6 min read
Despite what you see on LinkedIn or hear at conferences, most procurement teams are still early in their digitalization journey.
Your digital procurement roadmap needs to start with an assessment of your own capabilities and resources, not the fear of missing out.
This article sets out five pillars that I’ve seen separate successful digital procurement transformations from less successful initiatives over the past two decades.
What is digital procurement?
Digital procurement is the fundamental shift in how procurement operates through technology-enabled processes and governance. It allows organizations to make better decisions faster, with less friction between stakeholders and suppliers.
It's not about collecting apps or implementing software systems for their own sake, but rather using digitalization to handle routine processes while freeing procurement professionals to focus on strategic areas where human judgment adds value: understanding supply market nuances, challenging scope, advising on risk, and connecting supplier decisions to business strategy.
The goal of digital procurement is creating an environment where business users can execute compliant purchases independently within technology-provided guardrails, while procurement shifts from gatekeeping transactions to enabling better business outcomes.
Why digital transformation matters today
Digital transformation isn’t about chasing innovation for its own sake. It’s about staying competitive in an increasingly complex environment.
Your procurement team faces increasing volumes of data, growing expectations for self-service, and continuous pressure for visibility and speed - but no tolerance for increased risk. Without a digital foundation, procurement can quickly become a bottleneck.
Yet there’s often a gap between the hype and reality. PwC's most recent Digital Procurement Survey shows that enterprise businesses target an almost 64 percent process digitalization rate by 2027. That’s a 28 percentage point uplift since 2024, when the average process digitization rate was just 36 percent. Ambitious targets like that highlight both urgency and execution difficulty.
Five components of successful digital procurement initiatives
After two decades of leading digital initiatives across industries, I’ve seen five success factors show up again and again.
1. Pick the right use case
Always pick the right use case first, then pick the right solution. A narrow success beats a broad rollout every time. Build credibility through focused wins before attempting wider transformation.
Ask yourself: “What are you really trying to implement? What are you really trying to digitize? Is it a problem that needs to be solved, or are you just trying to use technology for the sake of technology?”
2. Design for user experience
Some digital procurement implementations fail not because the solution is bad, but because of poor adoption. Great user experience (UX) drives adoption, adoption drives data quality, and data quality drives insights.
Today your enterprise stakeholders expect consumer-grade experiences from all business applications. Deliver any less, and they'll work around you.
Ask yourself: “Are you implementing a tool that people actually want to use? Will it provide a better user experience than what you have today?”
3. Invest in change management
I'm a big believer that many digitalization projects fail because of poor change management, not poor technology. You can't just train people to use a new tool. You also need to help them think differently about their role in the process.
This is where many organizations underinvest. They'll budget heavily on technology and not spend enough time and resources on change management. That ratio is often backwards, and they don’t realize it until it is too late.
The question is not about whether the solution is good or not. It's whether it was implemented correctly.
Ask yourself: “Did you rethink your processes or are you just trying to make a bad process faster? Did you get buy-in from people to actually use it every day?”
4. Build business cases on reality
Be clear about why you're implementing something and how you're going to measure ROI. Return on investment needs to be built on reality, not optimistic projections.
Build your case on outcomes you can prove. Consider measurable metrics like faster cycle times, improved rates of compliance, or higher internal customer satisfaction scores. Be transparent about what's achievable. Measure what is important.
Ask yourself: “Is the return on investment realistic and measurable? Do you have key milestones set up where you evaluate ROI and impact after implementation?”
5. Establish governance from day one
It's all well and good to implement a tool, but sometimes you set it, let it go, and forget it. Technology that was perfect last year might constrain you today. Within a couple of years, it's not fit for purpose anymore. Instead of doing something about it, everyone just gives up.
I recommend building a governance committee including stakeholders from outside of procurement. They will honestly tell you if you’re missing a priority or over-focusing on another. Key internal stakeholders will be transparent if procurement is not bringing enough value. A governance team will help you define the value needed from digital procurement and keep you on track.
Ask yourself: “Is somebody keeping an eye on whether it's still fit for purpose? Did business conditions change? Did business needs change? How are you evolving and adapting your digital procurement plan?”
For more inspiration on governance, listen to Episode 326 of the Art of Procurement podcast, where I outline how to keep digital initiatives tied to business outcomes.
