Tradeshift CEO appears on The Art of Procurement podcast
Christian Lanng took to the airwaves with Philip Ideson to discuss the future of software and procurement. The interview ranged from the early days of Tradeshift to machine learning. The most salient point to emerge was Christian’s belief that procurement as we know it is coming to an end. The below quote sums it up well.
“I don’t think that most large companies will have a back office in 10 years. I think that the idea you have a procurement department, you have all of these cost centers that are not contributing to the top line is just going to be gone. We are digitizing and automating our way out of most activities. Procurement has to become a strategic revenue driver, and if procurement resists, other people in the business will do it for them.” – Christian Lanng
So how should procurement professionals react? For starters, this is an opportunity not a death sentence. The strategic imperative of the role has been growing in recent years and the vision Christian paints is one where drudgery and manual tasks are largely automated. Instead, procurement will run advanced spend analytics and spearhead profit-charging initiatives.
This could be everything from using big data to uncover key suppliers and liaising between them and the product team in the earliest phases of design to liberating employees from the toil of expense reports. This utopian vision isn’t just on the horizon, many parts of it are here already. For the full interview, check out the podcast below.
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