TECH & AI
Boston Consulting Group : Digital Procurement
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sort through those paper invoices . It can identify problems and automatically resolve them with no humans involved .”
Kilpatrick was speaking to Harvard Business Review , as part of its paper called Digital Optimization Paves the Way to Strategic Supplier Management , which explores the supplier management challenges facing organisations , and the benefits of adopting the right technologies . It was sponsored by Amazon Business , which offers solutions that not only manage bulk purchasing and approval workflows , but also generate data that provides actionable insights .
The rise of Amazon Business in this area is a sure marker that procurement is becoming more heavily invested than ever in digital processes .
The need for procurement to be more strategic has forced the hand of many organisations on digital transformation .
Matthew Rose , Procurement Transformation Practice Lead and Partner
at KPMG UK , says that in the early days of this trend , technology enabled organisations “ to run leaner headcounts and focus the available talent on higher-value tasks ”.
He cites as an example the use of machine learning ( ML ) to automate the purchase-topay process .
“ The first wave of machines focused on repeatable high-volume tasks and lent heavily on robotic process automation and simple bots ,” says Rose .
But he says that now , automation and AI is increasingly being used for higher value-added tasks . “ This is illustrated by
94 November 2023