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3 Questions To Find Out If Your Company Is Ready For The Transition To Digital Procurement
For many companies, digital procurement is a key part of their business model. And for companies that haven’t yet gone digital, it’s no longer a question of “if” they’ll follow suit, but “when.”
The more important digital technology becomes in the business world, the greater the pressure on companies to start digitizing. In their Worldwide Digital Transformation 2019 Predictions, the International Data Corporation said that by 2020 at least 55% of organizations will be ready to digitally transform within the next several years.
Getting ready for this type of transformation involves strategic, organizational, technological, and financial preparation. A company-wide digital transformation initiative is something more and more organizations are going to strive toward. Today, though, we’re just going to focus on getting ready for the transition to digital procurement.
How’s Your Data?
Even the best digital procurement system can be crippled by bad data. The better your data management going into digitization, the more you’ll get out of your new procurement system. For example, a detailed spend classification system makes it easier to group similar purchases together and examine spending trends.
Digital procurement is going to make data collection and analytics much easier. You’ll be able to collect and process clean, accurate, and useful data with much greater success after going digital. But you’ll still want to lay the groundwork for good data management before digitizing. For more information, click to read our article “Understanding The Essential Role Data and Analytics Play In Procurement.”
Is Everyone On Board?
There’s often some resistance to digital initiatives. People may not agree that procurement is a priority when deciding which departments to digitize first. Others may have reservations about the impact digitization will have on how your company manages procurement.
As you’re getting ready to transition to digital procurement, it’s important to cultivate an environment that’s open to change and collaboration. You’ll also want to be up-front about how this will affect jobs. In many cases, process automation doesn’t take jobs away from real people. It just makes their jobs easier.
Are You Ready To Transform Procurement?
The biggest mistake companies make when digitizing their procurement is to simply turn the process they already have digital. Digitizing your existing process isn’t enough to create a better procurement system. You’ll need to start at the beginning and re-evaluate the whole procurement process.
If you’re not prepared to use digitization as an opportunity to improve the entire purchasing process, then you’re not going to see all the benefits of digital transformation. For more info, click here to Learn About The Most Common Mistake On The Road To Digital Procurement, Plus 5 Tips For How To Fix It.
Once you’ve answered all these questions and laid a solid foundation for the transition to digital procurement, it’s time to pick out a software system. NextProcess offers a reliable, user-friendly procurement system that’s easy to customize for your company’s need. Click to learn more about how NextProcess can help you achieve your procurement goals.
