4 Lessons Learned From Real S2P Implementations, According to Gartner
The world of procurement is changing, and not just incrementally. According to Gartner’s Predicts 2026: Procurement Taking Steps to Become AI-First, procurement organizations are entering a pivotal transition as AI capabilities reshape both how work gets done and what “strategic procurement” truly means. In this blog, we’ll explore the most important takeaways from Gartner’s research and what they mean for modern procurement leaders navigating digital transformation, especially as they look toward 2026 and beyond.
The Two Questions That Shaped the Report
Gartner focused on two deceptively simple questions:
- If you could start over, what would your organization do differently?
- What one piece of advice would you give other prospective customers?
The answers revealed consistent patterns across industries, company sizes, and geographies. What follows is a summary of the themes that came up most often.
Lesson 1: Preparation Matters More Than the Platform
The most recurring theme across reviews: organizations that struggled most were the ones that underinvested in pre-implementation preparation. Specifically, they underestimated the importance of clean data, clearly defined processes, and internal alignment before going live.
The lesson? Technology doesn’t fix a broken process; it amplifies it. If your data is messy and your workflows are undefined before implementation, they’ll still be messy and undefined after. The platform is only as good as the foundation underneath it.
Peer Advice: Get your data house in order before you start. Map your current workflows, even the informal ones, and agree on how you want them to work before configuring the system around them.
Lesson 2: Change Management Is Underestimated
Technology adoption doesn’t fail at implementation. It fails at adoption. Time and again, reviewers flagged change management as the area they’d invest more heavily in if starting over.
S2P suites touch Finance, Legal, IT, Procurement, and business stakeholders. Each group has different workflows, different comfort levels with technology, and different definitions of success. Organizations that treated S2P as a technology project, rather than a change initiative, consistently reported lower adoption rates and longer time-to-value.
Peer Advice: Bring your stakeholders in early. Don’t just train people on how to use the system, help them understand why it’s changing and what’s in it for them. Champions inside each department make a bigger difference than any feature.
Lesson 3: Start Focused, Then Expand
Organizations that tried to implement everything at once, all modules, all departments, all use cases, reported more friction, longer timelines, and harder go-lives. Those that started with a focused scope, proved value quickly, and expanded from there had consistently better outcomes.
This aligns with a broader truth about enterprise software: the organizations that win are the ones that build momentum. A successful first module creates organizational confidence and executive support for what comes next.
Peer Advice: Pick your highest-pain area first. Get a win. Then expand. A focused implementation that goes live in 8 weeks builds more credibility than a comprehensive one that takes 18 months.
Lesson 4: Vendor Partnership Is Not the Same as Vendor Support
Several reviewers drew a clear distinction between vendors who provide support and vendors who act as genuine partners. The difference shows up during implementation, when things get hard, and post go-live, when the system needs to evolve with the business.
Reviewers who reported the best outcomes consistently cited proactive engagement from their vendor: teams that flagged issues before they became problems, suggested process improvements, and stayed engaged long after the contract was signed.
Peer Advice: Evaluate vendors on their partnership model, not just their feature set. Ask about their implementation methodology, their customer success approach, and how they handle issues post go-live. References matter.
Ready to Get Started?
The Gartner Peer Insights report is a valuable resource precisely because it cuts through vendor marketing and surfaces what real practitioners experienced. The themes are consistent and instructive: preparation, change management, focused scope, and genuine partnership are the differentiators between S2P implementations that deliver and those that disappoint.
If you’re evaluating S2P suites or are already in the planning stages, this report is worth reading in full.
