Author
Client Solutions Architect
4 minutes
As organisations strive to deliver increased savings and efficiencies in 2025, in addition to maximising return on investment for spend, optimising front-end processes becomes a critical factor in the long-term success of cost management strategies. A key challenge for procurement departments is the expectation to achieve more with less in 2025, with McKinsey observing a 50% increase in spend under management per buyer, due to the combination of smaller procurement teams, and increases in spend.
Playing a pivotal role in achieving cost savings in 2025 will be how organisations determine the best sourcing channel ‘to get work done’. Preventing misclassification and using the right route to talent - be it a day rate contractor, permanent hire, or outcome-based SOW project engagement - can save considerable cost and mitigate risk and governance concerns.
Simplifying and automating intake & triage processes will play a pivotal role in solving this challenge for procurement. Creating a consistent workflow at the front end means users can be directed to the right sourcing channel for their workforce requests. Whether that is creating a requisition for permanent headcount, an assignment for a new temporary worker, or a request for sourcing a professional or technical service firm to complete a project.
In our everyday lives, we have come to expect consumer-grade technology experiences, whether this is doing our food shop, booking a gym class or in mobile banking and where business users don’t have a user-friendly or obvious point of entry for the purchase process, they usually choose the path of least resistance to get what they need, which can leave procurement trying to manage rogue spend retrospectively, picking apart data from the ERP (if the data has been captured!) to identify misclassified spend, and ultimately minimising procurements ability to strategically maximise value for the organisation.
Intake is the process of collecting essential information from users for their requests and requirements, giving a clear view of what the user needs and what they are trying to achieve. Triage then directs these requests to the right sourcing channel, based on the requirements.
These interconnected processes are vital to facilitating efficient and accurate request management. Centralising intake and triage under one process enables organisations to streamline operations, manage demand, and help key stakeholders to make informed decisions to get the skills and capabilities they need.
The implementation of a user-friendly intake and triage process for new resource and work requests offers 3 key benefits:
To maximise the benefits of centralised intake and triage, organisations should consider the following best practices:
Establish clear processes and criteria: Define and document the correct intake and triage processes, including the criteria for assessing and prioritising resource requests. Ensure that these processes are communicated effectively to all stakeholders to maximise uptake.
People Led, Technology Driven: Having the right technology in place is central to getting the intake and triage process right, helping to automate request collection, streamline processes, and provide a “front-door” to the often multitude of procurement platforms that are used for sourcing external talent. However, these demand processes need to continue to be people-led. With the business being able to leverage experts to work with them to get the skills and capabilities they need.
Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and refine the intake and triage processes based on feedback and lessons learned. Continuously improving the process to ensure that they are having the desired impact, simplifying user experiences, and optimising outcomes.
Focus on User Adoption: Key to any business transformation is ensuring that new processes are adopted by all stakeholders. This involves clear communication of benefits, robust training programs, and ongoing support to build confidence and capability. Additionally, gathering and acting on user feedback will help refine processes and increase engagement, ensuring long-term success. Introducing an effective intake and triage process helps user adoption and experience through a standardised processes built on clear and robust criteria.
AI proof of concepts, and wider adoption of automation in procurement functions increased significantly in 2024. In the last 18 months, AI and automation has been a key point of focus at enterprise level, and we have worked with our clients and partners to introduce and evaluate AI tools into our customer programmes.
We recognise the potential value that AI and automation can offer procurement and sourcing teams.
We do not underestimate the importance of triage and intake processes as key challenge that can be solved by AI, thereby reducing the level of input required by procurement teams, improving accuracy, and simplifying the user experience for managers and buyers.
During 2024 Guidant Global have had great success with designing and implementing a dedicated intake and triage process for a leading outsourced service provider and a global FMCG customer. Both customers required a centralised and consistent intake process to aid user adoption and improve the time and effort required to raise a requirement.
Using optimised processes - supported by our team of experts - we are effectively triaging each requirement and request, helping to ensure users are quickly routed to the most appropriate sourcing channel. This has driven immediate value to our customers, significantly reducing the time it takes to raise a requirement and, most importantly, ensuring that the correct services are requested from the offset, whilst mitigating misclassification.
We are excited as we begin 2025, to see the difference AI will continue to make for sourcing, as we continue to work closely with clients and partners to leverage advanced technologies and data-driven insights to create intake & triaging systems that help procurement teams to optimise their sourcing channels for external talent.
If you want to find out more about intake & triage, or how AI can be integrated into the sourcing process, get in touch.
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