2020 Procurement Predicaments and Predictions — Part 1 (Series Wrap-Up)

As the first month in 2020 is drawing to a close, the holiday season is a distant memory and sleeves are being rolled up in earnest. As such, we’ll wrap up the Spend Matters analysts’ 2020 procurement predictions series for PRO subscribers as we look forward to this new year and new decade. We’ll first do a quick recap of our predictions in six procurement technology areas:

* Sourcing, by analyst Magnus Bergfors
* Supplier Management (SXM), by Magnus Bergfors
* Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), by analyst Nick Heinzmann
* P2P (Procure to Pay), by analyst Xavier Olivera
* Services Procurement, by analyst Andrew Karpie
* Procurement Analytics, by analysts Michael Lamoureux and Pierre Mitchell, the series editor

For a discussion of problems in each of these areas, see the analysts’ non-subscription posts about the predicaments per category.

In this PRO brief, we’ll address some of the foundational platform elements and broader market shifts that are happening regarding areas such as low-code/no-code platforms, open source, AI, bots, mega-vendor ecosystems, microservices, analytics and other areas. These digital capabilities aren’t just happening in a vacuum, but rather, responding to:

* buyer needs for increased agility, innovation and market options to move at the pace of broader digital business transformation, but also more focused procurement needs for better analytics, supplier engagement, commercial excellence, category intelligence, etc.
* supply market changes as M&A and an influx of private equity is chasing new opportunities — especially related to AI and specific areas that are still decidedly problematic, such as services procurement, tail spend management (and guided buying), category-specific functionality, master data management and other areas.

So, in keeping with our series, let’s dive into the forecast scenarios where we think the market will respond to these buyer needs/predicaments.