Jon Hansen, President and CEO, e-Procure Solutions Corporation, jhansen@eprocuresolutions.com

Unlike years past, where attention was predominantly centered on learning more about new and emerging technologies, today's procurement professionals are seeking insights into the actual processes that drive their enterprises. The impetus behind this change in focus is largely the result of the fallout from the consistently high level of e-procurement initiative failures (according to industry studies for the period between 2001 and 2005, 75% to 85% of all programs fail to achieve the promised results).
With the growing realization that process and not technology is the main force behind successfully achieving long hoped for objectives e-procurement strategies are now being built upon a solid foundation of process understanding and refinement well before technology is introduced into the equation. The end result is a clear understanding of how technology can work to accelerate process and not define it. What this means is that your e-procurement initiative will effectively adapt to the way in which your business operates in the real-world thereby eliminating the operational resistance associated with traditional compliance strategies.