Amsterdam became a hub of innovation once again this year at DPW’s huge annual conference in October. Procurement professionals flew in from all over the world to attend not only DPW’s two-day event, but an official side event led by ORO Labs: ORO Imagine.
ORO Labs brought its event to Amsterdam on the 8th of October as a fitting precursor to DPW 2024. The event was centred around the latest trends and best practices in procurement orchestration. The day featured keynote speeches from some of the most notable professionals in the sector, as well as company case studies, demonstrations, interactive sessions, and the opportunity for attendees to connect with their peers.
Solving procurement’s issues
The atmosphere was buzzing as attendees arrived to register and enjoy lunch, before the afternoon of fascinating sessions was kicked off by Sudhir Bhojwani, CEO and Co-Founder of ORO Labs. He opened with an introduction to ORO Labs and its modern procurement orchestration platform, aimed at solving user experience and compliance issues, among others. He reminded attendees that procurement is not linear nor consistent, which has resulted in years of business user frustration in trying to understand how to get things done.
But Bhojwani noted that the ORO Promise of a no-code platform, coupled with deep procurement semantics and Gen AI capabilities, is now humanising the procurement experience and guiding users and procurement teams to satisfactory outcomes.
Technology shouldn’t feel like pouring cement
The next session was led by Jason Busch of Spend Matters: ‘The intersection of world matters with Spend Matters – a navigation conversation’. Busch zoomed out from the procuretech conversation to look at the state of the world and current business and geopolitical trends, from human labour versus automation, to global trade dependence versus supply chain localisation, to the relatively sluggish economies in the US and EU.
Busch went on to predict that procurement may soon look like SimCity as a function. Technology investments will beget further technology investments, as tech becomes better and less expensive. We’ll see significant innovation from more providers, as well as procurement in three dimensions: physical, information, and capital.
He then gave a broad overview of what’s happening in procurement, including micro economies within industries, tech and data replacing bodies in top consultancies, and intake and orchestration starting to take over source-to-pay. Sourcing automation is starting to make major strides too, beyond just tail spend, and direct materials procurement is finally starting to move beyond Excel. Busch recognised that implementing older procurement platforms was like “pouring cement” for decades, whereas orchestration provides a lighter-weight, malleable and agile workflow-building approach. It was a hopeful talk, ending with a discussion about what orchestration really is and how it’s transforming procurement.
Customer Spotlight
After Busch’s session came two Customer Spotlight talks from Bayer and Liberty Global respectively. Bayer’s was entitled ‘Make procurement work for our people’, and was led by Marc Ofiara and Ryan Whitemore from the company. They gave an overview of Bayer as an organisation, before delving into how they use ORO Labs’ solution. The pair discussed making procurement work for business users, making it work for suppliers, and making it work for its own procurement teams, as part of one AI-powered, simple interface with full visibility.
Then came Liberty Global’s spotlight story, led by Stu Rogers and Valeriia Basko. They dove into challenges around visibility and user experience, integrated process and compliance, and efficiency and collaboration – all exacerbated by serving many diverse business units each with their own legacy systems. They then outlined the benefits of making changes, including a consolidated procurement and contract pipeline, tailored workflows, and collaboration – all things procurement needs in order to keep up and continue to evolve. The key learnings Liberty Global outlined were around being agile and focusing on digital, with the right data yielding the right results. They concluded by advising attendees to balance inspiration with realism, co-create with diverse users, and don’t wait to make change: release and then refine.
Future value delivery
During the break the excitement of the day continued as procurement professionals came together to network and discuss their learnings, before the second half of the afternoon kicked off with an interactive session and panel. ‘The future of procurement orchestration from the practitioners’ view’ saw Lance Younger of Procuretech, Sebastian Ebers from Roche, Rita Santos from Grunenthal, and Szilvia Regos of Diageo discussing future value delivery from orchestration, and how it can be delivered.
The panel discussed where orchestration is likely to have the biggest impact across procurement, and dug deep into some of the most vital metrics, such as process compliance, touchless transactions, budget compliance, and spend management. Then they outlined some of the major procurement value drivers – including AI-based spend analysis and cost management, AI-powered supplier and risk management, and Gen AI for contract and document management – all of which are among the biggest procurement priorities over the next couple of years.
The rise of labour 2.0
Then came a talk from Dr Elouise Epstein of Kearney. Her talk – ‘The procurement generation: boom(er) or bust?’ – delved into labour 2.0, and the way the workforce is set to change. There’s a big shift in the age of the workforce, with Gen Z about to overtake Baby Boomers in the workplace for the first time, so there needs to be a re-evaluation of what that means for businesses – and for procurement.
She also discussed broader ways in which technology has changed the demands of the modern consumer, from COVID-19 increasing our impatience for online purchases when we could no longer use physical shops, to relying on ChatGPT to write our social media posts and answer questions. Dr Epstein reiterated that yesterday’s skills are a thing of the past, and tomorrow’s skills focus more on elements like a love of data, creativity, intellectual curiosity, storytelling, and network thinking.
She also added that – as was the theme of the entire event – orchestration is king, and process management is no longer as relevant. She added a quote of her own, which encapsulates the major barrier when it comes to change: “Within 18 months we will have all the technology we could ever need for the enterprise. The problem is apathy and Excel.”
After a deeply informative afternoon, Lalitha Rajagopalan, ORO Labs Co-Founder and Head of Strategy, summed up the day with a reminder that the procurement experience must be humanised, and that advanced technology actually serves to make that easier. Rather than technology distancing us from one another, she reminded us that with orchestration it can bring us closer together for the most informed and aligned decision-making.
The event served as an ideal preface for DPW, shining a spotlight on today’s issues and the landscape of tomorrow. Congratulations to ORO Labs and everybody involved for an excellent and impactful day at ORO Imagine.