Prepare for an evolving operating model
Another aspect to consider in your digital transformation journey is that your operating model for procurement may change over time. This can follow a four-stage evolution, but each organization follows their own path.
Stage 1: Decentralized Model: Organizations often begin with dispersed procurement activities across business units. Each department manages its own supplier relationships and purchasing decisions independently.
Stage 2: Centralized Model: To capture economies of scale and control, organizations consolidate procurement under a single function. This centralization delivers cost savings through volume leverage and standardized processes, but often creates distance between procurement and the business.
Stage 3: Center-Led Model: Organizations evolve to balance control with flexibility. The procurement function maintains oversight of strategic spend categories while allowing business units more autonomy for tactical purchases. This model represents the current state for most mature procurement organizations.
Stage 4: Technology-Enabled Decentralization: For some businesses, the next evolution combines decentralized execution with centralized governance through technology. As discussed in conversations with executives like Sebastien Bals from Merck, this model uses digital platforms to embed compliance and controls directly into workflows. Business users gain autonomy to execute purchases within predefined parameters, while procurement shifts to a strategic advisory role.
The progression to technology-enabled decentralization reflects technology's increasing capability to handle governance and control functions that previously required manual oversight. Procurement transforms from a control function to a strategic enabler, maintaining influence over spend decisions without owning every transaction.
For more inspiration, listen to our top six podcast episodes on operating models for procurement.
Common pitfalls that can derail your procurement digital transformation
Digital transformation can fail even when you bring on-board the best digitalized solutions. Here are a few common pitfalls to look out for:
- Buying solutions before identifying problems. This can create expensive shelfware and organizational resistance. Start with the pain point, not the platform.
- Waiting for perfect data. You'll likely never have perfect data. Progress with good enough and improve iteratively.
- One-size-fits-all approaches. Some tasks lend themselves to full automation. Others require deep expertise and relationship management. Segment accordingly, and recognize that not everything needs to be digitalized.
- Set-and-forget mentality. Digital procurement is dynamic. Without ongoing oversight, tools become obsolete quickly while you keep paying for them.
- Underestimating the need for change. Technology often changes faster than people do. Account for the human element in your timelines and make sure your team has time and resources to adapt.
AI’s role in your digital roadmap
Right now, people think of AI as being different from digitalization, but ultimately they're one and the same. AI is just another way to digitize your procurement function. It brings new capabilities to make existing processes smarter and faster, but it doesn't change what success looks like.
AI and agentic workflows have the potential to take out vast amounts of work involved in running processes. But you still need strategy. You still need governance. You still need human judgment.
For more information on AI, see our State of AI in Procurement recap article.
Where digital procurement is heading
I'm a big believer that procurement teams are going to get a lot smaller. The vast majority of work will be self-guided, semi-automated, or even fully automated. In the future, procurement expertise will focus on smaller but more important areas of spend.
From an operating model perspective, procurement executives of the future are more likely to be generalist, high-EQ relationship builders, not necessarily domain experts. They will access domain expertise through partners when they need it.
The skills most likely to survive automation are relational and analytical. Skills focused on building trust, challenging scope, interpreting data, shaping demand will be hardest for AI to replace.
We’re also headed towards invisible procurement: technology doing the heavy lifting, people adding insight and judgment where it matters most. You won't control every transaction, but you'll influence every outcome.
The role you play now will determine whether AI and agentic workflows replace your job or help you be more effective. Focus on questioning, understanding nuance, challenging assumptions, and grasping supply market complexities. That's where your value shines against increased use of AI and automation.
Bottom line on digital procurement transformation
I believe procurement teams of the future will be smaller, faster, and more embedded in the business. Routine work will be automated or self-guided; expertise will concentrate on fewer strategic areas that truly drive growth and innovation.
The procurement professionals who thrive will be the ones who build trust, interpret data, challenge scope, and connect supplier decisions to business strategy. AI won’t replace those skills. It will most likely amplify them.
That’s the essence of what I call invisible procurement: technology doing the heavy lifting while people focus on judgment, relationships, and outcomes. To get a fresh perspective on where we’re heading, listen to episode 790 of the Art of Procurement podcast to hear Kelly Barner and me discuss procurement’s evolving operating model.
