The Hackett Group's insightful report on procurement tech

Exclusive research on the impact of digital technology in procurement has been released by The Hackett Group, titled Digital World Class Procurement: Reaching New Heights in Peak Performance. Founded in 1991, The Hackett Group is a management consulting group, with a revenue of $64mn. It is headquartered in Miami, USA.

Digital World Class procurement organisations are those which achieve top performance in:

• Operational excellence 
• Business value 

A public version of the research Digital World Class Procurement: Reaching New Heights in Peak Performance is available, but Procurement has created a summary.

Digital technology in procurement: efficiency, unbeatable customer experience and excellence 

A range of businesses were questioned, including those from:

• Dow Jones Industrials
• Fortune 100
• DAX 30 
• FTSE 100

The results showed:

Improved customer experience

The experience of stakeholders is one of the greatest business values that Digital World Class organisations can provide. Those with a performance edge over their peers in customer perceptions are:

• 85% more likely to be viewed by stakeholders, as taking a proactive approach to supply risk mitigation 
• 19% more likely to be considered a valued business partner
• 7x more likely to be viewed as having effective business knowledge skills

Efficiency

Digital World Class procurement organisations now operate at 25% lower cost than typical procurement organisations.

For a $10bn company, this represents procurement cost savings of $6.9mn.

Effectiveness

The Digital World Class advantage goes further than financial savings. Top procurement organisations deliver higher-quality services, such as:

• Better stakeholder engagement
• Supplier relationship management
• Product innovation

Compared to their peers, they have:

• 2.5x higher procurement ROI 
• 25% more spend influenced or managed by procurement
• 70% more FTEs in strategic roles like product development support
• 15% more FTEs in supplier partnering

Technology plays a key role in achieving these results, with Digital World Class procurement organisations spending 20% more than peers on technology.

World-class performance in procurement 

This research details how technology-enabled organisations are achieving peak performance.

“For decades The Hackett Group’s benchmarks have been the gold standard by which most global companies measure world-class performance in procurement and other business services. Now, with the growing impact of digital transformation, The Hackett Group is raising the bar further with its shift to a Digital World Class measurement standard”, said The Hackett Group Vice President, Research Erik Dorr. “The results are impressive. But the bottom line is straightforward. Our research provides empirical evidence of the impact that digital transformation is having. 

“For years, companies have been making incremental improvements, optimising processes, cutting costs and reducing transactional labor to reach world-class performance. 

“But new technologies allow many companies to fast-forward to Digital World Class levels of operational excellence and business value. They can get much of this benefit by overlaying digital technology on their existing systems, rather than embarking on large-scale infrastructure changes."