As Procurement Leaders gears up for our annual CPO retreat, Ovation, we’ve surveyed a large number of group-level procurement chiefs on their priorities, successes and vision for the future of the function.
Unsurprisingly, AI dominates the conversation. Regardless of where these organisations sit on the maturity curve, every leader is reimagining their future operating model around the technology. We’ll spend considerable time at Ovation designing these ideas, and I look forward to sharing those insights.
But while technology is generating immense excitement, particularly for its ability to drive better decision-making through advanced data and insights, there is a growing anxiety regarding the future of people.
One CPO articulated this perfectly, warning the single most underfunded long-term investment in business today is human capital. Leaders are at severe risk, he said, of failing to upskill their teams to “remain relevant in a world where technology is ubiquitous and talent is the key differentiator”.
To prove his point, he explained that while his function has delivered significant enterprise impact over the past 12 months, in all instances that impact was the direct result of people-led initiatives, not technology.
This highlights the vast amount of work that CPOs must still do. In nearly every recent conversation about the intersection of technology and talent, the prevailing theory is that the future of human contribution will hinge on strategic thinking and judgement.
That sounds great in theory. But, if we are being pragmatic, we have to ask what those words actually mean. How do we define strategy, judgement and influence in a world where machines are increasingly executing workflows and providing highly accurate decision support?
It’s why I’m drawn to the phrase “people-led initiatives”. It strips away the buzzwords and provides a grounded, pragmatic way for leaders to define exactly where being human remains a competitive differentiator – both today and in the future.
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