There’s a strange tension we keep hearing in procurement right now. The systems are live, the integrations are working, the training is complete. By every metric, the project is “done.” And yet, the work still feels stuck.
In more than 200 conversations with procurement leaders this year, we’ve heard the same theme over and over. The technology is in place, but the returns are still out of reach.
“We’ve invested in modern procurement tools and completed major rollouts, but it still feels like nothing’s actually moving. Everything works, but progress has stalled.” — Indirect Procurement Contact, Global Consumer Brand
That frustration is everywhere. People can feel the system running, but the work still feels slow and heavy.
As one director of strategic sourcing put it:
“We automated the mess we already had, and now it’s just a faster mess.”
The Hidden Problem: We Built for the Map, Not the Terrain
This isn’t a software failure; it’s an operating model failure. Most systems are implemented based on how work should flow, not how it actually does. Approvals get routed to named individuals instead of roles, supplier onboarding breaks on missing evidence and unclear decision criteria, and category teams spend half their time on strategic projects and the other half quietly working through a backlog of tactical cleanup that never shows up on dashboards.
Automation does exactly what you tell it to do. If you tell it to accelerate an outdated process, you just get bad outcomes faster. That’s where transformation fatigue comes from. Not from change itself, but from change that doesn’t deliver.
As Jamie Fiore, Senior Director of Procurement Advisory Services at RiseNow, says:
“Transformation fatigue doesn’t come from change itself. It comes from change that does not deliver.”
What Leading Organizations Do Differently
The companies that escape this trap treat the live environment as their evidence base. They pause, listen, and reset.
Across multiple global manufacturing environments, we’ve seen more than half of approvals stall with just a few individuals, sometimes adding weeks to cycle times. When approvals are redesigned to route by role instead of name and decision thresholds are clarified, cycle times consistently drop by 30 to 40 percent within a single quarter.
They also measure what’s really happening. Instead of celebrating a go-live date, they track how quickly work moves, how often it bounces back, and where exceptions pile up. That data shows them where to focus.
In complex procurement organizations, supplier onboarding often takes 40 days or more because documentation is missing, steps aren’t standardized, and decision criteria aren’t clear. Standardizing requirements, embedding automated checks, and clarifying decision ownership routinely cuts onboarding times by half while improving compliance.
They close the gap between design and behavior. When there’s a mismatch between how the process was mapped and how the work’s actually getting done, they fix the work, not just the labels. They bring procurement, finance, and operations back together to reset expectations and redesign the handoffs that slow everything down.
And when the process is healthy, they make technology a multiplier. They codify signals and guardrails first, then apply automation and AI to accelerate the right version of the work.
Why This Matters
Going live isn’t the finish line. Success isn’t about whether the system works, it’s about whether the work flows. Do requests move faster? Are exceptions dropping? Have the detours disappeared? Those are the measures of real transformation.
Technology will happily accelerate anything. The real question is whether you’ve built an operating model that deserves to be accelerated. The work that follows is to make that model visible, durable, and scalable.
At RiseNow, this is where we go deepest with our clients. We don’t just implement technology. We help organizations make the invisible visible, rebuild the work so it delivers, and put them on a path where technology finally becomes an advantage instead of a source of frustration.
Next up in this series: Why am I going fast while everyone else is slowing down (especially risk)?
