On this podcast, I’m proud that we take the time to talk to some of the more early stage companies operating in this space. And you don’t get much more early stage than just launched! 

Our guest today is Patrick Jonsson from Digi Procure, whose recently launched company offers a low code / no code guided category strategy creation tool.

I welcome Patrick to the podcast and ask him to open up with a quick intro on his background.
Low code / no solutions in digital procurement
Patrick explains how he doesn’t come from anything of a tech background. From his home in Sweden, he’s embarked on an international career - everywhere from South America to Denmark. The bulk career of this was in procurement for complex organisational setups: Lots of stakeholder management and getting different cultures to agree. Then about three years ago, he went into consulting, but then decided it was time to move into the digital procurement space. 

He found low code/no code solutions really interesting, and so following a low budget, bootstrap approach he launched a minimum viable product with his first solution, which only cost around 2000 dollars. There were some issues with his first customers, but in solving those he fell on what seemed to be needed: A solution for guided category strategy creation. 

Simplicity is Patrick’s keyword here. Digi Procure is a very simple tool that helps you get started with making category strategies. And with a low code platform, he aims to add further functionality and complexity over time.

I say to Patrick that any SaaS solution will face the conundrum of functional complexity versus user experience. There’s not really a right or wrong answer here, and it can often come down to organisational maturity and complexity. I ask Patrick who he sees as the target users for Digi Procure. Is he aiming for large enterprises, or smaller businesses?

Patrick thinks the answer is medium-sized and up. In his experience, many organisations struggle with making category strategies. You might get a consultant in and end up with a strategy that’s maybe 30-60 pages long, and these just end up on the shelf. Follow up on implementation might not ever get done. Then later you get a new CEO who wants to make some category strategies and you start the whole cycle again.

So Patrick is aiming for what he calls  ‘maturity level 2’ companies. By this he means companies who are starting to dabble in strategic sourcing. You need that maturity and you need a certain size - maybe two or three category managers, before it makes sense to use Digi Procure.
Simple and accessible early strategy for medium-sized companies 

I say that makes a lot of sense - we’re clearly not looking at greenfield here, as companies that young won’t have anything in place yet. But then the really big companies will probably want to go for that incredibly detailed kind of 60-page plan Patrick mentioned earlier. It’s really the medium-sized businesses that are just starting to dabble in category strategy who have the most to gain here.

Patrick agrees. He goes on to say that you can go more complex, using Digi Procure, and he speaks to some experience with customers who have asked for deeper functionality. But that’s the great thing about low code / no code. It’s adaptable to an individual customer’s needs and particularities in a way that traditional SaaS solutions might struggle with.