In my March 27th post – 163,933 Procurement Professionals, A One-Question Poll, And One Willing ProcureTech Solution Provider I asked the 163,933 members of James E. Martin’s Purchasing & Global Supply Chain Professionals group the following question: “If you have been part of a failed initiative, which of the following issues were the reason for the failure?
Here are the poll results:
ABOUT PGSCP
With 163,933 members, PGSCP is one of the oldest and first LinkedIn groups created for procurement professionals and the industry. You can check out the group using the following link: Purchasing & Global Supply Chain Group.
The group’s Founder, James E. Martin, has asked me to write a few articles and papers for the group’s membership, which I am more than happy to do.
Based on the results of this poll, the paper will also feature 10 CPOs who will assess the five most notable ProcureTech failed initiatives of the past 45 years and offer their take on why there is such a high generational failure rate. These CPOs will also highlight what they consider to be the three most common reasons for why ProcureTech initiative failures continue to happen from the early days of ERPs to today’s Agent AI technology breakthroughs.
While the paper will be available before the end of April, I will highlight some of the responses from CPOs in the next section.
ProcureTech Solution Provider Response
As a bonus, one ProcureTech solution provider has accepted my invitation to respond to how they would address the challenges listed by the 10 CPOs. The ProcureTech solution provider that has stepped forward was Zycus.
Here is their response to two of the issues they believe undermine and ultimately can derail the success of ProcureTech initiatives:
Procurement’s 10 Worst Nightmares: How Zycus Turns Them into Strategic Wins
Procurement leaders are all too familiar with the horror stories—ERP flops, oversold solutions, and disconnected systems draining budgets and morale. But these challenges don’t need to define the future. With Zycus’s built-in, GenAI-powered Source-to-Pay (S2P) suite and agentic AI capabilities like Autonomous Negotiation Agents (ANA) and the Merlin AI platform, CPOs can move from firefighting to foresight.
Below, we break down each of the 10 procurement nightmares from Jon Hansen’s analysis—and how Zycus directly addresses them.
1. High Failure Rates of Implementations
The Nightmare: Up to 70% of ERP/procurement tech projects fail due to scope creep, budget blowouts, or outright abandonment.
Zycus Advantage:
Zycus accelerates time-to-value with a built-in architecture and configurable AI that doesn’t require months of coding or integration. The Merlin Intake Agent plugs directly into MS Teams, reducing training time and increasing adoption. Zycus’s phased rollout model, with autonomous AI agents activated module by module, allows you to scale at your pace and still go live in as less as 90 days*
✅ Agentic AI delivers out-of-the-box autonomy—especially for tail spend—ensuring faster time-to-value.
✅ Built-in, not bolt-on architecture reduces integration friction and shortens implementation cycles by up to 65%.
✅ Change-resistant tasks are handled by AI, lowering dependency on stretched procurement teams.
2. Poor Integration & System Compatibility
The Nightmare: Disconnected tools lead to data chaos and manual workarounds.
Zycus Advantage:
With its AI-native S2P suite, Zycus eliminates bolt-on headaches. Data flows seamlessly across iRequest, iSource, iContract, iRisk, and iAnalyze, forming a single source of truth. This deep integration ensures 95% data accuracy, 90% faster request processing, and dramatically lower TCO
Zycus Advantage:
✅ Unified S2P Suite eliminates bolt-on complexity. No more patching APIs or syncing disparate systems.
✅ Intake-to-Pay orchestration ensures every module—Intake, Sourcing, Contract, Risk, AP—is natively connected.
✅ MS Teams integration via Merlin Intake boosts user adoption and collaboration across platforms.
Zycus Is Not Just Solving Challenges—It’s Redefining What Procurement Can Achieve
While competitors stitch together bolt-ons and rule-based bots, Zycus delivers a seamlessly orchestrated S2P experience where AI agents don’t just assist—they autonomously drive results. This is Deep Value Procurement AI: where maverick spend disappears, negotiations run 24/7, and procurement evolves from cost center to strategic catalyst.
Once again, the full paper will be available before the end of April, with future posts addressing the remaining eight of ten Zycus responses.
In the meantime, as a practitioner or Provider, what are your thoughts on the above poll results?
