October 2, 2024
A new poll from Ricoh Europe claims that people in both the UK and Ireland say they are are keen to use AI to automate workflows to improve productivity and job fulfilment, but the implementation of these systems is being hampered by their concerns about disrupting what are described as mission-critical operations. (more…)
October 2, 2024
A new poll claims that the vast majority (85 percent) of British SME bosses with HR responsibilities support proposals to give staff the “right to disconnect”, with 4 in 5 (80 percent) believing the Employment Rights Bill is a positive step forward for employees. The survey was conducted by Breathe HR to uncover sentiment towards new workers’ rights amongst bosses who will be steering through new rule changes at SMEs, ahead of the Employment Rights Bill being laid in parliament. This is expected to take place in the coming weeks, although the implementation of rule changes in practice may be delayed following pressure from certain business leaders. (more…)
September 26, 2024
In recent years, procurement has transformed from a back-office function to a strategic driver of business value. As global supply chains become more complex and businesses strive for greater efficiency, sustainability, and agility, the future of procurement is set to change even more dramatically. Technological innovations, data-driven insights, and a shift in priorities are reshaping the way organizations manage their sourcing, purchasing, and supplier relationships.
This article explores the future of procurement, focusing on the trends, technologies, and strategies that will define this critical business function in the coming years.
One of the most significant trends shaping the future of procurement is digital transformation. Traditional procurement processes, which were often manual and time-consuming, are being replaced by automated, digital solutions. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) are streamlining procurement workflows, enhancing transparency, and improving decision-making.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and process orchestration are transforming procurement by streamlining complex tasks and improving overall efficiency. As highlighted in Tonkean’s blog, AI can eliminate time-consuming manual work like managing approvals, chasing stakeholders, and navigating complex systems. The use of AI-powered orchestration allows procurement teams to unify systems, automate routine tasks, and facilitate collaboration. This leads to faster cycle times, better process adoption, and more time for high-value strategic work, ultimately positioning procurement as a key business partner.
Key Areas of Digital Transformation:
– Automation of Routine Tasks: Tasks like purchase order creation, invoice processing, and supplier matching can now be fully automated, allowing procurement professionals to focus on more strategic initiatives.
– AI-Driven Insights: AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify trends, predict demand, and assess risks, enabling more informed decision-making.
Impact:
The adoption of digital technologies will lead to faster procurement cycles, reduced errors, and significant cost savings. Procurement professionals will need to adapt to new tools and skills, such as data analytics and AI-powered decision-making, to remain competitive.
Data is becoming the new currency in procurement. With the vast amount of data now available through various channels—supplier data, market trends, and performance analytics—procurement teams have the opportunity to make more strategic decisions. Advanced analytics tools are enabling organizations to turn raw data into actionable insights, optimizing procurement strategies for cost reduction, risk management, and supplier performance.
How Data Impacts Procurement:
– Supplier Relationship Management: Data analytics can help procurement teams evaluate supplier performance, identify key areas of improvement, and foster stronger, more collaborative relationships.
– Risk Mitigation: Predictive analytics can forecast potential supply chain disruptions, allowing organizations to proactively manage risks such as supplier bankruptcies, geopolitical instability, or natural disasters.
– Cost Optimization: By analyzing purchasing patterns and market trends, procurement professionals can negotiate better contracts, reduce maverick spending, and ensure cost savings across the board.
Impact:
The ability to harness and analyze data will be critical for the future of procurement. Organizations that leverage data to drive decisions will be able to build more resilient and cost-efficient supply chains.
As consumers, investors, and regulators increasingly prioritize sustainability, procurement teams must align with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. This shift means that procurement will play a central role in ensuring that businesses source goods and services from environmentally and ethically responsible suppliers.
Key Areas of Focus:
– Sustainable Sourcing: Procurement teams will need to ensure that suppliers adhere to environmentally friendly practices, such as reducing carbon emissions and minimizing waste.
– Ethical Labor Practices: Ensuring that suppliers comply with labor laws, prevent human rights abuses, and foster fair working conditions will become a priority.
– Circular Economy: Procurement will increasingly focus on sourcing products that can be recycled, reused, or repurposed, contributing to a more circular economy.
Impact:
Sustainability will no longer be optional for procurement teams. To remain competitive and compliant, procurement professionals must prioritize ethical and sustainable practices in their sourcing strategies.
