PROCUREMENT IN THE DIGITAL AGE what European experts thought . The key for him was to get “ more empirical data to work with ” about what the differences are to allow SAP Ariba to best facilitate the varying requirements across different geographical regions .
Vollmer explains : “ Our feeling basically was that a lot of German CTOs and procurement executives , and supply chain executives on the finance side , were a little bit reluctant in terms of moving to the cloud , addressing systems and thinking about the future of their organisational setup and we wanted to bring this into the discussion .
“ I ’ m asking people all the time ‘ what are you doing today to respond to all the digital trends we ’ re seeing and what they might mean for your organisation ?’
“ Operational tasks , for example , are becoming more and more automated , so you don ’ t need employees to necessarily sit on two screens when , say , the left screen has a scanned invoice and maybe you have a menu of purchase orders on the right screen . On our platforms , you put in the information and the system does this in a better way than a human being can do it .
“ And that is far from the most exciting task when it comes to procurement or an accounts table . Therefore , I was thinking about ‘ how do you prepare yourself for the future ?’ The organisational readiness , the process readiness , as well as the systems you are investing in … And then , how we are going to transform procurement to ensure that you stay relevant in the future and that you will have a seat at the table of the business .
“ Other CTOs were not really working intensively on these topics , they were waiting to see how things developed rather than arming and preparing themselves for the future .
“ From my understanding , it ’ s absolutely key that procurement needs to become more strategic and more embedded within organisations , and this means focusing on supplier innovations , risk management , sustainable supply chain , etc . These are the kind of areas that supply chain needs to focus on more and more , especially with the smaller organisations . That ’ s exactly where I think procurement needs to be now to be ready for the future .”
With that in mind , Vollmer feels that procurement is now at a fork in the road in terms of how
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