Adapting procurement priorities for a post-COVID environment

According to a recent survey by strategic sourcing and procurement software company Bonfire Interactive Ltd., procurement professionals said that finding new ways to cut costs and reduce their budget was their team’s biggest priority for 2021. Bonfire’s new report, Public Procurement Priorities and Strategies for 2021, asked U.S.-based local government procurement professionals on their strategies for procurement in 2021, and how COVID-19 has impacted their work.

In addition to the 28.36 percent of responders who chose cutting costs and reducing budgets, the next priorities identified were increasing the speed and efficiency of processes (26.87 percent) and reevaluating digital transformation efforts to make them sustainable for the future (20.90 percent).

Speaking of technology, when it came to a digital transformation, 43.28 percent of responders said they had made temporary changes that they will reassess going forward, while 31.34 percent made permanent changes that they will be maintaining, and 25.37 percent said they didn’t make any significant digital changes.

Almost half of responders (47.06 percent) said their teams will be back at the office full time, while 7.35 percent said their teams will be working remotely full time. Other responders indicated their teams will be working from both an office and remotely to varying degrees.

The full Bonfire report is available here.