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Critical procurement tech that will help you through Covid-19 – ProcureCon Indirect

08/20/2020 By

On September 3rd this year, Worldwide Business Research (WBR) will host its online ProcureCon Indirect event for procurement practitioners from all over the world. WBR has a 20-year history of connecting leaders to promote and share best practices and solve common business issues, and this year will be no exception.

September’s virtual event will focus largely on responses to the Covid-19 impact on business and the solutions adopted by heads of procurement from all industries, so you can benchmark your own strategies. Speakers will be discussing the unprecedented challenges to their procurement operations, and share with you how they have faced them. We will hear from procurement leaders, global supply chain directors, heads of corporate services, and company directors from corporates as diverse as Deutsche Bank, Costa Coffee, SKY, Heineken, Radisson Hotel Group and Airbus, among others. And of course, we will hear from industry analysts, like Spend Matters, who will be represented too.

Our VP of European research and lead analyst, Magnus Bergfors, based in Sweden, will be talking about the critical procurement tech that will help get you through the Covid-19 effect on your business. He will explore the types of tools that exist for different scenarios, like risk mitigation, supplier management, contract management, P2P, contingent workplace management, sourcing commodity management and so on, and help you discern which technologies are better placed to drive productivity and cut operating costs.

To this end he’ll be drawing on some of the essential research Spend Matters has been conducting to identify the technologies and their providers that can help you get a grip on the incidents that are occurring right now in businesses and the supply chain.

Spend Matters produced seven articles, each one featuring a group of solutions per scenario. Magnus will go through each one in some detail, defining some of the less obvious benefits you can derive from these mostly cloud-based tools, especially with regard to collaboration and virtual capabilities – essential in today’s working climate.

By way of example, if we look solely at specialised supply risk management solutions, we can clearly see how they fit with what’s going on in the supply chain today, as they are built to provide support in crises situations. But Magnus will highlight other types of solution in the same area which are a subset of the broader risk management space, so that you have a fuller picture of what is available and what is suitable.

Within supply risk management, he identifies three different groups of solution. Those that that can track product flows through a supply chain of affected nodes; those more specific solutions that look at the financial impact of the current climate or events on your suppliers and supply base; those that can help you monitor sustainability efforts (because we mustn’t forget that this will impact your supply chain in the longer term). He will also cite some of the key players in each area, drawing on intelligence from Spend Matters’ unique solution ranking tool, SolutionMap.

While this is quite a high-level run through of the providers, solutions and capabilities that will help you respond in times of crisis, the series on our website has deeper information about both the sample vendors and the solution areas. Start reading that here with Making Sense of Supply Risk Management Solutions, and join Magnus to learn more about Spend Matters’ findings.

The event is free to attend, and will be a valuable source of advice as we rethink how we work with suppliers, stay innovative, socially responsible, cost-conscious and demonstrate procurement’s value and influence.

Other presentations will cover how to:

  • Balance cost control concerns while maintaining your value add to the business
  • Re-evaluate your procurement strategies post Covid-19 to improve the commercial capabilities for your business
  • Revolutionise indirect procurement through increased data analysis to master spend analytics processes
  • Leverage the latest strategies, tools and technologies to mitigate disruption impacts

The event facilitates easy access for all time zones in Europe and further afield, and will run from 10am to 4pm BST, 11am to 5pm CET on September 2 and 3. The beauty of the online format is that you can dip in and out of sessions and subject matter as they appeal, and receive a recording of all sessions after the event once you have registered, which you can do for free here, and access the agenda here.