It’s been 3 years since the start of Covid-19 pandemic, and it is hard to believe what all the world has gone through in these 36 months. Fortunately, barring a few countries, Covid-19 has all but fallen out of newspaper headlines and businesses all over the globe are trying to get to the pre pandemic velocity. However, business leaders continue to exhibit pessimism towards the economic environment citing inflation, supply chain risks, trade policy shifts, global energy crisis and fear of an upcoming global recession. 

 

Organizations have responded in a variety of ways to prepare for this economic uncertainty and ever-looming recession. Some responses take most of the limelight like employee layoffs, restructuring, management changes, passing on cost increases to customers, reducing pack sizes to keep price point and margins etc. Many other organizations are looking inwards to find the efficiencies required to face a tougher market.

 

One area that gets a lot of airtimes, but little progress, in these introspections is leveraging of data by Procurement leaders in decision making. Year after year, CPO surveys identify increased usage of data as a key priority for procurement leadership, yet few make tangible progress, as evident by this 2023 survey of Global CPOs where a whopping 85% are aiming to expand the use of data.