SAP’s New Year wishes for the procurement solutions and services marketplace 2022

Continuing our series of New Year wishes (rather than ‘predictions’) for the procurement, supply and services market for the year ahead (read more about it here), which runs from mid-December to early January, we are hearing from expert tech and service providers. At the end of our series our analyst Bertrand Maltaverne will wrap up with his own take on the key themes that emerge. Wishes are published in no other order than when they are received through our digital letterbox.

Today let’s hear an array of voices from enterprise software for business operations and customer relations specialists, SAP.

If you are looking for procurement technology to help with your wishes for 2022, try out Spend Matters TechMatch℠ to benchmark and shortlist providers 

Wishes for 2022:

Jeff Collier, Chief Revenue Officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

It has been nearly two years since the pandemic began wreaking havoc on the world’s businesses, exposing the fragility of linear supply chains and the need for a more networked economy. During this time, many businesses have changed their view of procurement from cost watchdog to that of a strategic enabler. As we enter 2022, many procurement leaders are tasked with aligning every spend decision to their overall corporate strategies. To best deliver on this responsibility, these professionals will need an integrated view of total spend across the enterprise and deep into their supply chain. This level of visibility will enable the necessary information sharing and collaboration needed to contribute to stronger business benefits, including better inventory management, more predictable lead times, alternative sources of supply, stronger supplier compliance and, of course, continued cost savings.

Vish Baliga, Chief Technology Officer, SAP Fieldglass Solutions, SAP

As global markets continue to face unprecedented labor shortages across industries, businesses will see an increased need to master external workforce management and maximize talent utilization. Tapping into contingent workers and service providers will continue to gain momentum beyond the pandemic as businesses are realizing the benefits – improved productivity, agility and resilience, reduced costs, increased access to quality talent and flexibility. With an estimated 70% of executives anticipating they will hire more temporary workers and freelancers over the next two years, external workforce will remain a top priority across organizations. With this comes the need for leaders to have complete visibility into their usage of external workforce to make more calculated, timely decisions about who is doing the work, at what cost, where and for how long. Digitalizing and automating external workforce management processes and improving visibility will help companies reduce inefficiencies and gain the most value out of its flexible resources.

Paige Cox, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Network, SAP

2021 has been the year of supply chain disruption. People who have never heard the term supply chain before are now talking about it as everyone is experiencing stock shortages in stores and lack of availability of the holiday gifts we had planned to buy. Recent events like Covid and Brexit have shown that traditional, linear, fragmented supply chains no longer work, and no business can do business alone. Companies will look to move beyond enterprise-centric systems toward those that are designed for cross-company transparency and collaboration. A digital network approach can transform fragmented supply chains into unified, collaborative, intelligent networks for supply, logistics, asset management, and service. With tighter collaboration between trading partners on a trusted network, companies can better anticipate shifts in supply and demand, deepening their competitive edge in the face of profound disruption.

Baber Farooq, Head of Market and Solution Strategy, Procurement Solutions, SAP

If 2021 has taught us anything, it is that even the best of predictions failed to anticipate some of the challenges the world has seen. What did occur though was that procurement organizations moved away from simply managing and optimizing processes to becoming pivotal in solving critical business problems. In 2022 procurement professionals should be bold in embracing this mandate and propose solutions that help companies navigate troubled, uncertain waters. Creative procurement solutions can address some of the biggest challenges businesses continue to face today: managing supply shortages, rethinking a globalized supply chain, leaning on a vibrant external workforce in the face of the Great Resignation, and focusing on working capital at a time of increasing global inflation. My wish is for procurement to be bold and re-define traditional paradigms to tackle these challenges.

Thanks to all the people at SAP, and look out for more solution and services provider wishes/predictions over the next few weeks, with an overall take on the series from our analysts at the end. See more vendor predictions and wishes here with our analyst commentary from last year.