Spring 2023 // Canadian Government Executive / 17 WORKFORCE 4 percent of their total external spend on high transaction costs, inefficiency, and noncompliance. Organizations can manage their spends effectively by implementing a digital source-to-pay (S2P) application by up to 50%, driving an additional 31% in total savings. This can also stand true for the public procurement industry. Source-to-pay solutions can help increase the efficiency of the entire procurement workflow, allowing government agencies to do more with less people. These solutions allow a seamless process from finding, negotiating with, and contracting the supplier of goods, to the final payment for those goods. They also help derive actionable insights from large data sets of historic spending and trends. For bidding, RFX documents can be prepared, reviewed and distributed digitally to potential suppliers including the request for information (RFI), request for quote (RFQ), or request for proposal (RFP). Post contract negotiation and management, purchase order, invoices, and finance reports can all be generated electronically as well. Going digital will not only improve efficiency and save time, but also attract younger talent that has a more forward-looking approach to public procurement. With baby boomers retiring in large numbers, there is more room now than ever before for a younger workforce in government agencies. Moreover, tech is the first language for most from this generation, making these digital tools and solutions a key driver for their participation in public procurement. Additionally, organizations can also divert the savings into upskilling the workforce to bridge the unfilled labor gaps. LinkedIn Learning found that if companies actively invested in employees’ careers, up to 94% of workers would be willing to stay with them longer. By addressing certain gaps across the procurement process for value loss, cost savings can have a real impact on streamlining workflows. Operations enhancements through source-to-pay initiatives can lead to efficiency gains as well as strengthen supplier relationships. The generation entering the workforce has a desire to contribute to fixing society’s problems at scale. They can do a lot of good from within the government, and they can also do tremendous good from outside of government by working with government partners. Public procurement has the potential to be a force multiplier for addressing almost all public sector challenges. As labour challenges in the public sector continue, having one solution that takes care of everything from sourcing to supplier and contract management, procurement, finances, and analytics across, will yield much greater business value for the government and the government partners. Thierry Jaffry, Chief Growth Officer, eprocurement, mdf commerce Going digital will not only improve efficiency and save time, but also attract younger talent that has a more forward-looking approach to public procurement. With baby boomers retiring in large numbers, there is more room now than ever before for a younger workforce in government agencies.
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