Have you noticed how many procurement managers are jumping ship?
LinkedIn released data a few years ago showing a significant exodus of supply chain professionals and procurement managers from their roles. To quote directly from the article:
“According to data released by LinkedIn to Bloomberg, in 2020-2021, the average number of supply chain managers who left their jobs, called the ‘separation rate’, increased by 28%. Chillingly, this figure was the highest it had ever been since LinkedIn started tracking data five years ago.”
Their data is a few years old, and we all know that Procurement and Supply Chain aren’t interchangeable terms. However, the pressures facing both functions are remarkably similar.
Some of the challenges procurement professionals face today are unprecedented. These include:
- Geopolitical disruptions
- Economic uncertainty
- Hiring freezes or headcount reduction
- Fear: “AI is coming for my job”
- And of course, the ongoing struggle with outdated systems.
What is driving Procurement Managers to leave the profession?
Let’s explore why this is happening, as well as how digital procurement technology could help reverse this trend. I’m particularly keen to explore how the right technology might act as a catalyst to keep talented professionals in the field.
I’ll focus on three key reasons why procurement professionals decide to leave their jobs:
- Workload (including stress and burnout-related reasons)
- Offer of a higher salary elsewhere
- Manual processes and lack of mandate / influence
Let’s tackle each of these reasons in detail and see how procurement technology might help address these challenges.
1. Increasing Instances of Burnout
Burnout is a significant factor in any high-pressure role, but it’s become particularly acute for procurement managers in recent years.
It doesn’t explain why people are leaving the profession entirely (as opposed to just seeking a new role). But it certainly seems to be contributing to more people re-evaluating their options.
The pandemic dramatically intensified the pressure on procurement managers. Since then, it doesn’t seem to have eased up. Economic uncertainty, geopolitical conflict, headcount freezes, or rounds of redundancy have added to an already downbeat environment.
Procurement roles in some industries can often feel like a thankless task, even at the best of times. I worked in automotive in the early part of my career. Procurement was rarely praised, but frequently blamed.
If you worked in sectors particularly hammered by the pandemic, such as retail, hospitality, or aviation, you might have seen governments’ COVID responses as a sign to shift to a more stable industry.
The psychological toll of managing crisis after crisis cannot be underestimated.
Even in less affected industries, procurement managers often found themselves at the centre of organisational demands, expected to maintain business continuity despite unprecedented challenges.
How Can Procurement Technology Reduce Instances of Burnout?
Much of the burnout stems from unreasonable workloads that procurement Category Managers simply can’t manage.
There’s a persistent feeling of overwhelm from having to deliver more results with fewer resources. Using antiquated tools and systems to do this just adds to the stress level.
Many CPOs and Heads of Procurement are surprisingly clueless about how much time their Procurement Managers spend firefighting operational issues.
Consequently, they’re ill-prepared to negotiate with the CFO or CHRO when there is a push to reduce headcount.
This is where procurement technology becomes invaluable. It drives automation and improves data quality—topics we frequently discuss on The Procurement Software Podcast.
Automation can eliminate many of the administrative tasks that consume procurement managers’ time and lead to burnout. Tasks like chasing approvals, gathering data from multiple systems, copying and pasting entries into ERP, and producing repetitive reports.
These can all be automated with AI Agents or RPA. Meanwhile, better data and neat dashboards provide insights at a glance rather than after hours of manual Excel-based analysis.
Both can help reduce burnout risk by freeing up bandwidth for strategic work.
Procurement’s job description shouldn’t be fixing P2P problems or chasing late deliveries! That’s tactical purchasing, and is the work of a Junior Buyer or Admin Assistant, not a Category Lead or Strategic Sourcing Manager.
These technological improvements allow procurement professionals to focus on the value-adding aspects of their roles—the parts that likely attracted them to the profession in the first place.
2. Do higher salaries still drive procurement pros to change jobs?
The second factor is straightforward but powerful: better pay elsewhere is convincing procurement managers to jump ship. With the current economic landscape, this has become an increasingly compelling reason to change employers.
With the real rate of inflation hovering around 10%, even a modest $5-10k salary increase can help to offset rising living costs. In many cases, procurement professionals are finding that the only way to secure a meaningful pay rise is to find a new job.
But it’s not just about the money.
Feeling valued as an employee is often equally important. Recognition for contributions, opportunities for professional development, and a sense that your expertise matters: these factors can be just as crucial as financial compensation.
