Technology is now in everything. If procurement doesn’t understand that and take the necessary steps to rethink it’s category structures and people competencies, money will be left on the table.
I spent a week last week in Silicon Valley, looking at various start ups (it’s all about platform, folks!) that are solving every sort of problem using new technology. I have a strong background in technology and struggled, at times, to keep up with my comprehension of what the tech was that underpinned a new product or service. And yet, every category of soend, pretty much, is now being upended by how technology is being used. It’s not just the IT category anymore. Even the IT category is changing with containerisation, APIs, cloud, Xaas, all having massive impacts on commercial models, IP, costs to serve and so on. Going up the very steep learning curve for category teams has not been this important since the invention of the formal Category Strategy document. The business relies on us to separate hype from hope and, with all the TLAs and jargon I heard last week, that’s harder and harder to do.
At the very least, category experts should:
- Know the tech being used in your category.
- Start keeping a glossary of new terms.
- Read the marketing materials your vendors are putting out.
- Understand the commercial models.
- Consider setting up your own training curriculum. Search for white papers, Wikipedia entries, books, blogs, etc in your areas of expertise. And start reading. A lot.
Keeo on keeping up. Our future depends on it!