What is the most important word in procurement?

Daniel Ball, Product Innovation, Medius reveals the most important word in business and discusses the 3 Foundations for Best Practice Procurement.

Sometimes the most important word in business is not the one that come to mind first. Board members, business owners, customers and other stakeholders could answer the question with suggestions such as profit, innovation, sustainability and growth. However it's likely that the most important word makes all these things possible.

From my own experience I think that integration should be at the top of the list.

“Without the desire and ability to integrate processes, people, teams and technology your business and indeed its procurement, is only ever going to deliver performance to a certain level”.
Daniel Ball, Product Innovation, Medius

As a leading Procurement vendor we've seen how integration has been the determining factor between success and failure. That's why we recently held a webinar, co-hosted by Peter Smith from Spend Matters, discussing the 3 Foundations for Best Practice Procurement with integration at the core.

Does your procurement software really provide an integrated process?
Do your procurement system effectively integrate with other business systems?
Is the procurement function as integrated within the business as well as it could be?

The webinar generated plenty of food for thought on how your procurement model can be strengthened by integration and posed the question for many attendees - what is your key integration challenge?