In the future, procurement will shift from a transactional function to one that focuses on collaboration and innovation. Instead of simply managing suppliers, procurement teams will work more closely with them to co-create value and drive innovation. This shift will require a new approach to supplier relationships, one that emphasizes trust, transparency, and mutual benefit.
Key Changes:
– Supplier Collaboration: Rather than viewing suppliers as vendors, procurement teams will treat them as partners in innovation. This collaboration can lead to the development of new products, improved processes, and shared efficiencies.
– Long-Term Relationships: Procurement will focus on building long-term, strategic partnerships with suppliers, ensuring that both parties can innovate and grow together.
– Innovation Hubs: Some organizations may establish innovation hubs or programs where procurement teams and suppliers collaborate on research and development, bringing cutting-edge products and services to market faster.
Impact:
Collaboration with suppliers will become a competitive advantage, enabling organizations to innovate, adapt to market changes, and deliver more value to customers.
As procurement evolves, its role within the organization will become more strategic. Instead of being seen as a cost-saving function, procurement will increasingly contribute to business growth, innovation, and resilience. This shift will require procurement professionals to develop new skills and capabilities, such as strategic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and leadership.
Key Areas for Strategic Focus:
– Procurement as a Value Creator: Procurement will move beyond cost-cutting to create value through innovation, risk management, and sustainability.
– Cross-Functional Collaboration: Procurement teams will work more closely with other departments, such as R&D, marketing, and finance, to align procurement strategies with broader business objectives.
– Leadership and Influence: Procurement leaders will need to influence key stakeholders and contribute to strategic decision-making at the executive level.
Impact:
The strategic elevation of procurement will lead to greater influence within organizations, enabling procurement professionals to drive business success through innovation, resilience, and sustainability.
Conclusion
The future of procurement is one of transformation and opportunity. As digital technologies, data-driven decision-making, sustainability, and supplier collaboration reshape the procurement landscape, professionals in this field will need to adapt and embrace new skills and strategies. By doing so, they will not only optimize procurement processes but also contribute to the long-term success of their organizations.
Procurement is no longer just about sourcing the best deal—it’s about building resilient, ethical, and innovative supply chains that drive business
September 20, 2024
When you fixate on deciding precisely how much time everybody has to spend in an office, somebody is going to decide the answer is five days. The peculiar obsession with pronouncing the answer to be two days or three days can be dated back to 2020 when a load of people who had never previously taken much interest in the matter decided to reinvent a world that had never existed, by replacing it with something that couldn’t exist. We invented hybrid working when we didn’t need to. (more…)
September 18, 2024
Have you ever attended a conference and been asked to gaze deeply into a stranger’s eyes for several minutes, standing just a metre apart in silence? No? Neither have I – until this September at the CoreNet Global Summit in Berlin. Gone are the days of handshakes and small talk. Today, it’s all about relationality, empathy, and hugging it out. For some, the summit’s emphasis on fostering human connections was a joyful opportunity to bond and share meaningful moments with fellow professionals. For others, it felt like being trapped in a never-ending therapy session nobody signed up for. (more…)
September 18, 2024
A new poll from CYPHER Learning claims that one in three workers would like to see AI banned from the workplace, while nearly half express concern that AI poses a threat to their future job security. The study, suggests that women, workers over the age of 55, and those in clerical or manual labour roles feel most at risk. The survey of 4,543 workers across the US, UK, and Mexico found that AI is reshaping job roles, with 63 percent of respondents reporting that AI technologies has already changed the skills required for their jobs. More than half of those surveyed (52 percent) believe that AI will either completely transform or have a major impact on their roles within the next two years. As a result, 38 percent of workers anticipate the need for retraining due to job obsolescence, and almost half (45 percent) are worried about their future job security. (more…)
September 17, 2024
Menopause is one of those things that until a few years ago, most of the population hadn’t heard of. Even if they had, it certainly wasn’t a workplace issue. Which is interesting as half the population will have one in some form. More specifically more than one in every ten people in our workforce is currently menopausal. (more…)
September 10, 2024
I was chatting to somebody last week about the person in the US who died, alone and ignored at a desk, unnoticed for over four days. Their instinctive and understandable response was to ask whether the story was apocryphal. Sadly, not. Sixty-year-old Denise Prudhomme had clocked into work at the Arizona office of Wells Fargo at 7 am on Friday, August the 16th. Her death some time that day went unnoticed until the following Tuesday afternoon, when a colleague discovered her body slumped over her desk in a cubicle. (more…)
September 9, 2024
