A Hindsight Assessment of 18 years of documented pattern recognition — and what it reveals about why 80% of transformations still fail in 2026
Introduction
In January 2008, I published a white paper titled “Talent Attraction and Retention in a Global Economy” for the CAT Alliance. At the time, e-procurement was the promised revolution. Organizations were being told that technology would eliminate the need for tactical purchasing workers. Consultants were parachuting into procurement departments with “multi-pronged strategies” and “competency maps.”
I argued something different.
I argued that talent attraction and retention “begins and ends with the pre-existence of firmly established core values and a clearly defined strategy.” That attracting talent was “not an exercise in and of itself but is the by-product of a sound procurement strategy and practice.”
In other words: organizational readiness before technology deployment.
Eighteen years later, that thesis has a name: Phase 0.
The 80% implementation failure rate I documented in 2008? It persists in 2026. The pattern of deploying technology before assessing organizational readiness? Unchanged. The over-reliance on external consultants to define rather than refine strategy? Still the dominant model.
What follows is an 18-year retrospective of my January posts — each assessed through the lens of hindsight. Not as a claim of infallible forecasting, but as documentation of a consistent pattern that was never disproved.
A Note on “Accuracy”
The “100% consistency” claim in this retrospective is not about infallible prediction of specific events. No analyst captures every detail over an 18-year span. Some vendors I once praised inevitably failed. Some timing estimates were undoubtedly off. That’s the nature of real-world systems.
The claim is narrower — and stronger. Across every major ProcureTech wave from 2007 to 2025, the same underlying causal pattern held: outcomes were determined by organizational readiness, incentives, governance, and behavioral alignment — not by the technology itself.
The messiness of real-world validation doesn’t allow for clean, binary scoring of every individual forecast. What it does allow is something more meaningful: longitudinal confirmation that the core thesis was never falsified. Different tools, different vendors, different eras — same failure mechanics when readiness was ignored.
That consistency is what was held at 100%.
The Hindsight Assessment: 18 Years of January Posts (2008–2026)
2008: Talent Attraction and Retention in a Global Economy
Core Thesis: Organizations fail at talent attraction because they lack foundational readiness — established core values, clear strategy, stakeholder buy-in. Technology and external consultants cannot compensate for this absence. Jim Collins’ “Doom Loop” explains why initiatives flounder: strategy based on misinformation, no stakeholder feedback, no traction. The solution is the “Flywheel” — pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process that keeps organizations on track.
Key Observations:
Over-reliance on consultants would continue to drive initiative failures
Technology would not eliminate procurement jobs as predicted by BLS
Organizations that fail to develop leaders internally would fail to retain talent
Change management strategies are “the Edsel of the consulting world” — symptoms of misalignment
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This white paper articulated what would become the Hansen Method and Phase 0 — 17 years before they had names. The observation that “unless the company has a clear-cut understanding of its own unique requirements, the external input will define versus verify and refine” is the exact failure pattern I still document today.
Core Thesis: Procurement patterns transcend geography. The challenges facing organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia share common roots in process maturity and stakeholder alignment.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The global reach of current Advisory Team work — from Middle East telecommunications to North American utilities — validates that the human strand of transformation is universal.
2010: Creating and Extending Supplier Value Through Practical Engagement and Economic Visibility
Core Thesis: Supplier relationships create value through engagement and visibility — not transactional extraction. Economic visibility enables strategic partnership.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: COVID-19 supply chain disruptions validated this thesis catastrophically. Organizations with transactional supplier relationships collapsed. Those with engaged partnerships adapted.
2011: Madison Avenue (Gartner) Names Oracle as a Leader in Supply Chain Planning
Core Thesis: Analyst rankings reflect marketing spend and vendor relationships more than actual capability or implementation success. Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” methodology is compromised.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The “Gartner Metaprise” post I wrote in December 2025 continues this thread — analysts discovering patterns I documented decades earlier, repackaging them as new insights.
2012: From Mobile Business Intelligence to Synchronized Execution
Core Thesis: Mobile technology enables synchronized execution — but only if the underlying processes support it. Technology extends capability; it doesn’t create it.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The “mobile-first” wave followed the same pattern as every technology wave — organizations deployed the tool before establishing the foundation.
2013: The Prognosticators Series — 2013 Predictions by Kelly Barner
Core Thesis: Industry predictions often reflect vendor marketing agendas rather than practitioner reality. Featuring practitioner voices provides more accurate forecasting.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The decision to feature practitioner voices rather than vendor perspectives anticipated the current credibility crisis in procurement media.
