Zycus is pleased to present its Pulse of Procurement 2014 report on the state of procurement performance and technology. The research is part of an ongoing Zycus initiative to comprehend enterprise procurement challenges and best practices around the globe. The report is compiled with inputs from 300 plus procurement executives with varied demographics.

Having begun this research series back in 2011, we are now able to look beyond current snapshots into emerging trends as enterprise strategic procurement functions continue to evolve and gain in maturity.

Some of the big observations from this year’s study are:

• The rate at which corporations seem to be minting new enterprise strategic procurement groups has come to a virtual standstill over the past 2-3 years. This may signify saturation for procurement strategic transformation or simply reflect a shift in C-Suite attention away from defensive to more offensive business priorities as economic recovery continues. Either way, CPOs who wish to continue expanding their spheres of influence may need to change or raise their games.
• Procurement organizations continue to advance in placing additional spend under management, obtaining compliance to preferred supply contracts and saving money for their companies, but a majority still lingers in the lower performance tiers for cumulative cost-savings delivery and many are still encountering barriers in the big transition from occasional to more systematic types of performance wins.
• Investment in procurement process automation and information technology persists with solutions such as Contract Management and Spend Analysis nearing ubiquity. Nonetheless, procurement pros say their overall technology profiles are far from ideal, with most looking for greater integration among solutions in order to yield higher quality, more synthesized and predictive business intelligence.
• High-performing procurement organizations show notably stronger technology adoption, use and utilization rates than lower performers.

We are greatly excited to observe that, after many years of intense focus on fixing old problems, procurement appears to be moving into a new phase — characterized by innovation — in which information gets transformed into competitive business intelligence, sourcing and procurement activities become more forward-focused and predictive and the scope of procurement’s performance contributions expands into many areas beyond purchase costs and process efficiency.

The report looks into

• Procurement pain areas for 2014
• State of procurement and performance benchmarks
• Procurement technology trends
• Technology impact and wish list

Watch out for this space as we analyze the report findings.