New Year Insights for the procurement solutions and services marketplace 2024

For several years now, Spend Matters has been collecting and publishing a series of articles about procurement, supply and services trends for the year ahead from expert tech and service providers in the market.

This year we’re highlighting the customer demands, market movements and advances in procurement tech that are exciting the world of solution providers, how they expect them to shape the S2P landscape next year and how they plan to respond to them.

Our series runs from mid-December to mid-January, then our senior analysts will wrap up with their own take on the key themes that emerge.

In no order of preference, other than by the date they arrived in our inbox, today let’s hear from Jag Lamba, Founder & CEO at Certa, provider of Supplier Management and Contract Lifecycle Management solutions and one of Spend Matters 50 Procurement Providers to Watch.

AI will power better compliance

AI is going to step even more into the spotlight for procurement in 2024. This year we’ve seen a lot of both excitement and skepticism around the technology, and I think the next step will be the market sorting out what’s unsubstantiated hype and what’s truly impactful. In the procurement space, this coming year will feature companies taking the first step toward some of the most exciting future applications of the technology, especially the ability for AI to process newly passed regulations and recommend changes to a company’s processes to meet those new requirements. We’re heading toward the capability for AI to enable a compliance layer that can monitor everything from external news to internal communications within teams and with third parties and make expert recommendations that humans can review and then implement.

New regulations will reward ethical companies

Recent years have introduced us to a number of new supply chain laws that are focused on promoting human rights and environmental stewardship (see the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and the US’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act), and that trend will continue in 2024. Companies that are already doing good — avoiding forced labor, taking environmental change seriously, and the like — will have the chance to flourish and spread their goodness throughout the world more effectively. Companies that are not as prepared for additional ethical, anti-bribery/anti-corruption, and sustainability regulations will have to quickly adapt or risk being left behind.

Read Spend Matters series on forced labor and regulations here.

ESG takes its place as a central pillar of compliance and risk management

Speaking of sustainability, expect 2024 to be the year we see the SEC finally nail down its proposed ESG regulations. That means rules around emissions and reporting in the US will move closer to what we’re seeing in the EU and other regions. ESG activities won’t be optional, but central to compliance and risk processes in procurement departments across the country. Required disclosures around climate-related risks could have companies rethinking their supplier relationships, reevaluating their suppliers and how they fit into the necessary ESG framework. Over two-thirds of a company’s emissions can be traced to its supply chain, and suppliers’ emissions are also required to be reported in the current SEC proposal. As a result, suppliers’ ability to report their emissions and take steps to improve their processes could increasingly find themselves replaced.