2014: Nature Versus Nurture — Is Relationship Success in the Genes?
Core Thesis: Legacy vendors face existential threats from failure to evolve. Audit requirements expand procurement’s scope. The next generation of procurement leaders will require different competencies.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
Observation
Outcome
Status
Legacy vendors face existential threat
Elcom and similar vendors are either acquired or defunct
✓ Thesis Validated
Audit requirements expand procurement scope
Regulatory compliance now central to procurement strategy
✓ Thesis Validated
Next generation requires different competencies
AI fluency, strategic thinking now baseline requirements
✓ Thesis Validated
2026 Reflection: The “Generation Next” piece anticipated the competency shift that AI is now accelerating. The practitioners reaching out in 2026 are the generation I wrote about in 2015.
2016: Procurement and Social Media — Heaven or the Other Place?
Core Thesis: Social media creates both opportunity and risk for procurement. The medium amplifies patterns — good and bad.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This observation directly anticipated the AI amplification thesis — technology amplifies human patterns, it doesn’t change them.
2017: Looking Back at 2016 / Looking Ahead to 2017
Core Thesis: NIGP accountability coverage, emerging patterns in KPMG, distributed ledgers, and BravoSolution.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The decision to pursue accountability journalism — despite litigation risk — established the credibility that practitioners now recognize.
Core Thesis: Data management is a generational challenge. Knowledge transfer across organizational generations determines long-term success.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This directly anticipated the “conversational AI fluency” work — AI as knowledge capture and transfer mechanism across generational boundaries.
Core Thesis: Digital transformation in procurement requires practitioner perspective, not just vendor narrative. What matters to practitioners differs from what vendors promote.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The gap between vendor promises and practitioner reality widened further — leading directly to the 80% failure rate that persists today.
2020: Hugging the Cloud / Logitech’s Results-First Approach
Core Thesis: Despite decades of technology investment, 95% of enterprises have not modernized their operating models. Technology deployment without organizational transformation produces no results.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This study validated everything I had documented since 2008. The 95% figure explains why Phase 0 readiness assessment is the missing layer.
2023: What Role Have Spreadsheets Played in Evolution of Procurement Technology?
Core Thesis: Despite massive technology investment, spreadsheets remain the dominant procurement tool. This reveals the gap between technology promise and organizational reality.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: Organizations buy technology but continue using spreadsheets because the underlying organizational readiness was never established. Same pattern, every wave.
2024: Would You Really Use an RFP to Buy Procurement Technology? Really?
Core Thesis: The irony of procurement organizations using flawed RFP processes to buy the very technology meant to improve procurement. The tools we use to select tools are broken.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This post directly set up the Hansen Fit Score methodology — if you can’t assess your own readiness, how can you assess technology fit?
2025: Moment of Truth — Can AI Succeed Where Humans Fail?
Core Thesis: AI represents a “moment of truth” for procurement transformation. It will either succeed where previous technology waves failed, or it will amplify the same failure patterns. The difference is organizational readiness.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This post positioned the AI amplification thesis that Tim Cummins, Vera Rozanova, and others are now validating publicly. The moment of truth has arrived.
2026: Why Academics Are Continuing to Reach Out to Connect in 2026
Core Thesis: Academic institutions reaching out signals shift from vendor-dominated to evidence-based procurement research. The methodology is gaining scholarly attention.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This is the current moment. The 18-year thesis is being examined by the very institutions designed to validate evidence-based research.
Aggregate Hindsight Assessment
Overall Assessment: The core thesis — readiness before deployment — has never been disproved across 18 years and 5 technology waves.
What 18 Years of Consistent Pattern Recognition Tells Us
The consistency documented here isn’t a claim of infallible forecasting. It’s something more useful: pattern recognition applied to a field where the underlying human dynamics never change.
Every technology wave — ERP, e-procurement, cloud, mobile, digital transformation, AI — follows the identical pattern:
Promise: Technology will transform procurement
Deployment: Technology deployed before organizational readiness assessed
Failure: 60-80% of implementations fail to deliver promised value
Blame: Technology blamed, or users blamed, or consultants blamed
Repeat: Next technology wave arrives with same promise
The pattern persists because the industry never addresses the root cause: organizational readiness is never assessed before technology is deployed.
This is “Implementation Physics” — the constant human and organizational behaviors that determine whether technology can be absorbed. The technology changes. The physics doesn’t.
That’s why I formalized Phase 0. That’s why I created the Hansen Fit Score. That’s why I documented 18 years of consistent patterns.
