Study reveals that digital marketplaces are the future of commerce

"Dramatic changes in the global economy, ongoing supply chain disruptions, the rise of a highly distributed workforce and rapid consumer digitalization have driven organizations to adapt quickly and evolve to survive - not only from a procurement perspective, but also from their core business model" says Kahly Berg, Senior VP, Digital Experiences, SAP SE. "This research proves that the digital marketplace is here to stay and that resources like the SAP Store website and SAP.com are critical to the success of SAP's partners, customers and peers in the industry."

For the "2022 B2B Digital Buyers' Journey: Forces Shaping the Future of Enterprise Procurement," nearly a thousand B2B decision-makers from small to large companies in nine industries collaborated with Futurum Research to respond to the study, which also served to reinforce the previous "2019 B2B Digital Buyers' Journey: Trends, Challenges and Predictions."

The main conclusions are:

As business requirements change so does the type of software that companies need to acquire.

• 89% of responding organizations say that their business model has changed in the last two years (with 39% admitting a significant change in business model).
• Of the total responses, 41% say that their company's software or solution needs have changed significantly in the last two years.
• Of this panel, 78% say they are looking for the way to streamline their sourcing process, while 27% say their current process never or only occasionally works as efficiently as in the past.

The future of supply is digital.

• The majority of procurement professionals (54%) report that by 2024 they will conduct their sourcing process primarily in an online mode, either through the supplier's own website or a digital marketplace.
• Of the respondents, 44% cited having a single store for multiple vendors as the most important feature in a digital marketplace.
• Of the total responses, 16% expect to buy at least half of the software their company needs through a digital marketplace.

Both managers and purchasing teams have greater involvement in the purchasing process.

• Of those surveyed, 61% say that management staff are more involved in the procurement process today than they were two years ago. As a contrast, our 2019 panel study indicated that less than 30% of executives were active in any part of the procurement journey.
• Of the purchasing teams, 51% are now significantly involved in determining enterprise software needs.

Distributed decision processes are becoming the new normal.

• Most companies believe that it takes four or more team members, per functional group, to finalize a purchasing decision.
• A quarter of companies with 50,000 or more employees say that they need at least 11 managers for the signature of a typical procurement process.
• Of the companies, 34% say that the lack of group consensus is considerably a concern, impediment, or risk to the successful acquisition of enterprise software solutions.

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This article is republished in partnership with Supply Chain Magazine - Read the original article article here.