A common question when discussing AI is ‘where do humans fit in?’. The fear of technological advancements stealing our jobs is an old one, but the conclusion is always the same and always true: there will never be a time when human judgement and teamwork isn’t required.
At DPW New York 2025, we sat down with Rinus Strydom, Chief Revenue Officer at Pactum AI, and Steven Velte, Executive Director Procurement Transformation at Honeywell – a customer of Pactum AI – to discuss AI’s evolution and the human connection. As AI develops, for Strydom, the focus is on agentic, rather than generative. There’s a key difference there, especially when Pactum AI is talking to large enterprises.
“A lot of people feel a little bit afraid, because generative AI can go a little off the rails,” he explains. “But when you put agents to work, they’re always within the rails that are defined by the customers. Once we get over that hurdle and can make clients see that they can take their procurement operating model and have it just run at scale with agents, rather than being afraid that their image will get tarnished, AI can be put to work much faster.”
Putting AI to work
When it comes to strategies procurement leaders can adopt to make AI work for them, it’s a major discussion point for Strydom and Velte. As a customer, it’s important for Honeywell to feel like its work with Pactum AI is a collaboration; it’s part of what makes its strides into AI work successfully. “This collaboration goes deeper than what we’ve typically had in the past,” says Velte.
“When we go through organisational changes, we need a true partner, And when that partner gets into the elevator with you, they don’t just push the button with you – they go up to the next floor with you and sit at the table to talk about what’s happening. So a barrier to AI adoption is not having that deep collaboration and partnership.”
“I think another thing leaders can do today is really help with that psychological change management to make it feel like a safe thing,” Strydom adds. Mindset shift is such a vital part of this change, especially when it comes to successful collaboration. “It’s important to embrace agentic AI, to encourage people to become managers of agents and not run away or become fearful.”
Identifying the opportunities
The true benefits of AI are now beginning to present themselves, as people increasingly embrace AI. For Velte, businesses have to get going with their AI plans in order to realise where the real opportunities lie. “I can make a business case with tons of ROI, potential productivity gains, revenue uplift, bottom line, profit line – all of that. But the real benefits that come from AI are those hidden benefits we don’t realise. When you start looking at it, there’s a common theme of saving time, and time becomes the real benefit. Unlocking better use of time gives you more potential to work on other creative aspects of the business.”
For Strydom, the true value lies in achieving things that used to be extremely difficult to achieve. Pactum AI’s customer base is broadly looking at 10X ROI, which, now, is easily done thanks to the use of AI agents. Agents also allow procurement teams to scale extremely fast, which is something that has, historically, been hard-won.
“For example, if you need to change payment terms across your entire supply base, you can do that with thousands of agents in parallel. You could never do that before. It gives you the agility to react to global macro risk issues, like tariffs.”
Start now; perfection comes later
One of the loudest topics of conversation at DPW New York 2025 was data quality and the challenge of cleaning that data up. It’s a huge topic, and a daunting one. Many businesses fall into the trap of thinking their data has to be perfect before they can get fully involved with AI, but the conclusion many procurement leaders are coming to is that getting started is more important than perfection.
“Data quality is always the holy grail going forward,” says Velte. “Everyone’s going to look for it, and try to attain it. When you start implementing within an AI framework, you just need to go in there and know that you’re going to constantly evolve in a good way, thanks to the agents, AI programs, and initiatives. They’re going to uncover and unlock a lot of data and inconsistencies that you have. You won’t get there unless you start looking into them as an opportunity area. Data perfection is not the way to go; it’s about getting in there, starting to look at the opportunities, and being willing to be creative, disruptive, and innovating quickly.
“There’s never going to be a time when everything is 100% correct and accurate, because data is always evolving,” adds Strydom. “Start now. The data can be enriched over time with the agents’ help.”
Maximum savings, maximum momentum
Pactum is using AI specifically to enable it to be a strategic advisor for customers like Honeywell. The use cases coming out are very new, and changing fast. What Strydom and his team want is to be able to guide customers on the right strategies for them, how to get maximum savings, and maximum momentum. As this landscape becomes more complex, human intervention and guidance is more important than ever, which links back to the topic of mindset and change management.
There’s been a lot of debate within Pactum AI as to how the business embraces this. “From a marketing perspective, too, there’s the question of whether we should make our agents look human,” says Strydom. “Actually, what we’re seeing is that suppliers actually enjoy interfacing with a bot. Walmart, one of our customers, did a survey where they found that 85% of their suppliers actually prefer to negotiate with Pactum than with a human. It’s more efficient, but there still has to be a balance of efficiency with fairness and empathy.”
Managers of agents
Speaking of humans, shortage of talent has been a talking point within procurement for some time. That was, until advanced tech became more widely adopted, and bringing in procurement experts became less important than bringing in technology experts who are willing to learn. With the advent of agentic AI, according to Strydom, procurement leaders are now acting as managers of agents.
“All the analyst surveys say that procurement organisations are being asked to do more with less every year,” he says. “So the type of talent is definitely transforming. What we see is that the procurement organisations of the future are much more strategic. They’re focusing on creating strategy and procurement policies and procedures, and then having the agents actually go out and do the menial day-to-day work – entering things into ERP, turning requisitions into purchase orders, onboarding suppliers, and so on. All of that can now be done very quickly and efficiently by agents. This really elevates the role, and allows procurement to become a partner to the business.”
Velte adds: “When you talk about talent shortage, it’s also that shift in the mindset we’re going through right now. The expertise is changing, and we want to be able to bring in talented people with that technology flare. When we look at the next generation of leaders coming out of university and college, they’re AI enabled already. They’re expecting AI to be available to them to accelerate their development, career goals, and ambitions.”
Making sense of the landscape
As DPW New York 2025 unfolded around us, the discussion inevitably turned to the ways in which DPW helps procurement make sense of the AI landscape. Pactum AI is actually a perfect example of how useful DPW is. Only four years ago, the business was a startup, and won a pitch contest at DPW Amsterdam. “That catapulted the business, and got us a lot of visibility,” says Strydom. “It’s a great place for visibility with practitioners, investors, and partners.”
Again, it comes back to people. Being able to meet them in real life, communicate face-to-face, and learn from one another. “It’s about reconnecting with a lot of our partners,” says Velte. “But it’s also about seeing what is out there on the forefront that’s becoming available. It’s an amazing opportunity for us to really benchmark ourselves, while also getting a glimpse of what’s coming around the corner.”