Not because I predicted the future. Because the underlying dynamics that drive success and failure never changed.
Conclusion: The Pattern That Predicts What Comes Next
If Implementation Physics holds — and 18 years of evidence suggests it does — here’s what we can expect:
2027-2030: AI implementations will follow the identical failure pattern. Organizations that deploy AI without assessing organizational readiness will achieve the same 60-80% failure rate as every previous technology wave.
The organizations that will succeed: Those that assess readiness first. Those that understand AI amplifies existing patterns. Those that invest in the human strand before the technology strand.
The consultants who will profit: Those selling AI implementations without readiness assessment. The same business model that has produced 80% failure rates for 25 years.
The organizations that will be studied: Those rare exceptions that achieved Phase 0 readiness before Phase 1 deployment. The case studies that prove the thesis.
The question isn’t whether the pattern will repeat. The question is whether your organization will be part of the 80% that fails, or the 20% that succeeds.
The answer depends on one thing: Are you ready?
Jon Hansen is the founder of Hansen Models and creator of the Hansen Method and Hansen Fit Score (HFS) framework. His work in procurement transformation dates to 1998 government-funded research through Canada’s SR&ED program, where he achieved 97.3% delivery accuracy for the Department of National Defence. He has documented procurement technology patterns through Procurement Insights since 2007.
Procurement Insights
18 Years of New Year Insights: How One Thesis Predicted Every Transformation Failure
Posted on January 2, 2026
0
A Hindsight Assessment of 18 years of documented pattern recognition — and what it reveals about why 80% of transformations still fail in 2026
Introduction
In January 2008, I published a white paper titled “Talent Attraction and Retention in a Global Economy” for the CAT Alliance. At the time, e-procurement was the promised revolution. Organizations were being told that technology would eliminate the need for tactical purchasing workers. Consultants were parachuting into procurement departments with “multi-pronged strategies” and “competency maps.”
I argued something different.
I argued that talent attraction and retention “begins and ends with the pre-existence of firmly established core values and a clearly defined strategy.” That attracting talent was “not an exercise in and of itself but is the by-product of a sound procurement strategy and practice.”
In other words: organizational readiness before technology deployment.
Eighteen years later, that thesis has a name: Phase 0.
The 80% implementation failure rate I documented in 2008? It persists in 2026. The pattern of deploying technology before assessing organizational readiness? Unchanged. The over-reliance on external consultants to define rather than refine strategy? Still the dominant model.
What follows is an 18-year retrospective of my January posts — each assessed through the lens of hindsight. Not as a claim of infallible forecasting, but as documentation of a consistent pattern that was never disproved.
A Note on “Accuracy”
The “100% consistency” claim in this retrospective is not about infallible prediction of specific events. No analyst captures every detail over an 18-year span. Some vendors I once praised inevitably failed. Some timing estimates were undoubtedly off. That’s the nature of real-world systems.
The claim is narrower — and stronger. Across every major ProcureTech wave from 2007 to 2025, the same underlying causal pattern held: outcomes were determined by organizational readiness, incentives, governance, and behavioral alignment — not by the technology itself.
The messiness of real-world validation doesn’t allow for clean, binary scoring of every individual forecast. What it does allow is something more meaningful: longitudinal confirmation that the core thesis was never falsified. Different tools, different vendors, different eras — same failure mechanics when readiness was ignored.
That consistency is what was held at 100%.
The Hindsight Assessment: 18 Years of January Posts (2008–2026)
2008: Talent Attraction and Retention in a Global Economy
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2008/01/16/talent-attraction-and-retention-in-a-global-economy-white-paper-release/
Core Thesis: Organizations fail at talent attraction because they lack foundational readiness — established core values, clear strategy, stakeholder buy-in. Technology and external consultants cannot compensate for this absence. Jim Collins’ “Doom Loop” explains why initiatives flounder: strategy based on misinformation, no stakeholder feedback, no traction. The solution is the “Flywheel” — pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process that keeps organizations on track.
Key Observations:
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This white paper articulated what would become the Hansen Method and Phase 0 — 17 years before they had names. The observation that “unless the company has a clear-cut understanding of its own unique requirements, the external input will define versus verify and refine” is the exact failure pattern I still document today.
2009: Procurement Insights from Around the World
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2009/01/06/procurement-insights-from-around-the-world/
Core Thesis: Procurement patterns transcend geography. The challenges facing organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia share common roots in process maturity and stakeholder alignment.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The global reach of current Advisory Team work — from Middle East telecommunications to North American utilities — validates that the human strand of transformation is universal.
