Automation & Cognitive Set To Boost Sourcing & Procurement Outsourcing

New study reveals the emergence of automation & cognitive processes across strategic sourcing & category management that will drive outsourcing

Boston, MA and Paris /PRNewswire/ - A new NelsonHall study, Next Generation Sourcing & Procurement, reveals that self-service, automation, AI, cognitive, machine learning and proactive analytics are emerging end-to-end across strategic sourcing & category management, sourcing support services, and procurement transaction services. And organizations will increasingly outsource sourcing & procurement services to enable stakeholder partnerships and provide an enhanced purchasing experience to users.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/643421/NelsonHall_Logo.jpg )

The traditional sourcing & procurement (S&P) market is driven by the need to achieve cost savings, drive compliance, and reduce risk. However, looking ahead, key success factors for next generation S&P services include the ability to:

• Deliver procurement transformation and sourcing consulting projects
• Provide S&P process automation
• Achieve customer experience automation.

Based on interviews with vendor executives responsible for sourcing & procurement operations in the U.S., U.K., Europeand Asia, Next Generation Sourcing & Procurement predicts that over the next four years:

• Organizations will increasingly outsource S&P services to enable stakeholder partnerships: elevating procurement's role to that of a trusted advisor, aligning strategic sourcing's goals with the businesses' objectives, and categorizing/grouping stakeholders for more efficient alignment
• Traditional AP vendors will bring RPA experience from the payments processing area into S&P to automate more spend analytics and opportunity identification processes
• Buyers will demand a more 'millenialized' end-user experience and vendors will offer cloud-based mobile app PR to PO apps along with bots within the procurement helpdesk and catalogs to enhance the end-user experience
• Vendors will develop category plans and integrate market intelligence and benchmark data to deliver 'should cost' models
• Vendors will combine AI, cognitive and RPA to automate numerous S&P processes, reducing cycle time and human intervention.

The Next Generation Sourcing & Procurement report is part of NelsonHall's F&A & Supply Chain Transformation. For further information on the report and the program, contact NelsonHall's Principal F&A Services analyst, Janet Irwin.

About NelsonHall
NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next generation IT and business services. With analysts in the U.S., U.K., and Europe, NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors (including NEAT assessments) that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. For service providers, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies.