“The point is not just to have awesome data, it’s the ability to act on that data. If people don’t trust it, if people can’t make decisions based upon it, then there’s no sense in building a strong base of data, enriching it, and looking for opportunities.” – Kelly Barner – General Manager, Art of Procurement
“The user experience has to be fundamental to the design of procurement technology. If the technology is difficult to use, then procurement is a roadblock, in the way of someone trying to do their job. If the technology is easy, people don’t necessarily think of it as connected with procurement.” – Philip Ideson – Managing Director, Art of Procurement
As digital transformation progresses, corporate leadership teams are increasing their focus on the quality and availability of data. Spend analysis is just one internal data resource in a sea of data ecosystems, but it has the potential to serve as the foundational connection point for all procurement analytics.
For this special series, Art of Procurement partnered with Sievo and Buyers Meeting Point to take a deep dive into procurement data ecosystems. We will explore how procurement leaders can meet their analytical requirements while also exploiting the full cross-functional value of data – data that enables corporate growth and competitive advantage.
In this episode, Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner provide a series recap and reflect back on the major take-aways from each interview and identify the connecting opportunities that bring them all together into one cohesive vision for data-driven procurement.
What we learned about data from these diverse points of view, including what makes it valuable and how to approach the problem of poor quality data
How to identify the breaks between people, systems, and processes that prevent data from driving strategic insights and actions
The ways in which procurement has to approach data differently for the sake of its future potential, and how this connects to our vision for procurement as a whole
