How to choose the right procurement system — a practical guide for modern procurement teams

Introduction: A procurement landscape in transition

Digitalization has transformed every part of business — yet many procurement teams still rely on spreadsheets, emails, and manual routines. When the need for a new procurement system arises, you often face an ocean of solutions, technical terms, and vendors promising “AI-driven insights” and “source-to-pay in 30 days.”

This guide is designed to help you make an informed choice — independent of any vendor. It gives you a structured framework to assess what truly matters for your organization, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls.

Start with the challenges — not the feature list

Most failed system projects start by comparing features instead of understanding the problems you actually need to solve.

Ask yourself these questions before looking at vendors:

• Where do we lose time and visibility today?
• Where do processes get stuck — and why?
• Which tasks are repeated without learning or improvement?
• Who experiences the most day-to-day frustration — and in which areas?
• What would an “ideal workday” look like for them?

When you clearly describe your real pain points, you can use them as a yardstick to evaluate different solutions — and avoid buying features you don’t need.

Map maturity and ambition level

Find a solution that fits today’s level — and can grow with you.

Ten key evaluation criteria

When comparing solutions, evaluate them across these areas:

• Usability — Is it intuitive even for non-procurement users?
• Implementation — How quickly do you realize the first benefits?
• Process coverage — Intake, RFx, contracts, supplier management, etc.
• Flexibility — Can it be adapted to your processes without heavy coding?
• Integration — Does it work seamlessly with ERP, finance, and project tools?
• Analytics and learning — Does the system support continuous improvement?
• Collaboration — How does it support communication internally and with suppliers?
• Control and compliance — Approvals, audit trail, and version control.
• Cost model — Is pricing transparent and scalable?
• Vendor relationship — Does the vendor act like a partner — or just a helpdesk?

When you clearly describe your real pain points, you can use them as a yardstick to evaluate different solutions — and avoid buying features you don’t need.

Common pitfalls

• Over-customization: You build the system around every exception instead of improving the process.
• Feature chasing: You get impressed by demos, not real value.
• Lack of user involvement: Even the best system fails if no one adopts it.
• Poor data quality: Unstructured data provides no insight, regardless of the system.
• No change plan: A new tool changes working habits — plan for it.

When you clearly describe your real pain points, you can use them as a yardstick to evaluate different solutions — and avoid buying features you don’t need.

A practical approach to selecting a solution

A structured decision process can look like this:

• Understand the need — interviews, observations, mapping bottlenecks.
• Document requirements — create a lightweight, prioritized requirements list.
• Market research — shortlist 3–5 relevant vendors, including smaller players.
• Demos and pilots — test against your own processes, not generic scenarios.
• Decision and rollout — create a plan for training, ownership, and improvement.

When you clearly describe your real pain points, you can use them as a yardstick to evaluate different solutions — and avoid buying features you don’t need.

The future: Learning procurement

Procurement is shifting from being a control function to becoming a learning organization. Next-generation solutions help not only execute processes, but also understand what worked — and why.

Choose a platform that enables evolution, not just automation.

About this guide

This document is created to help organizations make well-founded decisions when evaluating procurement systems.

It is written by professionals with extensive experience from both public and private procurement — and from implementing several of the world’s leading tools.

You are free to share, quote, or use this content in your own assessments.