How Procurement Orchestration is Revolutionizing the Source-to-Pay Cycle

In many organizations, the role of procurement is not merely limited to monitoring costs. Instead, the function is now expected to contribute to more strategic goals including risk mitigation, sustainability and strong relationship building with external partners. 

Increasing Complexity in Procurement

With all these added responsibilities, procurement is likely to become increasingly complex. 

In fact, 90% of procurement leaders expect increasing complexity in sourcing and procurement in the next two years, according to a Gartner report. This complexity comes from the systems, data and processes.

As the function’s responsibilities continue to increase, decision-making also becomes more complex, making it harder for the team to take fast and informed actions.

Again, 70% of organizations are prioritizing data and analytics as a top procurement investment by 2030, states the same report. This makes data and analytics the number one investment area, followed by generative AI and sustainable procurement. 

The key point here is that we don’t need more data, we need better insights to drive decision-making and actions, says Alex Zhong, director of product marketing at GEP in this webcast.

The Gartner report also suggests that 40% of sourcing activity is likely to be conducted by non-procurement staff by 2027. 

With more casual users engaging with procurement systems, there is a need to provide a smooth and transparent experience while ensuring procurement compliance at the same time.

Organizations across industries are facing significant challenges in the current state of procurement technology. 

Systems are siloed, with data scattered across multiple platforms making it difficult to gain clear, actionable insights, says Zhong. 

Even when data is available, inconsistent and misaligned processes result in delays and inefficiencies.

Procurement teams are also burdened with manual tasks that need to be automated. All these time-consuming tasks slow down the process and result in