Efficiency, Collaboration & Transparency - The key to procurement success in 2025?

4th February 2025,

By Jonathan Dutton FCIPS,

What are the key challenges facing procurement leaders in 2025 throughout Australia & New Zealand? What are the common factors we will have to navigate to succeed for our stakeholders and ourselves? The PASA theme for 2024 was ‘Responsible Procurement’ and how we balance the growing demands for

stronger ESG inputs (and outcomes) with a clear commercial agenda to assure delivery in a volatile world

and still deliver value for money in an inflationary environment.

The key to success in 2024 was centred around prioritisation. Having the confidence to hold mature

discussions with stakeholders asking, “what’s first then, what is key?” not, how we can justify resources to

address a very broad ESG agenda?

For 2025, some other clues seem to be emerging to help busy buyers; becoming more efficient and

streamlined, working as a team more, and operating with much greater transparency and oversight

as the norm.

Efficiency – faster process, faster technology, faster service.

Standing alone, ‘efficiency’ as a goal has offered a weak business case for procurement to achieve more resources. Gartner revealed their ANZ based

research in early 2023 that suggested only 17% succeed yet fully 49% fail totally. And those often seem to put ‘efficiency’ as the strategic driver for

eProcurement investment – over solving business problems, enacting policy, building competitiveness or driving margin.

The Hackett Group key issues survey has put technology at the heart of procurement investment needs for the last two years in 2023 and 2024 in

order to ‘close the productivity gap’ between high workload growth (around 8-11% pa) and headcount increases in procurement (FTE growth only at

around 2-3%). But we are poor at making the case it seems in procurement.

Yet efficiency can bring its own reward - effectiveness. And being more efficient frees time. Time for procurement leaders to work more proactively and strategically for greater business effect.

However, TECHNOLOGY is not the only thing that can

bring efficiency:

• Better processes in the first place, even USER selfservice or guided buying

• Outsourcing procurement to aggregators, category specialists or contract staff?

• Deploying agile or accelerated procurement methodology can streamline workload and responsiveness.

• Improved teamwork with stakeholders and suppliers alike can also offer dividends.

• All that said, technology is still presenting challenges – how does Gen AI fit for procurement?

For suppliers? Should tech offer augmentation over automation? What can’t tech achieve?

Collaboration – with stakeholders, with suppliers, with other buyers.

Traditionally, despite its collegiate culture, procurement have often been poor collaborators. Perhaps, having worked so hard to achieve meaningful spend control, buyers are fearful of giving it up or even sharing that control?

Yet TEAMWORK with stakeholders, with suppliers or even other buyers can yield strong results.

Procurement managers have made great strides with stakeholders in recent years in many areas. Becoming business partners over mere supplier conduits. Getting involved much earlier, generating broader value, more aligned with business goals. And building the Talent to deliver.

And, with suppliers, after Covid especially, supplier relationship management (SRM) has entered the mainstream procurement toolbox. How can we improve our business case for SRM, post-covid, and how can we use it as a strategy to deliver broader value?

Working more together seems obvious. Indeed, many are – like in dustry sector driven co-operative groups like Australian University Procurement Network (AUPN), Energy Procurement Supply Association (EPSA) and others … But public sector All of Government (AoG) arrangements are genuinely rare. Very rare inter-jurisdictionally.

Why is that?

Transparency – better ESG, better measures, better governance.

Today, transparency is no less than stakeholders expect. They want strong provenance – understanding of where things came from and how

they got here? No longer can procurement deliver three bids and a cloud of dust and produce a shiny new supplier.

Inherent in TRANSPARENCY is the idea of accountability – which means better measures, better governance. Overall, better service with better standards for stakeholders and for suppliers.

But, also their suppliers, and theirs, driving visibility UP the supply chain is key. This, almost in itself, can bring better ESG outcomes, yet we cannot dodge the need to prioritise. The breadth of the ESG agenda demands prioritisation, even hard choices for some.

Transparency offers a real business benefit beyond stakeholder confidence; risk management. 

We can manage what we can see.

Every conference and event run by PASA this year will offer insights from hard working practitioners and others who have faced the same problems and found their own solutions through better efficiency, collaboration and transparency. Attending any PASA event in 2025 will help you draw upon their successes to inspire your own.