Here is something worth considering.
The procurement technology market is more capable today than at any point in its history. Platforms are smarter, faster, more integrated, more AI-enabled. By every technical measure, the tools available to procurement organizations in 2026 are vastly superior to what existed even five years ago — let alone fifteen or twenty.
And yet the implementation failure rates haven’t moved.
The industry has been documenting failure rates between 65% and 80% for decades. Not because the data is stale — because the pattern is persistent. New platforms arrive. New vendors emerge. New acquisitions consolidate the market. The technology gets better. The outcomes don’t follow.
If technology were the variable that determined success, this wouldn’t be possible. The math doesn’t work. You can’t have exponentially better tools producing the same failure rates unless the tools were never the determining factor in the first place.
This graphic is from our recently published Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment. It tracks two lines across three corporate phases spanning 18 years: Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement. The gold line — capability — went up. The burgundy line — outcomes — went down. The gap between them widened from 3.4 points to 4.7 points.
That’s the acquisition paradox in a single image. But the pattern isn’t unique to SAP Ariba. It shows up across every vendor we’ve assessed. Capability climbs. Outcomes stall or decline. The gap widens.
Now consider the counterexamples.
Canada’s Department of National Defence achieved 97.3% delivery accuracy and 23% cost savings over seven years — on technology that would be considered primitive by today’s standards. Virginia’s eVA program succeeded on the same Ariba platform that cost Ontario’s OECM $20 million. The Scottish Government’s procurement initiative delivered measurable outcomes on infrastructure that no vendor would put in a demo today.
These weren’t technology success stories. They were readiness success stories. The organizations that succeeded had structured methodologies, behavioral alignment, governance frameworks, and decision ownership in place before deployment. The ones that failed had better slide decks.
That’s what the Hansen Fit Score measures. Not whether a platform is capable — they almost all are — but whether the gap between capability and outcomes is being managed. Because a 4.8-point gap on the most capable platform in the market is a bigger risk than a 2.0-point gap on a modest one.
The industry has spent decades optimizing the wrong variable. The technology was never the problem.
Readiness is the problem. It always has been.
The full Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment is available here.
Jon Hansen has covered the procurement technology market independently since 2007 through Procurement Insights. The Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series is a product of Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.).
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Procurement Insights
The Widening Gap: Why Better Tech Hasn’t Fixed Procurement Failure
Posted on February 7, 2026
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Here is something worth considering.
The procurement technology market is more capable today than at any point in its history. Platforms are smarter, faster, more integrated, more AI-enabled. By every technical measure, the tools available to procurement organizations in 2026 are vastly superior to what existed even five years ago — let alone fifteen or twenty.
And yet the implementation failure rates haven’t moved.
The industry has been documenting failure rates between 65% and 80% for decades. Not because the data is stale — because the pattern is persistent. New platforms arrive. New vendors emerge. New acquisitions consolidate the market. The technology gets better. The outcomes don’t follow.
If technology were the variable that determined success, this wouldn’t be possible. The math doesn’t work. You can’t have exponentially better tools producing the same failure rates unless the tools were never the determining factor in the first place.
This graphic is from our recently published Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment. It tracks two lines across three corporate phases spanning 18 years: Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement. The gold line — capability — went up. The burgundy line — outcomes — went down. The gap between them widened from 3.4 points to 4.7 points.
That’s the acquisition paradox in a single image. But the pattern isn’t unique to SAP Ariba. It shows up across every vendor we’ve assessed. Capability climbs. Outcomes stall or decline. The gap widens.
Now consider the counterexamples.
Canada’s Department of National Defence achieved 97.3% delivery accuracy and 23% cost savings over seven years — on technology that would be considered primitive by today’s standards. Virginia’s eVA program succeeded on the same Ariba platform that cost Ontario’s OECM $20 million. The Scottish Government’s procurement initiative delivered measurable outcomes on infrastructure that no vendor would put in a demo today.
These weren’t technology success stories. They were readiness success stories. The organizations that succeeded had structured methodologies, behavioral alignment, governance frameworks, and decision ownership in place before deployment. The ones that failed had better slide decks.
That’s what the Hansen Fit Score measures. Not whether a platform is capable — they almost all are — but whether the gap between capability and outcomes is being managed. Because a 4.8-point gap on the most capable platform in the market is a bigger risk than a 2.0-point gap on a modest one.
The industry has spent decades optimizing the wrong variable. The technology was never the problem.
Readiness is the problem. It always has been.
The full Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment is available here.
Jon Hansen has covered the procurement technology market independently since 2007 through Procurement Insights. The Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series is a product of Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.).
-30-
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