I changed Procurement Tech roles
I was AWOL - sorry!
Hey Procurement Legends,
I’ve been reticent for the last 4-6 weeks.
I’ve been wildly busy with non-work and work-related activities.
I just saw one of my all-time favourite bands, Foo Fighters, in London.
I was also ankle-deep in mud at Download Festival.
BUT.
Two things:
I’m working through my second bout of Covid in 4 weeks. Seriously! It’s 2020 all over again.
I took a new role on at Gatekeeper. I’m now responsible for everything Product Marketing. Building out a function is never an easy task, so I’ve been in the clouds and the weeds figuring the focus there. In short, this is how any brand positions and talks about its products to get interest from the right people at the right time.
However, I wanted to share two insights with you about the Procurement Tech market that have been on my mind the past few weeks.
I’m still testing out many of these thoughts.
Connectivity from Procurement tech solutions to the wider tech ecosystem will be the norm in the next 24 months. Process Orchestration as a category has gained initial steam, but I do see this as potential table stakes for many solutions moving forward.
AI: Yeah, I’m going there. The prominent use cases for AI right now are Extraction of data and accessing data to tell you stuff. I love these use cases. I'm genuinely excited by them. But I don’t see AI as the differentiator in technology solutions. I’m also going to massively tamper my optimism on AI's impact on teams. The more I live in this space the more I see the need for procurement pros with expertise and generalism. Teams may become a bit leaner, but I do not see them getting as lean as I initially thought.
I’ll be back from next week with the regular weekly email and sharing insights from my rather unique position of being a form Procurement and Contract Management pro now on the Dark side of marketing and sales in a procurement and legal technology company.
Daniel