New Year Insights for the procurement solutions and services marketplace 2024: Efficio

Spend Matters is publishing a series of articles about procurement, supply and services trends for the year ahead from expert tech and service providers in the market.

We are highlighting the customer demands, market movements and advances in procurement tech that are exciting the world of solution providers, how they expect them to shape the S2P landscape next year and how they plan to respond to them.

Our series runs from mid-December to mid-January, then our senior analysts will wrap up with their own take on the key themes that emerge.

In no order of preference, other than by the date they arrived in our inbox, today let’s hear from Simon Whatson, Vice President of procurement services and S2C solution provider Efficio. 

GenAI will offer procurement a springboard to leap ahead in various strategic domains

There’s no discussing procurement tech (or indeed procurement) in 2024 without discussing generative AI.

As with all business functions, generative AI will be a game-changer for procurement. It will automate and reduce the burden of administrative tasks – think data entry, document generation and basic vendor communications – freeing teams up to focus on high value-add tasks like strategy generation, problem-solving and relationship building.

For procurement in particular, this shift couldn’t have come at a better time: it coincides with a transition point where the function is evolving into a strategic powerhouse. For procurement teams that seize this opportunity, generative AI will offer a springboard to leap ahead in various strategic domains.

• Talent – With AI taking on the more administrative tasks, 2024 is the time for an increasingly business-critical function to tackle its talent shortage. Upskill your existing teams (a valued employee is one that will stay) and communicate the strategic work your procurement function does externally to attract fresh, strategically minded talent.
• Agility and resilience – Recent years have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of building a resilient function that can pivot and endure in the face of external shocks. Generative AI can monitor and analyse market trends in real time. This allows for rapid responses to disruptive events, building procurement into a proactive force that drives organizational resilience.

There are further ways in which procurement teams can achieve talent, agility and resilience that don’t rely on the latest technology.

Take team structures. We expect to see more procurement teams embrace a dynamic team set-up in 2024. Leading procurement teams are moving away from large, static teams and instead towards a smaller, core BAU team. This is supplemented by additional external skills and capacity as the required resource and capabilities fluctuates throughout the year.

Data is another key element. The procurement world talks a lot about data – but perhaps this doesn’t fully reflect the reality of how we deploy it. Although data often isn’t lacking, it isn’t always presented in a way that lets teams draw actionable insights. Procurement teams must find ways to make data available in user-friendly and meaningful ways (e.g. accessible technologies) such that the quality of content and data is continually improved through ongoing use and iteration. The procurement team that harnesses the power of data is a disruption-ready, high-performing one.

2024 represents significant opportunities for procurement teams to get ahead – so now is the time to start building up the infrastructure, processes and capability to do so.

You can read our in-depth analysis of Efficio’s solution here.

Read our senior analyst’s take on the key themes from the series here.

Access Spend Matters dedicated ‘Artificial Intelligence in Procurement’ page for more AI insights.

If you need to find the right procurement technology provider or service for your business needs next year, try Spend Matters TechMatch for a free rapid shortlist.

For granular analysis and comparisons of procurement technology solutions, subscribe to Spend Matters Insider.

As always, reach out to discover how Spend Matters can help with your new year commitments and wishes.