Lean management creates new value in procurement. In most organizations, lean management runs into an important wall: the one by which the purchasing department sits. In our experience, to the extent most procurement functions have thought about lean management at all, they have viewed it primarily to streamline and automate procure$-$to$-$pay $($P$2$P$)$ activities. Lean management$$s capacity to deliver significant value in strategic procurement has largely been ignored. The reason may be obvious. Despite procurement$$s influence, its operating costs are usually very low: on average, between $0\mathrm{.}3$ and $1$ percent of spend in most industries. For procurement leaders who see lean as a tool for wringing out efficiency improvements, those numbers hardly seem to promise much potential. That mind$-$set should change. Properly applied, the disciplines and systemic thinking of lean management can become a strategic weapon: aligning purchasing more tightly to internal customers$$ real interests, helping leaders rethink the end$-$to$-$end procurement process $($from suppliers through to manufacturing and ultimately to external customers$),$ and transforming the effectiveness of strategic procurement activities. Think of what procurement people do each day. How much time do strategic buyers spend on truly value$-$adding activities, such as building a deeper market understanding in key categories, identifying and qualifying new potential suppliers, or negotiating the best possible contracts? Likely, much less than you think. A broader and more thoughtful lean$-$management perspective doesn$$t just help companies maximize the effectiveness of their current processes. It also allows companies to take a more integrated view of the value each individual buyer creates. It helps them answer important strategic questions, such as which activities should be kept in$-$house and which should be automated, allocated to near or offshore shared$-$service centres, outsourced, or stopped altogether. Standardized activities, fewer processes, better$-$qualified buyers, continual people development, and resources sharply focused on activities that add real value$$this is what we understand as lean procurement. The advent of lean discipline in purchasing is timely for another reason: digital is set to have huge impact on the function, with many new solutions that extend beyond today$$s P$2$P automation and could transform the end$-$to$-$end procurement process. Tools such as standardized should$-$cost analyses, work$-$flow portals to manage the full strategic$-$sourcing process, and access to huge external supplier databases for market research will allow strategic buyers to spend even more of their time focusing on the right things. And the efficient, structured processes enabled by lean management provide the perfect framework for integrating these new tools

Discuss the role of digital technologies in enabling lean procurement and describe how digital tools align with lean principles to improve procurement