Sachin Sharma of ProcureDesk says procurement system failures come down to change management, not technology. Start by involving buyers and accounts payable in design, launch with basic features like purchase approvals, then add complexity gradually. Assign one person to own the tool and keep tweaking it based on feedback.
If you're rolling out a new procurement system, you might be worried about adoption. And you're not alone. Here's a simple fact, right? It's not always about the technology or the tool that you are launching. It's also about managing the change or working with the stakeholders to do a successful launch. So in this video, I'm going to give you three simple strategies that you can implement today to decrease the adoption risk of your new procurement system. Right? So if you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I am the founder of procuredesk where we help growing companies automate their processes around purchasing and ap. So let's get, get right into it. So number one is you should involve your stakeholders early. It's you're probably not hearing for the first time, but you'll be surprised how many times we see in our implementations where you have started the implementation but the key stakeholders like the buyers or the accounts payable team has not been, you know, they haven't been communicated or you know, they haven't been consulted in the new process that you're about to roll out. So what I mean by involving stakeholders early, think about a couple of things, right? So what should be our process for approval? Are there any specific approval processes for each department that you need to consider? What is AP's or accounts payable requirement around matching, how they do invoice matching today, what are their exception rules? All that should be considered in your design so that when you roll it out there is no surprise and the team is actually, you know, become your champions at that time, right? Because they've been involved in the process from day one. So make sure your stakeholders are involved from day one in this whole process. Number two is do a simple launch. So what do I mean by that? Every software solution, right, you implement, there is no shortage of features there. You know, there are different use cases that has been implemented in the system and the tendency is always to let's do all of it on day one. You know, let's say we set up budget controls on day one. We want to set up complex workflows for categories and things like that. All that is great, but I think it just makes the whole rollout process complex. A simple way to approach this would be let's do the basics first. So what are basics? Right? Setting up a purchase request approval process, setting up a simple approval process, not, you know, a complex one, or setting up a simple three way match process. Once you have these three things rolled out, you can Always add complexity or tweak the process as you move forward. So start with simple add more features as you go or add launch new features as we go. Number three is having an internal owner. So it's not one and done when it comes to procurement automation, right? And here's why. You always have changes to the process. Your business is evolving, so your business processes are going to change. That means the processes that are configured in the system has to be changed and who owns it? If nobody owns it, then it just you launch it. The product remains where it was launched and your business process changed. So now you have a disconnect. Users stop using the system and you have low adoption. So have an internal owner treat this as a product that you're launching, right? So if you launch the product in the market, you will get some feedback from your customers, you will make those changes in the product in the next version and then you see the feedback again. So the launch of a procurement technology is very similar to launching a product. You launch it, you get feedback from your stakeholders and then you keep on improving as and when you get feedback, make the processes better and so on, right? So just to summarize, these are the simple three strategies that you can implement to decrease the adoption rate of new procurement technology. Number one is involve your stakeholders early. Number two is do a simple launch. Number three is have an internal owner. If you enjoyed this video, hit the subscribe button so that you get notified when we release new videos like this. Thank you for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
