The Market Speaks: Procurement practitioner requirements and the tech vendor response — JAGGAER

Spend Matters constantly updates its understanding of the state of the procurement tech market via RFIs for our SolutionMap dataset, vendor interviews, global event attendance and product demos with the aim of keeping tech-selection decision makers ahead of market trends. But we also endeavor to grow our understanding of the wants and needs of the customers using that tech – the practitioners.

In one series of interviews this summer and through to the end of the year, we are talking to vendors about what their customers really want from them and how they are proposing to address those needs. In a second one, we are talking to the end users about their expectations and requirements.

This week we’ve spoken with Georg Rösch, VP Direct Procurement Strategy at cloud-based business automation suite JAGGAER to find out what the firm is hearing directly from its customers and prospects in terms of their current priorities.

What are the challenges and asks of your customers?

It’s an exciting, yet challenging, time for procurement teams. Economists expect interest rates and inflation to stay high this year, which increases the pressure on procurement to cut costs. Growing concerns over geopolitical risks and supply shortages are raising the expectations for supplier risk management. While money and risk reduction will always be top priorities, procurement’s influence is expanding to ESG and other strategic initiatives, which elevates its role within the organization and enables the function to have a direct and positive impact on our world.

Procurement organizations are managing all these initiatives while working with leaner teams due to the ongoing talent shortages and layoffs. We’re hearing from companies that their teams need tools that help them get more done and enable them to deliver results fast across all their responsibilities and focus areas simultaneously. Many procurement organizations still describe their commerce processes as highly manual and cumbersome. They say their teams spend their days deep in the weeds of core processes instead of on high-value activities. Given the breadth of asks on procurement teams, the tools and approaches teams currently rely on need to fundamentally change.

What is JAGGAER doing to address these customer challenges?

We address these needs through our Autonomous Commerce strategy. At its core, the self-governed and AI-enabled commerce experience offers companies a way to source more efficiently and cost effectively, reduces risks and boosts diversity and sustainability. We unite buyers, suppliers and partners on a common, cloud-based platform where everyone is credentialed, onboarded and ready to transact. We augment and enrich customers’ data with historical performance, cost and service levels, ESG capabilities, risk and more. The system sources the best candidates to participate in the bid process, from a product, capabilities, pricing and company values standpoint. This ensures companies work with the suppliers that meet their expectations for ESG, and that everything the organization buys is at the lowest possible cost while still meeting other strategic criteria.

We also automate many of the time intensive and manual processes that plague both the buy- and sell-side. Our goal is to make buying enterprise products and components as easy and fast as shopping online. By reducing the friction across the end-to-end source-to-pay (S2P) process, buyers and suppliers are in a better position to collaborate, innovate and support each other where it matters most. Both sides get time back to focus on the work that matters to them, their businesses and the world.

We’re helping procurement teams and suppliers completely rethink the way they do things across S2P. As the economic outlook remains uncertain, there’s no better time to break free of the status quo than right now. A strategic and thoughtful change could be just the thing to help you weather a storm and come out stronger on the other side.

Many thanks to JAGGAER. We’ll be talking to more vendors next week – check back in then.

To help you with your tech selection challenges, Spend Matters offers vendor analyses as part of its Insider membership, providing independent and in depth tech selection tips across all procurement categories.

TechMatch helps you understand how the capabilities you need match your technology provider.