Why Procurement Process Orchestration is Going to be Big in 2024

Is this the missing ingredient for procurement tech adoption?

Hey Procurement Legend,

There are a few big-ticket items I’m bullish on in 2024, and I will be talking about these over the next few weeks.

The first is Procurement Process Orchestration.

Why?

My number one is the removal of complexity from procurement for everyone who interacts with procurement.

The procurement industry is on the brink of a significant shift.

The most notable of these is procurement orchestration.

This innovative approach is reshaping how we think about procurement and its role within businesses. It promises to revolutionise the industry and alter forever how procurement is conducted.

I think…

Process Orchestration Defined

I feel like people know what process orchestration is to some degree.

Process orchestration is effectively a process-driven approach whereby we integrate all the ways of work across the business into the procurement process.

Ultimately, it is only possible to do that with tech.

There's absolutely no way you can do it without tech. You might attempt to use no-code integrators across your disparate apps, but if you’re reliant on Microsoft Office, you’ll only update a Spreadsheet.

So process orchestration is a new model of procurement technology, and it has been gaining traction for a couple of years. I've been following the space for two and a half years now when I started talking to some CEOs in that space and seeing what they're up to and doing.

I remember looking at Zip back in 2020 and thinking that it could be an incredible solution when I was still a practitioner, which led me down the orchestrations/spend control rabbit hole. But it was too early to use it for many of my stakeholders at the time

And almost everyone's heard of the key players in the space from Zip, ORO Labs, Tonkean, and Omnea. There are many others (sorry if I didn’t call you out here; just drop your name in the comments), and I’ve recently spoken with a UK startup in this space that could be onto something incredible.