A recent survey conducted by Amazon Business with 250 B2B buyers and procurement professionals found that 91% (nine in 10) prefer e-procurement over traditional purchasing.
The report, published by Amazon in mid-2021, shows how digital transformation is the key topic for most companies and most of them are transitioning to a more online approach as 85% of buyers were forced to move their procurement processes online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
But although this implementation of technologies for procurement happened for some companies in an anticipated way, the report also found that 96% of the professionals intend to keep purchasing online even after the pandemic.
This means that the efforts to digitise procurement are worthwhile, as organisations are seeing the benefits it can unlock within their operations and help achieve new areas of growth.
Other results highlighted by the report show that 50% of the professionals said that they are now fully digitised, 45% had streamlined the purchasing process, and 34% said they had focused their spending on specific suppliers that were bigger partners and more strategic.
Priorities for the next few years
The report discovered that it was harder for smaller companies to "catch up" on remote work culture and technologies to enable a 100% online and remote routine for their employees. But even these smaller sized companies plan to keep investing in digitisation and will have this as their top priority.
Meanwhile, 42% of companies with an annual revenue larger than $250m already have a fully digital purchasing process.
The reality can be different for most companies, but there's no denying that investing in digital technology seems to be the priority for procurement over the next few years with a need to improve efficiency, data accuracy, cost reduction and governance.
The Amazon survey also asked what the main goals were for companies with 40% responding that it was increasing efficiency and 34% saying their focus is on reducing costs – two priorities that can be directly impacted by the implementation of e-procurement and as discussed in a previous article, for procurement leaders, agility maybe more important than costs.
After those two priorities, 39% of buyers cited that making procurement more sustainable was their main goal and 35% agreed that diversifying their supplier base was the focus for the next few years.
Achieving a diverse supplier base can be done with the help of procurement platforms that can cultivate supplier relationships and better manage their data, along with being able to easily access the data gathered from purchases made with them, no matter how small the value.
Lastly; when thinking about many organisations aims to achieve green and more sustainable procurement practices there's no secret: one of the most important steps is investing in technologies that can help monitor improvements whilst highlighting possible risks and events before they become a problem.
Get in touch to find out how Maistro is helping organisations digitalise their procurement process and gain valuable insights and control across the supply-chain.
