Every organisation is built on a series of choices.
Some are visible: product launches, market expansions, technology bets. Others are quieter but no less defining: choices about who we trust to stand with us when uncertainty strikes and build the future with us.
Strategic sourcing today is no longer about operational support. It is about existential decisions: Who has access to our data? Who drives our technological evolution? Who holds the keys to our business resilience?
In a world where AI capabilities can redraw competitive landscapes overnight, where sustainability is becoming a licence to operate, and where alliances can turn into vulnerabilities overnight, sourcing has shifted from a cost question to a survival question. Today's sourcing decisions must navigate a landscape where geopolitical tremors break supply chains, regulations shift with the winds of politics, and access to critical technologies can be weaponised.
How can you build long-term strategic partnerships when the ground is constantly shifting beneath your feet? Can you balance the urgent need for resilience with the visionary choices that will define your competitive edge a decade from now? Will you allow short-term geopolitical shocks to drive your sourcing inwards and shrink your innovation potential, or will you architect ecosystems designed to flex, adapt, and endure?
For digital leaders, the tension between immediate risk management and long-term ambition has never been sharper.
Strategic sourcing must now be seen as architecture: building ecosystems of trust, flexibility, innovation, and shared ambition. It is about recognising that the contract is not the goal, it is merely the beginning of a journey toward value creation, resilience, and transformation.
On May 27th, at Salon van Edel in Wilrijk, the CIONET Belgium community will gather to confront these challenges. "BEYOND THE CONTRACT: Strategic Sourcing as a Catalyst for Business Transformation" is an opportunity to exchange real-world strategies and insights from leaders at Atlas Copco, Telenet, Belfius, Ethias, ING, and SWIFT.
We need sourcing models that enable, not constrain. Partnerships that evolve, not expire. Contracts that catalyse, not control. Because today, sourcing decisions are leadership decisions. And leadership decisions are about shaping the future, or surrendering to it.
Will your sourcing choices make you a creator of change, or a hostage of it?