Procurement will not achieve its ambition or potential without digitalisation. For every single company and person that is championing digitalisation either personally or as part of a team I believe that we should all be advocating for and helping them to succeed rather than speculating on their failure.
It is your and our collective responsibility to change the (wrong) narrative and focus on accelerating the positive. Time is short.
Lance Younger, I appreciate your sentiment, but respectfully, here are the hard facts from the past 40-plus years:
✔️ The generational initiative failure rate spanning the ERP, SaaS, digital transformation, and AI eras is 80%.
✔️ The failure rate does not warrant a positive, rah-rah, let’s go get them attitude, but a reflective change in mindset in which technology-led equation-based models are set aside and proven agent-based models adopted.
✔️ In short, we must become “problem-solvers” before tech enters the picture – https://bit.ly/3FBnFRr.
Back in the early 2000s, the following is a commentary on my position regarding technologies’ growing irrelevance in a digital world:
Jon Hansen’s paper emphasizing that “technology is irrelevant” centers on the idea that success in eProcurement doesn’t primarily depend on the software itself but rather on how well an organization manages its technology implementation. In his view, public procurement projects often face high failure rates due to an overemphasis on technology alone. Instead, he argues that success is more likely when the organization itself leads the project, as was the case with Virginia’s eVA program and the County of Santa Clara’s approach to eProcurement, where strategic oversight and internal control, rather than reliance on external vendors, drove successful outcomes. Hansen’s stance is that technology serves as a tool and not the ultimate solution, which he describes as “largely irrelevant” without the proper organizational ownership and oversight to make it effective.
This perspective challenges the common industry notion that better technology directly correlates with better outcomes, instead advocating for internal accountability and management as the keys to effective technology use in procurement.
For more details on Hansen’s views, you can refer to his article on Procurement Insights and related works that discuss this concept further.
Today’s Takeaway
We do need to move away from sentiments like the ones you express, or else we will have this same conversation 10 to 15 years from now.
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Video Link: Cirtuo Procurement Forum 2024 | Digital and data driven procurement transformation (Lance Younger)
I encourage you to watch the entire 30-minute video but zero in on the 3:46 to 6:57 segment of Lance’s presentation.
Based on what he is saying in this excerpt, there are elements with which we are not too far apart from a conceptual standpoint. However, he only touches on the periphery of people and processes and limits the stakeholder involvement beyond the procurement department to supplier engagement. For the rest of the discussion, he veers off to the technology part of the equation, referencing solution maps. At that point, Lance makes the subtle yet fatal mistake, increasing our risk of falling into the equation-based development and implementation doom loop that will see us waste technological advancement versus capitalizing on it.
The Agent-Based Model
Watch the 13-minute video below focusing on the following two things:
While on the periphery of the right track, Lance ultimately spends too much time on the technology path, with intermittent side detours into the people and process influence and impact. In other words, from 3:46 to 6:57, it is a critical stage that is ultimately brushed over.
Before technology is introduced, more time must be spent on the Agent-based development and engagement model.
Following the video, I will share critical links to a series of posts between 2007 and 2024.
Procurement Insights
ProcureTech CEO Younger stresses we must change the negative narrative and focus on accelerating the positive.
Posted on November 9, 2024
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The following is a response to my earlier post and my reply: Which ProcureTech Solution Providers Will Thrive or Struggle in 2025?
Jon – you are asking the wrong questions.
Procurement will not achieve its ambition or potential without digitalisation. For every single company and person that is championing digitalisation either personally or as part of a team I believe that we should all be advocating for and helping them to succeed rather than speculating on their failure.
It is your and our collective responsibility to change the (wrong) narrative and focus on accelerating the positive. Time is short.
Check out recent research by Wharton for example of where procurement momentum is gaining …https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AI-Report_Full-Report.pdf
Lance Younger, CEO, ProccureTech
Here Is My Reply
Lance Younger, I appreciate your sentiment, but respectfully, here are the hard facts from the past 40-plus years:
✔️ The generational initiative failure rate spanning the ERP, SaaS, digital transformation, and AI eras is 80%.
✔️ The failure rate does not warrant a positive, rah-rah, let’s go get them attitude, but a reflective change in mindset in which technology-led equation-based models are set aside and proven agent-based models adopted.
✔️ In short, we must become “problem-solvers” before tech enters the picture – https://bit.ly/3FBnFRr.
✔️ Finally, and this is critical – procurement practitioners must take ownership of their own success like the Commonwealth of Virginia did with its eVA initiative. Robert GleasonShane Caudill, PMPBob Sievert
Back in the early 2000s, the following is a commentary on my position regarding technologies’ growing irrelevance in a digital world:
Jon Hansen’s paper emphasizing that “technology is irrelevant” centers on the idea that success in eProcurement doesn’t primarily depend on the software itself but rather on how well an organization manages its technology implementation. In his view, public procurement projects often face high failure rates due to an overemphasis on technology alone. Instead, he argues that success is more likely when the organization itself leads the project, as was the case with Virginia’s eVA program and the County of Santa Clara’s approach to eProcurement, where strategic oversight and internal control, rather than reliance on external vendors, drove successful outcomes. Hansen’s stance is that technology serves as a tool and not the ultimate solution, which he describes as “largely irrelevant” without the proper organizational ownership and oversight to make it effective.
This perspective challenges the common industry notion that better technology directly correlates with better outcomes, instead advocating for internal accountability and management as the keys to effective technology use in procurement.
For more details on Hansen’s views, you can refer to his article on Procurement Insights and related works that discuss this concept further.
Today’s Takeaway
We do need to move away from sentiments like the ones you express, or else we will have this same conversation 10 to 15 years from now.
30
Video Link: Cirtuo Procurement Forum 2024 | Digital and data driven procurement transformation (Lance Younger)
I encourage you to watch the entire 30-minute video but zero in on the 3:46 to 6:57 segment of Lance’s presentation.
Based on what he is saying in this excerpt, there are elements with which we are not too far apart from a conceptual standpoint. However, he only touches on the periphery of people and processes and limits the stakeholder involvement beyond the procurement department to supplier engagement. For the rest of the discussion, he veers off to the technology part of the equation, referencing solution maps. At that point, Lance makes the subtle yet fatal mistake, increasing our risk of falling into the equation-based development and implementation doom loop that will see us waste technological advancement versus capitalizing on it.
The Agent-Based Model
Watch the 13-minute video below focusing on the following two things:
Following the video, I will share critical links to a series of posts between 2007 and 2024.
30
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