Spend Matters founder Jason BuschSince its inaugural event, we’ve been known to call Digital Procurement World “The best new procurement event in years.” We made this statement based on its ability to “bring together not only acquisitions organizations and technology (and services) companies in a conversation about digital, but also to engage the startup community and investors…and make a great job connecting them with buyers, consultants and others.”
Digital Procurement Word (DPW), now in its third iteration since 2019 (due to Covid), has continued to excite and innovate in the digital technology space, fueled by its appetite for revealing innovative solutions to the market, introducing new concepts, discussing raw topics and featuring an unprecedented lineup of expert speakers. This recipe for what our founder and CEO, Jason Busch, once called “runaway success” will be served once again in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on September 21-22, when he will take center stage to share his thoughts. , experience and a lot of time. -Knowledge accumulated in the task of identifying, comparing and choosing the right acquisition technology for the needs of your organization.
“What I love about DPW,” says Jason, “is that it really is a technology community of many people with a lot in common. And I am delighted that Spend Matters has been invited to participate in several sessions.”
Jason will co-host an event on the main stage with his colleague Roberto Mastrigli, operating partner at our partner and investor, Copley Equity, titled “Buy Better Technology: Lessons from Private Equity on Evaluating Acquisition Technology.”
The premise is that many companies harbor the same regrets about choosing and buying technology. They regret making assumptions about how the tool works; regret not discovering gaps in functionality and capacity prior to implementation; they regret not having carried out due diligence.
Roberto, like Jason, has spent a large portion of his career focused on due diligence, growth strategies, and turnarounds for private equity (PE) portfolio companies. The backgrounds of the two speakers complement each other, with Roberto’s focus on finance and operations and Jason’s on technology and strategy. So as advisors and consultants, they’re really excited to be able to tap into a professional life experience of how private equity firms run their due diligence manuals, and share that to help make technology buying an experience. faster and better informed that produces more success. results.
“Throughout my career,” explains Jason, “I’ve seen the same mistakes made over and over again that could be corrected if buyers could see technology the same way investors see buying or investing in companies. There are playbooks and checklists for understanding business, some of which are very exhaustive. And there are similar tools that can be applied to understand technology. While we do not intend to go into all the details of due diligence, we will share how important it is to make the decision with your eyes wide open. And in this session, we will equip listeners with the ability to do that. I’m not suggesting that problems are inherently a deal breaker (although some certainly are): you’ll always run into problems when you do your due diligence. But it is valuable to see how these problems can become opportunities if you are fully aware of them early on. So I’m really excited to offer this session, because I think we have some really unique tips to share.”
Some of those tips will cover:
- Correctly understand current business requirements
- Exploring, together with your stakeholders, where you want the investment to take you: what is the path, hypothesis and investment thesis?
- Identify the importance of headwinds and tailwinds that could make or break success and more importantly…
- Understanding the optionality of what you are buying
“The end point is key,” says Jason, “because the options change depending on, for example, whether you’re buying the technology as a platform or as an add-on. The answer to that changes the way you approach the purchase. In my experience, many technology buyers don’t consider that. In today’s technologically advanced world, we just hope our solutions work. But will they work as efficiently and with as many options as we want and need?
“So we’ll build models and mental frameworks for how you plan to evaluate technology investment for your company. And the good thing about this is that everything is based on data. You can forget hunches and replace them with facts, allowing everyone to be on the same ‘good sourcing’ page.
“I don’t think we’ve historically applied that to buying technology, mainly because the unknowns have outpaced the known. But we think you can make those unknowns known, if you know where to look.”
This is shaping up to be a very informative session, which you can join on the second day of DPW, at 2.35pm on Wednesday the 21st.St. September.
In other sessions on Wednesday, Jason will host panel discussions covering:
- How to use CLM to drive value across the enterprise and improve business impact, with Kai Nowosel, CPO at Accenture ‘Uber of contract management’, and Roman Howe, VP Customer Advocacy at CLM experts Icertis, discussing how CLM can drive value across the organization if it is used to its full potential, from seamlessly managing 360-degree relationships to driving co-innovation for stakeholders and suppliers.
- How to navigate disruption and become a master of resilience, with David Simchi-Levi, Business and Supply Chain Analytics at MIT and Pierre-Francois Kaltenbach, Supply Chain and Operations Europe Lead at Accenture. Here, Jason will delve into one of his passions, supply chain risk, asking global experts about proactively building resiliency where it matters, and how visibility and simulation can uncover hidden risks.
We are very excited to attend and speak at DPW once again, because as Jason comments:
“DPW is a young organization, and that works in its favor. It has created a conference for 2022. The fact that it is completely focused on technology not only makes it unique, but it gives us, especially those who have been around for a while, the opportunity to learn from young entrepreneurs who are coming up with innovative ideas. that we have not contemplated before. It’s truly a privilege to be able to share the stage with them, talk to them and the more mature companies that are succeeding in this space, understand what works for them and the ecosystem, and advise clients and investors on how to leverage to the maximum the systems that are being implemented. So I think it becomes very important to attend an event like DPW as it keeps you in the game and at the top of your own game.”
To be a part of this information and innovation technology hotspot, visit Digital Procurement World.
And for more on the innovators making a demo at DPW, check out our previous coverage here.