It’s never too late to start planning for the future – but the future of procurement is NOW! That was a key message in today’s NextLevel Presentation: Procurement 2020. Forward-thinking procurement professionals can’t afford to ignore the dramatic shifts occurring in today’s global economic, business and social landscape. They must take steps to address today’s challenges and prepare for the future. This NextLevel panel discussion provided attendees with the opportunity to learn exactly how several key industry thought leaders are driving impressive change across people, processes and technology within their organizations to prepare for 2020 today.
The session kicked off with an examination of procurement today and current forces of change, including sustained economic pressure, loss of public funding for many universities and organizations, changing demographics and the increasing focus on sustainability. Panelists then shared their visions of how the world and procurement will look in 2020 along with what their organizations are currently doing to prepare for the future.
Kelly Fox, Chancellor and CFO at the University of Colorado discussed critical challenges impacting the university system, including increasing competition for students, declining state and federal support, and the fragility of research enterprise funding. Troy Halverson, Manager of Contract Management for Sedona Technologies pointed to the globalization of contracts, the need for enhanced flexibility and workflow capabilities among internal and external stakeholders as well as the significant role CLM tools now play within overall enterprise IT systems. John Mayes, Chief Procurement Officer at Yale University detailed the continuing transformation of procurement at Yale using a timeline to chart how the university has incorporated technology to create a self-service infrastructure, improve strategic focus, standardize expense management and purchasing procedures while significantly reducing manual and paper-based processes. Mayes also made note of the inevitable impact of mobile technologies on future business processes.
The session was a great example of how NextLevel delivers critical insight and real-world examples that procurement professionals can use to streamline processes, lower costs and enable success today and well into the future.
Check in often with the Open Kitchen for more news and expert insight from NextLevel 2013.
