What is the Potential for Applying Cognitive Technologies to Procurement?

This week is Big Idea Week on the Art of Procurement – a mini series of shorter interviews with procurement thought leaders ahead of their participation in the Procurious Big Idea Summit.

Today’s guest is Barry Ward, Senior Procurement Brand Manager at IBM.  Barry and I discuss how cognitive technologies have the potential to transform procurement delivery models. Barry shares how IBM is using technology to drive automation across their internal procurement group by levering their IBM Watson platform.  We talk about where this technology is on the maturity curve, and the impact this is likely to have on the procurement skill sets of the future.

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“The successful procurement leaders of the future will be those who harness the power of analytics and big data.”

In this episode, you will learn:

• The key business trends that IBM sees that are impacting today’s CPO agenda.
• How is the role that technology playing in procurement evolving?
• What is cognitive computing?
• How are IBM levering their Watson Platform to build cognitive technologies into their procurement delivery model?
• What is Supplier IQ and the Watson Buying Assistant?
• Where is cognitive technology on the maturity curve, and how far away are we from wide scale commercialization of these solutions?
• Does the increasing role of technology change the notion of what is “strategic” procurement?
• What is the impact on future skill sets of emerging procurement technologies?
• What is the one thing that Barry believes procurement professionals can do today to increase the value that they create for their stakeholders?

Links and Resources:

• Subscribe to The Art of Procurement
• Barry Ward on LinkedIn and Procurious
• IBM Watson
• IBM Procurement Services
• Procurious.com