The 4th edition of the Digital Procurement Success (DPS) barometer, published by the Conseil National des Achats, describes 2024 as a turning point for procurement departments: shrinking digitalisation budgets, heavier regulation, and generative AI landing in teams without a manual. Here is what we take away from it.

Transformation under budget pressure

The study surveyed more than 115 procurement decision-makers. Its first finding is uncomfortable: budgets dedicated to digitalising the procurement function are down compared with 2023. Fewer than one decision-maker in five believes they have the resources needed to see their transformation through.

The paradox lies in the next figure: close to 50% of respondents still plan to launch a digitalisation project within the next twelve months. Procurement departments have not given up on tooling. They have to do it with less, which means choosing projects whose result can be measured quickly, on data they already hold.

Regulation as a trigger

For Jean-Luc Baras, chairman of the CNA, new regulatory requirements, the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and the CS3D, are redefining the mission of procurement departments: know your suppliers, document the supply chain, produce verifiable data on what is bought and on what terms.

More than 50% of respondents see these obligations as a catalyst for digital transformation. The logic is straightforward: nobody collects supplier ESG data at group scale with spreadsheets. The constraint becomes the argument that unlocks a tooling project, and an opportunity for procurement to strengthen its position inside the company.

Generative AI, still exploratory

The arrival of generative AI is the other headline of this edition. 85% of procurement decision-makers consider sharing best practices around AI essential, yet the approach remains largely exploratory: few use cases in production, many experiments.

Laurent Piechocki, head of procurement digitalisation at Orange France, puts it this way in the barometer: AI is not a ready-to-use tool, it transforms practices in depth. That is our reading too. An AI that reads contracts and invoices does not replace a process; it changes its starting point, because what used to be reviewed by sampling can now be checked in full.

Data, the condition for everything else

The barometer insists on data quality as a success factor. Close to 40% of procurement departments have already set up governance dedicated to data management, and 38% are preparing theirs. For Sébastien Charvet, marketing director at Altares, data sits at the heart of procurement processes and having quality data is the key to sound decisions.

In practice, that means a repository that links contracts, orders and invoices, a stable taxonomy, deduplicated suppliers. Without it, a generative AI project produces fluent answers on wrong data.

Keeping the investment going

Despite budget constraints, close to 60% of procurement decision-makers consider it necessary to maintain investment in digitalisation to prepare for the way out of the crisis. Michael Bentolila of InsideBoard AI sums up the barometer’s position: the procurement departments that come out ahead will not be the ones with the biggest budgets, but the ones that find the right balance between technology, people and data.

The priorities identified for 2024 are consistent with that view:

  • make better use of existing data;
  • update and adapt the tools already in place rather than replace them;
  • review internal processes;
  • develop team skills.

None of these priorities requires rebuilding the ERP.

What this changes for a procurement department

Florence Baiget, procurement director of the Veolia group, expects 2024 to be the year procurement departments commit to concrete, high-performing AI use cases. That is the right scale: a precise question (do invoiced prices respect negotiated prices?) asked of real data, with a result a controller can verify line by line.

The procurement departments that combine this demand for proof, control over their data and tools that adapt to their processes will be best placed for the period ahead. The full barometer is available on the CNA website. To see what a concrete use case yields on your own procurement spend, a call with an expert is enough to scope the perimeter.