The reality is that working for a startups is cooler. Switching to consulting pays more and has a clearer path for career progression.
While procurement pros typically won’t move for a pay cut, they do often leave for sideways moves that improve job satisfaction. If they feel undervalued and underpaid, the decision becomes even easier.
How Can Procurement Technology Help Reduce Attrition?
Many non-financial factors driving resignations relate to work engagement.
If you’re an experienced procurement manager stuck doing operational, tactical work, you’re likely frustrated and disengaged. Your expertise is wasted on tasks that don’t leverage your strategic capabilities.
Being forced to perform repetitive tasks that could be automated is a legitimate reason to seek new opportunities. It’s not just inefficient, it’s demoralising.
From personal experience, one of the major factors that led me to leave the corporate world was feeling like a very well-paid admin assistant. We lacked the technology – even in a Fortune 500 company – to automate or simplify work. Without wanting to sound arrogant, I felt way too overqualified for much of what I was being asked to do.
Modern intake and process orchestration platforms can transform the day-to-day experience of procurement managers. By automating routine tasks, they allow team members to focus on strategic initiatives, supplier relationship management, innovation, and other high-value activities that better utilise their skills and provide greater job satisfaction.
Can technology investment help retain your best talent?
Absolutely.
Is it the only factor? Of course not!
But it addresses a significant pain point that drives talented people away.
3. Are archaic systems driving Procurement Managers away?
Outdated processes and systems are one of the biggest factors driving people away from our profession. This deeply saddens me, because it’s completely avoidable.
The frustration of working with systems and processes that seem decades behind other business functions is demoralising.
Procurement has lagged behind Sales, Finance and HR when it comes to IT investment.
Simplification and automation still haven’t reached many procurement teams. Add to this the bloated, robotic processes that we’re often forced to follow. You quickly have a recipe for professional dissatisfaction.
Procurement processes can be painfully cumbersome. Multiple approvals, extensive documentation requirements, rigid procedures, and limited flexibility. It all creates an environment where getting anything done feels like wading through treacle.
If you’re a more entrepreneurial personality, the daily paper-pushing can feel excruciatingly mundane. The disconnect between what you know is possible and what you’re forced to work with becomes increasingly frustrating over time.
Much of this red tape can be eliminated. The rest can be automated.
Give people the tools and autonomy they need to do their jobs effectively. Modern professionals expect modern tools—it’s that simple.
How Can Procurement Technology Reduce Busywork?
Even complex processes could often be simplified significantly. Some common archaic procurement processes easily improved through technology include:
- Travel expenses: Submit through an app rather than Excel and email, with immediate receipt capture and automated policy compliance checks
- PO and invoice approvals: Complete via mobile app in a P2P software rather than ERP, allowing approvals from anywhere with full visibility of the request context
- Category strategies: Execute using specialised software rather than fiddling with PowerPoint (who else hates PowerPoint?), with built-in templates and analysis tools
- Sensitivity analysis on commodity pricing: Perform in spend analytics or cost modelling software that updates automatically with market data
- Savings reporting and finance approval: Manage via cloud-based performance systems rather than Excel sheets, with automated verification against actual spend
- Sourcing events: By using e-sourcing tools that suppliers actually enjoy using and that don’t require extensive training, you can both reduce cycle time and increase user adoption.
Each of these improvements not only saves time but also improves accuracy, compliance, and ultimately, procurement’s credibility within the organisation. They remove the administrative burden that so often pulls procurement professionals away from strategic work.
Can Tech enable businesses to retain the best Procurement Managers?
It’s simple really. All three major reasons why procurement professionals quit can be mitigated through smart investments into digital procurement tools.
Technology isn’t just an efficiency play. It’s increasingly a talent retention strategy, especially for younger team members. Looked at in this light, user-friendly technology with high adoption rates becomes an incredibly shrewd investment.
Not only can it prevent burnout by eliminating outdated processes and unnecessary administration, but technology can also help reduce the total FTEs in your procurement organisation. If you’re losing talent because you can’t compete on salary, then why not leverage automation to reduce headcount needs, to enable better salaries for a smaller team?
“I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players” – Steve Jobs
The right procurement technology creates a virtuous cycle: more efficient processes lead to less busywork, which creates more capacity for strategic initiatives, which increases job satisfaction, which improves retention.
Is technology the answer to the procurement talent exodus, or are there other factors at play? Have you implemented technology that has made a difference in your team’s satisfaction and retention?