2010: Creating and Extending Supplier Value Through Practical Engagement and Economic Visibility
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2010/01/15/creating-and-extending-supplier-value-through-practical-engagement-and-economic-visibility/
Core Thesis: Supplier relationships create value through engagement and visibility — not transactional extraction. Economic visibility enables strategic partnership.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: COVID-19 supply chain disruptions validated this thesis catastrophically. Organizations with transactional supplier relationships collapsed. Those with engaged partnerships adapted.
2011: Madison Avenue (Gartner) Names Oracle as a Leader in Supply Chain Planning
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2011/01/07/madison-avenue-ooops-make-that-gartner-names-oracle-as-a-leader-in-supply-chain-planning/
Core Thesis: Analyst rankings reflect marketing spend and vendor relationships more than actual capability or implementation success. Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” methodology is compromised.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The “Gartner Metaprise” post I wrote in December 2025 continues this thread — analysts discovering patterns I documented decades earlier, repackaging them as new insights.
2012: From Mobile Business Intelligence to Synchronized Execution
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2012/01/31/from-mobile-business-intelligence-to-synchronized-execution-so-you-can-take-it-with-you-after-all/
Core Thesis: Mobile technology enables synchronized execution — but only if the underlying processes support it. Technology extends capability; it doesn’t create it.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The “mobile-first” wave followed the same pattern as every technology wave — organizations deployed the tool before establishing the foundation.
2013: The Prognosticators Series — 2013 Predictions by Kelly Barner
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2013/01/04/the-prognosticators-series-2013-predictions-by-kelly-barner/
Core Thesis: Industry predictions often reflect vendor marketing agendas rather than practitioner reality. Featuring practitioner voices provides more accurate forecasting.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The decision to feature practitioner voices rather than vendor perspectives anticipated the current credibility crisis in procurement media.
2014: Nature Versus Nurture — Is Relationship Success in the Genes?
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2014/01/08/nature-versus-nurture-is-relationship-success-in-the-genes-by-jon-hansen/
Core Thesis: Successful supplier relationships are nurtured, not inherent. Organizational culture and deliberate investment determine relationship outcomes.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: Andy Akrouche’s “Relationships First” book (which I ghostwrote in 2017) built directly on this foundation. The title says it all.
2015: A Failure to Launch / Audit Tendering / Generation Next
Links:
Core Thesis: Legacy vendors face existential threats from failure to evolve. Audit requirements expand procurement’s scope. The next generation of procurement leaders will require different competencies.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The “Generation Next” piece anticipated the competency shift that AI is now accelerating. The practitioners reaching out in 2026 are the generation I wrote about in 2015.
2016: Procurement and Social Media — Heaven or the Other Place?
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2016/01/19/procurement-and-social-media-is-it-a-pairing-made-in-heaven-or-the-other-place/
Core Thesis: Social media creates both opportunity and risk for procurement. The medium amplifies patterns — good and bad.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This observation directly anticipated the AI amplification thesis — technology amplifies human patterns, it doesn’t change them.
2017: Looking Back at 2016 / Looking Ahead to 2017
Core Thesis: NIGP accountability coverage, emerging patterns in KPMG, distributed ledgers, and BravoSolution.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The decision to pursue accountability journalism — despite litigation risk — established the credibility that practitioners now recognize.
2018: Managing Data Across Time and Generations
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2018/01/17/managing-data-across-time-and-generations/
Core Thesis: Data management is a generational challenge. Knowledge transfer across organizational generations determines long-term success.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This directly anticipated the “conversational AI fluency” work — AI as knowledge capture and transfer mechanism across generational boundaries.
2019: Procurement Goes Digital / Beyond Trends
Links:
Core Thesis: Digital transformation in procurement requires practitioner perspective, not just vendor narrative. What matters to practitioners differs from what vendors promote.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The gap between vendor promises and practitioner reality widened further — leading directly to the 80% failure rate that persists today.
2020: Hugging the Cloud / Logitech’s Results-First Approach
Links:
Core Thesis: Cloud adoption requires procurement strategy adaptation. Results-first approaches (outcomes before technology) succeed where technology-first fails.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: “Results-first” is another way of saying “readiness before deployment” — the Phase 0 thesis in different language.
2021: CPO Arena Episode 3 — Dragons Den of Procurement
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2021/01/26/welcome-to-episode-3-of-cpo-arena-the-dragons-den-and-shark-tank-of-the-procurement-world/
Core Thesis: Practitioner validation of vendor solutions — putting technology claims before experienced CPOs for reality testing.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: The CPO Arena concept anticipated the Advisory Team model — practitioners validating methodology, not just accepting vendor claims.
