patience and trial and error to help ensure data, implementations, processes and people are all in place for an easy and successful transition.
- Automated procurement – This is a level where the majority of organizations are at today, by using automation such as RPA for simple tasks
- Augmented procurement / intelligence – These are systems learning from human feedback to provide better insights and recommendations over time for one or more specific tasks.
- Intelligent procurement – Built on cognitive intelligence, these intelligent tools learn from human interaction to formulate recommendations and replicate human behaviour.
- Autonomous procurement – By combining digital procurement + autonomous intelligence, this is something we will see from 2025 and beyond! 🔮 What does this mean? Autonomous Procurement learns from humans to adapt its behaviour and cognitive abilities, as well as learn and adapt to new tasks and situations like a human expert would. It’s a mindset shift: some functions might be better suited to a machine, whilst other are better for people
People are tempted to skip steps, but this results in failure. Think about the value of the Golden Triangle and build your foundations first. Ease employees into it so they understand why a change was made.
Remember, a digital adoption is full time effort that will not happen overnight, which needs commitment. As data is built up over time, use these as actionable insights to guide your company towards it next step.
Takeaway questions:
- Will this investment in Autonomous Procurement help achieve core business objectives?
- Why does it need to be done this way?
- What impact will this have in the long run?
- What is the ROI?
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