Procurement Trends to Focus on for 2025
Procurement teams and their supply chain will continue to navigate an existing era of change in 2025. Despite challenges ahead with global dynamics, evolving compliance requirements, and executive expectations – these are all new opportunities for growth and innovation in procurement.
CPOs prioritizing the many benefits of digital transformation and Cloud-led procurement software will find they will fare better than those relying on legacy systems. Modern day procurement professionals will therefore have a unique change to navigate and succeed in a rapidly evolving and disruption-prone world to drive resilience, efficiency, and strategic impact.
The digital transformation of procurement isn’t just a new reason to evolve, but to competitively differentiate with new abilities that focus on strategy and delivering greater value at the executive level.
Keep reading to learn the key trends procurement teams should be on top in 2025 to thrive and become strategic in the digital era – learn more in this blog.
1. The role of AI and Automation in propagating strategic focus
Many organizations and teams continue to rely on legacy approaches, with fragmented systems, siloed teams, poor data visibility, and minimal collaboration to boot.
Technology has come on leaps and bounds in recent years and AI and automation are presenting themselves as a key enabler of strategic tasks through the elimination of time-consuming manual processes.
Legacy systems rely on manual data processes, from data keying, consolidation, management, and analysis all requiring human effort. This can burden procurement teams with unmanageable workloads that leave little time to analyze data.
Procurement teams must create processes to analyze their data easily, data analysis being key for the forecasting, planning, and reporting needed for success.
Automation can help reduce manual tasks, for example:
- eRFx events can be recorded automatically when digitized, providing more data for procurement teams to analyze and improve their supplier relations
- When onboarding suppliers, data can be easily managed and most data consolidation tasks automated, increasing time allowance for analysis
- Contract templates can be pre-configures for compliance, increasing accuracy, but also reducing time spent on data consolidation
2. ESG remains a huge focus for procurement teams
A report from Baker & McKenzie found that 70% of an organization’s carbon emissions come from their supply chain, which are known as Scope 3 Emissions. Additionally, according to a recent Gartner Survey, pressure to deliver on sustainable procurement goals has increased or significantly increased for 83% of organizations.
Undoubtedly, for large enterprises there will be greater pressure to adhere to ESG compliance, and not just to measure Scope 3 Emissions efficiently, but develop plans to reduce them, and have the ability to report on this.
Digital solution like Scanmarket’s Carbon Accounting tool enables procurement teams to effectively monitor their Scope 3 Emissions, simplifies reporting, extend visibility of your supplier data, and support your entire decarbonization and sustainability journey.
Digital procurement software is a huge alleviator of the burden of work that ESG reporting compliance involves, not just from automating manual tasks, but providing procurement professionals the data and data management processes they need to effectively monitor and optimize these strategies for long term effects.
What will remain true is that an effective ESG reporting process will prove to be a competitive differentiator for large enterprises. Baker McKenzie suggests that 72% of business leaders now believe that a robust sustainability strategy can be a powerful differentiator in a competitive market.
3. Social responsibility continues to affect customer behaviour
Social responsibility, and subsequent Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DE&I) initiatives, are of top priority for the supply chain, and will have the largest effect on large enterprises whose social duty will be scrutinized more than others.
Not only does this come under the ESG umbrella, but even considered independently, social responsibility, and how the supply chain monitors these initiatives, will be under great scrutiny not just by investors, but by the public.
Procurement teams need to do more than simply form DE&I initiatives but need digital systems to report, monitor, and adapt these initiatives for true compliance, and to demonstrate true proactivity with reporting.
From an internal point of view, procurement teams need these digital systems to monitor spend and resources allocated to DE&I, to ensure they are allocating enough to these initiatives, but also so that they can manage resources effectively.
When empowered by data through a digital tool such as Scanmarket, procurement teams can:
- Set specific parameters that ensure you reach the suppliers you want, and not the wrong suppliers
- Integrate data to provide the visibility of current suppliers, helping to evaluate where initiatives can have the most effect and be optimized
- Analyze spend to monitor their progress towards initiative goals, ensuring they aren’t just agreed but can be financially qualified
Forecasting data will define success
Today’s geopolitical climate is an unpredictable one, but we can count on these events occurring, and having a large effect on the supply chain – forecasting data is becoming a vital driver of resilience and success among procurement teams.
While organizations cannot predict geopolitical events, they can build resilience in their teams by generating forecasts and what-if scenarios based on various conditions, so even when the unexpected happens they can prepare. This kind of next-level process isn’t possible with legacy systems that struggle with data management itself.
A digital solution like Scanmarket Spend Analytics can aid forecasting with streamlined processes, such as:
- Advanced reporting and trendlines on spend for analysis
- Map out spend and resources per supplier, identifying direct or indirect spend risks
- Access to custom or out-of-the-box dashboards that project data forward for multiple procurement scenarios, utilizing real-time data
Reimagining talent strategies for the modern employee
The procurement landscape is evolving swiftly, driven by digital advancements changing workforce dynamics. This transformation is not just about efficiency; it’s about future-proofing your workforce and talent strategies.
With the rapid adoption of cloud-based procurement software, the days of manual, paper-based processes are over. Today’s procurement teams must leverage strategic sourcing platforms, data analytics, and AI to streamline operations.
To stay competitive, procurement professionals must upskill in cloud-based technologies and software, while organizations and procurement leaders must ensure they have both the operations and talent strategies to attract and retain modern procurement talent.
Modern employees must focus on data literacy, AI integration, and automation, but procurement leaders need to ensure they lead the way by investing in the latest technology and providing the appropriate training. These technologies and skills are crucial for informed, data-driven decision-making.
Upskilling in these areas will empower your team to stay ahead of industry trends and attract modern talent ready to lead in the digital age.
Final Thoughts
The move to digital processes, not just for procurement but for global teams, is becoming a question of when not if.
Those investing in digital procurement platforms like Scanmarket’s will be able to transform their operations with resilience, data, and the Cloud at heart, while legacy approaches will only put the brakes on procurement excellence.
For example, Scanmarket helped Blue Bright Foods migrate to the Cloud quickly, so they could take advantage of increased sourcing activity with Scanmarket eAuction and eRFx.
“The Scanmarket team immediately stepped in to support the overnight surge in sourcing activity by organizing comprehensive training and workshops for the newly centralized procurement team, demonstrating the simplicity, ease of use and intuitive nature of their eSourcing platform.”
Scanmarket by Unit4 can deliver the digital transformation to Cloud-first operations that will enable your procurement teams to navigate these trends and remain flexible for future trends. Visit our website to learn more, or talk to sales today.