New York accounted for a third of all leasing activity globally in the legal sector in the first half of 2024, says Savills, equating to over 1.4 million sq ft of space, out of a total of 4.3 million sq ft across the world’s 15 largest legal markets, reflecting its position as the world’s principal legal hub. Together, US cities accounted for 69 percent of overall H1 law firm office leasing activity in the world’s largest legal markets, reflecting the dominance of American firms in the sector overall, as well as the tendency for US legal offices to have a lower occupancy density and thereby requiring more space, according to Savills. (more…)
September 6, 2024
There’s a lot to be said for not being slaves to the clock and the screen. Ironically, the way we measure time has its roots in a famous instance of daydreaming. The story goes that in 1583 a young student at the University of Pisa called Galileo Galilei was daydreaming in the pews while his fellow students were dutifully reciting their prayers. He noticed that one of the altar lamps was swaying back and forth and even as its energy dissipated, the arc of each swing slowed so that each took the same amount of time as the last, measured against his own pulse. (more…)
September 3, 2024
Central London is showing steady progress in the return to a traditional working day, with workers spending more time in the office compared to last year, according to a new survey. The data, collected by Centre for Cities in collaboration with Savanta and Focaldata, claims that the average full-time worker in Central London spent 2.7 days per week in the office in June 2024. This marks an increase from the 2.2 days recorded in April 2023. (more…)
September 24, 2024
Did you hear the one about offices and creativity?
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
There is a famous episode of Seinfeld in which the character George is insulted in a business meeting and only thinks of a perfect retort while driving away from the office. This being George, he decides that he doesn’t want to waste his ‘killer line’ so engineers a second meeting so he can use it with the person who had insulted him, only for it to blow up in his face yet again. It’s an example of what the French refer to as l’esprit de l’escalier and the Germans as Treppenwitz, in both languages the wit you develop on a staircase.
It describes the phenomenon we all experience of having our best ideas when we stop trying to have them. When our mind wanders, and especially when the body is wandering too, it is free to have its own moments of insight and inspiration. And, contrary to the idea that structured collaboration leads to good ideas, when we are alone.
Unsurprisingly, there are good reasons why this happens. In his book The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, Professor John Kounios argues that our brains have essentially two ways of solving problems. One is analytical in which we use a rigid methodology to arrive at a solution. It is based on the frontal lobe of our brains that is responsible for attention, organising information and focus. The other is one where we experience a eureka moment in which an idea seems to pop out of nowhere.
His own insights into these phenomena are based on his research into what happens to the brain when it has ideas or solves problems. Using neuroimaging technology, he and his fellow researchers invited a number of research subjects to solve puzzles. What they found was that shortly before a burst of activity in the right temporal lobe of the brain indicating a moment of inspiration, the brain would shut down its own visual cortex which processes sight and perception.
Kounios and his fellow researchers compare it to the way we might close our eyes or look away immediately before a eureka moment. For a moment we become unaware of our surroundings while the idea flares into being. The brief change in function in the brain allows it to focus inwards and use the subconscious to make links between information it has stored and then present it to our conscious mind.
By contrast, when thinking methodically about a problem, the brain uses the frontal lobe to focus attention outwards to acquire as much information as it possibly can.
Eureka!
The process of having creative epiphanies is best served when we are not in a methodical frame of mind and ideally when we are not processing information in a formal way. That is why a walk in the park, a change of activity or setting or doing something routine like taking a shower are conducive to those aha moments. Sitting at our workstation in an office may be a great way of completing many tasks, but it is not necessarily suited to the creative spark.
Merely being in the outdoors or being able to perceive the natural world from our place in the office building can release endorphins and increase our feelings of wellbeing, putting the brain into the right frame of mind for an aha moment. Stepping away from a problem also gives the brain a chance to place less emphasis on its frontal lobe and allows the subconscious to intervene.
A study published in the Journal Psychological Science called Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation found that when we create the conditions in which our minds can wander, the brain makes connections between pieces of information unconsciously, massively increasing our ability to have revelatory insights and ideas.
We can achieve this by doing simple things like exercising outdoors, going for a walk or simply relaxing, by changing our behaviours but also by changing our surroundings. An office that encourages people to move and be aware of the natural world is not just good for physical and psychological wellbeing, it allows us to work in different ways that are best suited to the ways our brains function.
That includes moments of doing nothing in particular or sitting back or closing our eyes or simply walking up some stairs to tap the potential for creativity we all have hidden within.