Anyone of a certain age remember this Palmolive commercial from the early 1970s?

In the commercial, a manicurist advises a frequent dishwasher to switch to a kinder, gentler brand of dish soap. When the client inquires further, the manicurist tells her, "You're soaking in it!"

Today, there's a fascinating experiment underway. The $450 billion world of software buying is moving online. It's been in the works for about 10 years, beginning with the rise of e-commerce; however, evidence that the move was here to stay has only come in the past few years. Like Palmolive, the movement in the tech buyer world to source, evaluate, purchase and deploy enterprise-grade software entirely online crept up without much fanfare. Three points underscore the impact of this change on the tech buying industry.

1. Tech buyers trust online advice and recommendations. G2 will soon top 1,000,000 verified reviews of software and technology services; other review sites are experiencing similar growth, albeit on a smaller scale. In a recent G2 survey (Apr. 2019, N=1,362 respondents) 82% of respondents stated they use online review sites to get information and recommendations to support their tech buying decisions.
2. Large-scale software subscription contracts, conducted end to end online, are routine. To date, there have been at least two, and perhaps many more, seven-figure software purchase or license deals done entirely on the AWS Marketplace. And that means the entire process-the selection of software; the price negotiation in online deal rooms; the contract automation using a platform focused on 4–5 areas of typical contention; and finally, deployment on a massive cloud infrastructure, ready for configuration and user rollout.
3. Technology procurement has transitioned from a centrally run CFO function to an IT leadership function. This is the case at more than 30% of enterprise corporations (1,000+ employees) in the United States. This is also true at over 35% of large corporations (10,000+ employees) and at nearly 50% of very large corporations (50,000+ employees). At these firms, it's not always called procurement, and where it once was ad hoc and tactical, it's now strategically imperative for large IT organizations to speed up how they identify, source, and buy the best software.