Procurement leaders face a growing challenge: expectations are rising, but resources are not.
The Hackett Group 2025 Procurement Agenda and Key Issues Study reveals that procurement workloads are expected to increase by 9.8% in 2025, yet headcount and budgets will see only marginal growth. This productivity gap, an estimated 8.8% efficiency shortfall, puts procurement teams under pressure.
At the same time, procurement operations are becoming increasingly complex. Supply chain disruptions, rising costs, and evolving compliance requirements demand a more agile, data-driven approach. Procurement teams that continue to rely on manual, disconnected processes may struggle to keep pace.
To bridge this efficiency gap, procurement leaders must focus on eliminating unnecessary manual work, standardizing processes, and using automation to accelerate productivity and efficiency.
Four ways procurement leaders can boost efficiency and productivity
To become more efficient and productive, procurement leaders need to pinpoint the places in their processes where costs can be better controlled, and time can be saved. By focusing on automation, visibility, and streamlined workflows, procurement teams can create greater efficiencies and increase productivity. Here are four ways procurement leaders can boost efficiency and productivity:
1. Automate repetitive tasks to speed up procurement cycles
Manual processes slow down procurement workflows, creating bottlenecks in approvals, supplier updates, and goods receipt postings. Use automation to eliminate manual data entry, reduce approval wait times, and improve supplier response rates. Automated workflows can seamlessly convert purchase requisitions into purchase orders and trigger near real-time approvals.
2. Improve visibility into procurement workflows
Without clear visibility, inefficiencies go unnoticed, leading to unnecessary costs and delays. Process analytics solutions and technology can identify bottlenecks, track approvals, and highlight process variations, giving procurement leaders the insights they need to streamline operations and make data-driven decisions.
3. Accelerate approvals and reduce cycle times
Slow approvals for purchase orders and invoices can delay procurement cycles, leading to missed opportunities and strained supplier relationships. Solution: AI-driven approvals can route purchase requests, detect anomalies, and minimize manual intervention, ensuring faster decision-making and improved compliance.
4. Standardize procurement processes to reduce complexity
Procurement inefficiencies often stem from inconsistent processes, which create unnecessary work and increase error rates. Standardizing workflows, such as purchase requisition approvals and supplier onboarding, can significantly reduce the time spent on administrative tasks. In turn, this allows procurement teams to focus on higher-value strategic activities.
SAP Signavio solutions can help procurement teams discover where costly manual interventions are limiting efficiency and productivity
Before automating processes, procurement teams need to see where things aren’t working as well as they could and get data-driven insights on how to improve key processes.
With SAP Signavio solutions, procurement leaders can:
- Identify manual bottlenecks and optimize processes
- Compare process efficiency and productivity against industry benchmarks to uncover improvement areas
- Pinpoint automation opportunities to reduce cycle times and lower costs
- Analyze compliance gaps to mitigate risk and help ensure procurement policies are followed
We invite you to download The Procurement Leader’s Guide to Process Excellence, which takes a deeper look at the main ways procurement leaders can boost efficiency and productivity.
Plus, gain insights into two additional key areas for accelerating the journey to procurement excellence: increasing financial efficiency, and improving procurement compliance.