Trend: All sources show a steady but gradual decline in failure rates, from high levels (63–80% in 2000) to still significant levels (40–55% in 2025).
Spend Matters and Everest Group report the highest failure rates throughout.
Deloitte and IDC report the lowest, but even these do not dip below 40% by 2025.
Interpretation: Despite two decades of digital transformation, a large proportion of ProcureTech projects still fail to meet expectations, reflecting persistent challenges in change management, integration, and digital readiness.
ProcureTech M&A Value (2000–2025)
Line (dashed, right axis): Represents total annual M&A deal value in billions of USD.
Trend: The M&A value grows exponentially from near zero in 2000 to about $30 billion by 2025.
Interpretation: The surge in M&A activity reflects intense investment, consolidation, and strategic repositioning in the ProcureTech sector, particularly after 2015.
Key Insights
Investment vs. Outcomes: The exponential rise in ProcureTech M&A activity has not been matched by a commensurate improvement in implementation success. Even as investment soars, failure rates remain stubbornly high, with the best sources still reporting a 40% failure rate by 2025.
Persistent Barriers: The gap highlights ongoing obstacles such as poor taxonomy alignment, legacy system integration, lack of digital readiness, and change management issues.
Market Dynamics: The disconnect between massive investment and moderate improvement in outcomes suggests that consolidation and capital alone are not enough-organizational readiness and execution remain critical.
Summary Table (2000–2025)
Year
Failure Rate (Range, %)
M&A Value (Billion USD)
2000
63–80
0.1
2010
55–75
4
2015
50–70
13
2020
45–65
28
2025
40–55
30
In summary: The graph clearly demonstrates that while ProcureTech M&A investment has skyrocketed over the past 25 years, implementation failure rates-though improving-remain unacceptably high. This underscores the need for organizations to focus not just on technology acquisition, but on foundational readiness, change management, and strategic alignment to realize true value from ProcureTech investments.
Procurement Insights
Do Acquisitions Like Coupa Buying Cirtuo Really Improve ProcureTech Initiative Outcomes?
Posted on May 14, 2025
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Let’s start out with how a picture is worth more than 1,000 words:
Now, let’s add the words:
What the Graph Shows
ProcureTech Implementation Failure Rates (2000–2025)
ProcureTech M&A Value (2000–2025)
Key Insights
The exponential rise in ProcureTech M&A activity has not been matched by a commensurate improvement in implementation success. Even as investment soars, failure rates remain stubbornly high, with the best sources still reporting a 40% failure rate by 2025.
The gap highlights ongoing obstacles such as poor taxonomy alignment, legacy system integration, lack of digital readiness, and change management issues.
The disconnect between massive investment and moderate improvement in outcomes suggests that consolidation and capital alone are not enough-organizational readiness and execution remain critical.
Summary Table (2000–2025)
In summary:
The graph clearly demonstrates that while ProcureTech M&A investment has skyrocketed over the past 25 years, implementation failure rates-though improving-remain unacceptably high. This underscores the need for organizations to focus not just on technology acquisition, but on foundational readiness, change management, and strategic alignment to realize true value from ProcureTech investments.
30
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