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

For several years now, Spend Matters has been collecting and publishing a series of articles about procurement, supply and services trends for the year ahead from expert tech and service providers in the market.

This year we’re 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 we hear from Pierre Laprée, Chief Product Officer of SpendHQ, and Scott Macfee, CEO of SpendHQ, have to say:

More companies will buy versus build procurement solutions

Companies will continue to leverage the evolving procurement-solutions market, rather than struggle to marshal internal and external resources to develop in-house solutions that aren’t scalable or sustainable. Procurement teams will benefit from advancements in hybrid data models that merge public, market and proprietary data and enable them to benchmark their performance against industry peers while protecting intellectual property.

Tapping the solutions market will also enable procurement teams to focus on recruiting and retaining top talent for traditional procurement roles instead of the more technical roles that have been outside of procurement’s purview. Procurement can leave solutions development to the solutions market and focus on doing what it does best — driving financial and non-financial value to impact overall company performance.

ESG will be a key performance indicator — and driver

Mature procurement teams will increasingly track and advertise their contributions to their organization’s non-financial key performance indicators, especially environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures. They’ll demonstrate that it’s not only possible to drive concurrent financial and non-financial performance, it’s also what will define future procurement maturity, performance and success. Conversely, procurement teams that continue to focus solely on measuring and tracking financial performance indicators will struggle to climb the maturity curve that will only get steeper.

Winning organizations will win with procurement at the table

Organizations that will ‘win’ in the next decade will not only view procurement’s role as truly strategic, they’ll also elevate the business function and enable it to become an enterprise-wide value driver. By elevating procurement’s role within organizations, leaders will no longer view procurement as a ‘cost center’ that merely cuts costs and increases savings, but one that drives financial and non-financial performance across business units and the company’s supply chain.

As a result, procurement will no longer have to fight for a seat at the executive table — it’ll be at the table as a key decision maker for the future of the business. Given the current macroeconomic climate, corporations will continue to reap the benefits of procurement teams that drive maturity through technology that enables the execution of board-level strategic imperatives, such as driving ESG performance and avoiding or reducing costs.

Many thanks to SpendHQ for being a part of the series. You can read our Vendor Analysis of it here.

You can also read our senior analyst’s take on the key themes from the series here.

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.