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

08/17/2023 By

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

In a 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, and to users about their expectations and requirements.

This week we’ve spoken with Tarek Alaruri, COO & Co-Founder of intelligent sourcing platform Fairmarkit.

What are the challenges and asks of your customers?

We’re seeing a huge push on cost savings and doing more with less. This is resulting in organizations changing old buying processes and having new candidates/involvement from the C-suite to help make change happen. You can buy a bunch of tools but without buy-in and effective process technology can fall flat.

Are you witnessing a shift in demand towards more ESG and supply chain risk capabilities?

This is something that differs by region. The focus is large in Europe but less so in North America. There is a lot of buzz around this and companies are springing up, but it’s less around actual technology improvements and more about moving things around via accounting. It’s exciting to see improvements in nuclear fusion and other industries that will lead actual change here.

What is Fairmarkit doing to address these customer challenges?

Fairmarkit is continuously investing in the bet we made in 2017: that AI and data will drive meaningful change in the supply chain. We continue to invest and ride the wave of automation by using corporations’ data which is increasingly being digitalized.

Many thanks to Fairmarkit, and 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.

Series
The Market Speaks
Topics
Digital Procurement