In early March 2020, Wakefield Research led a survey for Tealbook-Research with procurement leaders in which 96% of them agreed that focusing on agility is more important than cost savings for their companies’ bottom line in the long term.
The survey was conducted with senior procurement leaders and sourcing executives in companies with yearly revenues of $200m or higher.
There's no denying that a solid data foundation is a key factor to ensure good results, meet strategic goals and bring innovation, but around 3 in 4 procurement leaders have as their top concern or are somewhat concerned is that the lack of supplier intelligence and insufficient data could directly affect their ability to take fast and smart decisions – especially during the pandemic.
The importance of accurate and real-time data
Most leaders worldwide realised that in order to become more competitive in the market, and overcome the effects of COVID-19 or other disruptions, their data foundation needs to be adequate and strong, as around 41% of them realised halfway through the pandemic that their supplier data was mostly inadequate, which means that decisions had to be pushed back, gathered from outside sources and made without clarity.
A low-information environment with no access to real-time data can put the entire supply chain at risk and every step becomes a challenge, and as the report showed: "procurement leaders often find themselves using information they know could be out of date. Just 54% of procurement leaders have real-time access to supplier data—a critical disadvantage in a world that, as COVID-19 has shown, can shift quickly and present new challenges requiring the most up-to-date data available."
When times become volatile and prioritisation is more important than ever, having the agility to read through the right data and take the correct decisions makes all the difference. Being proactive is the way to maximise suppliers results and protect the business from future issues.
Accurate data information is so critical that most procurement leaders agreed that they need to improve their supplier intelligence and address the issues with the lack of agility they faced during 2020, a year in which the ones in position to leverage supplier relationships to drive innovation were in advantage.
And now, in early 2021, 199 out of 200 procurement leaders that were part of the survey for Tealbook-Research said that they are already implementing or are planning to start big improvements on their supplier data and intelligence – the need to do it now shows how urgent making this investment on data improvement is, as 92% of the companies admitted that COVID-19 made them become more strategic and bring their plans on data improvement from the future to the present.
And in the long run, 96% of the procurement leaders agree that being agile is more important than cost savings for their companies'. When data is robust, the disruptions on the supply chain for the lack of information become minimised.
To understand how Maistro releases the data trapped in the tail to produce better and smarter outcomes, book a call with one of our specialists.