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Procurement Insights
ProcureTech Nightmare Poll Results And One Solution Provider Stepping Up To The Challenge
Posted on April 10, 2025
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In my March 27th post – 163,933 Procurement Professionals, A One-Question Poll, And One Willing ProcureTech Solution Provider I asked the 163,933 members of James E. Martin’s Purchasing & Global Supply Chain Professionals group the following question: “If you have been part of a failed initiative, which of the following issues were the reason for the failure?
Here are the poll results:
ABOUT PGSCP
With 163,933 members, PGSCP is one of the oldest and first LinkedIn groups created for procurement professionals and the industry. You can check out the group using the following link: Purchasing & Global Supply Chain Group.
The group’s Founder, James E. Martin, has asked me to write a few articles and papers for the group’s membership, which I am more than happy to do.
Based on the results of this poll, the paper will also feature 10 CPOs who will assess the five most notable ProcureTech failed initiatives of the past 45 years and offer their take on why there is such a high generational failure rate. These CPOs will also highlight what they consider to be the three most common reasons for why ProcureTech initiative failures continue to happen from the early days of ERPs to today’s Agent AI technology breakthroughs.
While the paper will be available before the end of April, I will highlight some of the responses from CPOs in the next section.
ProcureTech Solution Provider Response
As a bonus, one ProcureTech solution provider has accepted my invitation to respond to how they would address the challenges listed by the 10 CPOs. The ProcureTech solution provider that has stepped forward was Zycus.
Here is their response to two of the issues they believe undermine and ultimately can derail the success of ProcureTech initiatives:
Procurement’s 10 Worst Nightmares: How Zycus Turns Them into Strategic Wins
Procurement leaders are all too familiar with the horror stories—ERP flops, oversold solutions, and disconnected systems draining budgets and morale. But these challenges don’t need to define the future. With Zycus’s built-in, GenAI-powered Source-to-Pay (S2P) suite and agentic AI capabilities like Autonomous Negotiation Agents (ANA) and the Merlin AI platform, CPOs can move from firefighting to foresight.
Below, we break down each of the 10 procurement nightmares from Jon Hansen’s analysis—and how Zycus directly addresses them.
1. High Failure Rates of Implementations
The Nightmare: Up to 70% of ERP/procurement tech projects fail due to scope creep, budget blowouts, or outright abandonment.
Zycus Advantage:
Zycus accelerates time-to-value with a built-in architecture and configurable AI that doesn’t require months of coding or integration. The Merlin Intake Agent plugs directly into MS Teams, reducing training time and increasing adoption. Zycus’s phased rollout model, with autonomous AI agents activated module by module, allows you to scale at your pace and still go live in as less as 90 days*
✅ Agentic AI delivers out-of-the-box autonomy—especially for tail spend—ensuring faster time-to-value.
✅ Built-in, not bolt-on architecture reduces integration friction and shortens implementation cycles by up to 65%.
✅ Change-resistant tasks are handled by AI, lowering dependency on stretched procurement teams.
2. Poor Integration & System Compatibility
The Nightmare: Disconnected tools lead to data chaos and manual workarounds.
Zycus Advantage:
With its AI-native S2P suite, Zycus eliminates bolt-on headaches. Data flows seamlessly across iRequest, iSource, iContract, iRisk, and iAnalyze, forming a single source of truth. This deep integration ensures 95% data accuracy, 90% faster request processing, and dramatically lower TCO
Zycus Advantage:
✅ Unified S2P Suite eliminates bolt-on complexity. No more patching APIs or syncing disparate systems.
✅ Intake-to-Pay orchestration ensures every module—Intake, Sourcing, Contract, Risk, AP—is natively connected.
✅ MS Teams integration via Merlin Intake boosts user adoption and collaboration across platforms.
Zycus Is Not Just Solving Challenges—It’s Redefining What Procurement Can Achieve
While competitors stitch together bolt-ons and rule-based bots, Zycus delivers a seamlessly orchestrated S2P experience where AI agents don’t just assist—they autonomously drive results. This is Deep Value Procurement AI: where maverick spend disappears, negotiations run 24/7, and procurement evolves from cost center to strategic catalyst.
Once again, the full paper will be available before the end of April, with future posts addressing the remaining eight of ten Zycus responses.
In the meantime, as a practitioner or Provider, what are your thoughts on the above poll results?
30
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