There is a version of enterprise software buying that sounds modern: a business team identifies a need, finds a solution, evaluates it quickly, buys it, and gets access. The whole thing takes just a couple of days.
The technology to do this better has been around for a while, but the habits haven’t caught up. That version exists—many organizations just aren’t using it yet.
What still happens most of the time: the team finds the tool, sends an email to IT, copies procurement, waits for a vendor quote, chases someone for budget approval, gets the contract sent to legal, and follows up three weeks later to ask where things stand. Somewhere in that chain, someone is managing a spreadsheet no one else can find.
This is not a niche problem. Companies relying on spreadsheets and email-based workflows experience significantly higher error rates, longer processing times, and limited visibility into spending patterns, and those inefficiencies compound the longer they go unaddressed. Meanwhile, 67% of B2B buyers now say they prefer a rep-free buying experience. They want to research, evaluate, and buy on their own terms, not wait for someone to send them a PDF.
The gap between what buyers expect and what many procurement processes actually deliver is wide, and it’s getting harder to ignore as AI adoption accelerates. Business teams do not want to wait weeks to access a new capability. But the approval chain wasn’t built for that speed.