2022: 95% Have Not Modernized Operating Models (SIG/Globality Study)
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2022/03/28/study-from-the-sourcing-industry-group-and-globality-reveals-nearly-95-of-enterprises-still-have-not-modernized-their-operating-models/
Core Thesis: Despite decades of technology investment, 95% of enterprises have not modernized their operating models. Technology deployment without organizational transformation produces no results.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This study validated everything I had documented since 2008. The 95% figure explains why Phase 0 readiness assessment is the missing layer.
2023: What Role Have Spreadsheets Played in Evolution of Procurement Technology?
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2023/01/13/what-role-have-spreadsheets-played-in-the-evolution-of-procurement-technology/
Core Thesis: Despite massive technology investment, spreadsheets remain the dominant procurement tool. This reveals the gap between technology promise and organizational reality.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: Organizations buy technology but continue using spreadsheets because the underlying organizational readiness was never established. Same pattern, every wave.
2024: Would You Really Use an RFP to Buy Procurement Technology? Really?
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2024/01/10/would-you-really-use-an-rfp-to-buy-procurement-technology-really/
Core Thesis: The irony of procurement organizations using flawed RFP processes to buy the very technology meant to improve procurement. The tools we use to select tools are broken.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This post directly set up the Hansen Fit Score methodology — if you can’t assess your own readiness, how can you assess technology fit?
2025: Moment of Truth — Can AI Succeed Where Humans Fail?
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2025/01/07/moment-of-truth-can-ai-succeed-where-humans-fail/
Core Thesis: AI represents a “moment of truth” for procurement transformation. It will either succeed where previous technology waves failed, or it will amplify the same failure patterns. The difference is organizational readiness.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This post positioned the AI amplification thesis that Tim Cummins, Vera Rozanova, and others are now validating publicly. The moment of truth has arrived.
2026: Why Academics Are Continuing to Reach Out to Connect in 2026
Link: https://procureinsights.com/2026/01/01/why-academics-are-continuing-to-reach-out-to-connect-in-2026/
Core Thesis: Academic institutions reaching out signals shift from vendor-dominated to evidence-based procurement research. The methodology is gaining scholarly attention.
Hindsight Assessment (2026):
2026 Reflection: This is the current moment. The 18-year thesis is being examined by the very institutions designed to validate evidence-based research.
Aggregate Hindsight Assessment
Overall Assessment: The core thesis — readiness before deployment — has never been disproved across 18 years and 5 technology waves.
What 18 Years of Consistent Pattern Recognition Tells Us
The consistency documented here isn’t a claim of infallible forecasting. It’s something more useful: pattern recognition applied to a field where the underlying human dynamics never change.
Every technology wave — ERP, e-procurement, cloud, mobile, digital transformation, AI — follows the identical pattern:
The pattern persists because the industry never addresses the root cause: organizational readiness is never assessed before technology is deployed.
This is “Implementation Physics” — the constant human and organizational behaviors that determine whether technology can be absorbed. The technology changes. The physics doesn’t.
That’s why I formalized Phase 0. That’s why I created the Hansen Fit Score. That’s why I documented 18 years of consistent patterns.
Not because I predicted the future. Because the underlying dynamics that drive success and failure never changed.
Conclusion: The Pattern That Predicts What Comes Next
If Implementation Physics holds — and 18 years of evidence suggests it does — here’s what we can expect:
2027-2030: AI implementations will follow the identical failure pattern. Organizations that deploy AI without assessing organizational readiness will achieve the same 60-80% failure rate as every previous technology wave.
The organizations that will succeed: Those that assess readiness first. Those that understand AI amplifies existing patterns. Those that invest in the human strand before the technology strand.
The consultants who will profit: Those selling AI implementations without readiness assessment. The same business model that has produced 80% failure rates for 25 years.
The organizations that will be studied: Those rare exceptions that achieved Phase 0 readiness before Phase 1 deployment. The case studies that prove the thesis.
The question isn’t whether the pattern will repeat. The question is whether your organization will be part of the 80% that fails, or the 20% that succeeds.
The answer depends on one thing: Are you ready?
Jon Hansen is the founder of Hansen Models and creator of the Hansen Method and Hansen Fit Score (HFS) framework. His work in procurement transformation dates to 1998 government-funded research through Canada’s SR&ED program, where he achieved 97.3% delivery accuracy for the Department of National Defence. He has documented procurement technology patterns through Procurement Insights since 2007.
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