The Consumerisation of Corporate Systems – Can business procurement technology learn from the consumer world?

It is only in the past few years that B2B software has started to benchmark itself against those leading consumer online shopping experiences to stay relevant. We call this process the "consumerisation" of business procurement and spending. It is clear that this is a long-term trend, and indeed the gap between the two approaches will inevitably narrow with software advances and as business buyers simply expect the same sort of experience that they enjoy in their world of consumer buying.

This is all relevant to the end user or budget holder in corporate organisations who need to acquire goods and services to do their jobs. And as procurement professionals and functions will often be responsible for putting in place both the contracts that are accessed and the technology that supports that, this is obviously of interest to procurement too.

But what does this trend mean for procurement organisations - regardless of how centralised or decentralised your team is? What defines “consumerization” and what exactly is it that makes software easy to use and effective within the corporate (as opposed to the consumer) world? How should procurement professionals stay ahead of the game if they are to satisfy their internal stakeholders and reap the potential benefits of this approach? Those are amongst the questions we address in this short paper, written by Peter Smith of Spend Matters Europe and sponsored by Basware, the global leader in providing networked purchase-to-pay solutions, e-invoicing and innovative financing services.