For years, procurement leaders have argued that the function needs a rebrand.
Procurement has long been regarded as a reactive, cost-cutting hindrance. Often thought of as a police officer that enforces strict governance, its focus was solely on driving cost savings without much outside-the-box thinking.
But is that perception finally changing?
According to respondents to the CIPS Procurement & Supply Salary Guide 2025, more than two thirds (68%) said that procurement and supply chain are highly valued within their organisation, which was an increase from 66% in 2024. Elsewhere, 70% of respondents globally confirmed that procurement’s perception within their own organisations had improved over the previous 12 months. Further, 72% of those surveyed globally said that directors and heads of departments within their organisations understand what procurement specialists can offer while 25% said that a procurement leader had a permanent seat on the main board.
Those figures in CIPS’s survey are all on the rise. The results demonstrate that there is a shift already underway which could allow procurement to ditch its stereotype. This is backed up by Ari Stone, Global SVP – Value Engineering, Solution Consulting and Services at Ivalua, who told us that for many teams, a successful rebrand is well underway, but this ultimately depends on giving teams the tools and visibility needed to truly operate as strategic partners.
“Almost two-thirds of businesses now say C-suite leaders recognise procurement as an enabler of success,” she explains. “As global tariffs and inflation rise, and disruption becomes the new normal for supply chains, procurement teams have stepped into a critical role, helping businesses navigate uncertainty and safeguard operations.
“Despite this progress, the ‘rebrand’ is not complete across every organisation. The barrier is not a lack of ambition or skill, but a lack of enablement. In too many organisations, procurement remains constrained by an over-reliance on manual processes and data across fragmented systems that reinforce the perception of a slow and outdated back office function. Procurement’s expanding remit demands real-time insights, rapid responses and better coordination across suppliers and stakeholders.
“By combining AI’s speed and scale with human expertise, procurement teams can operate with greater resilience in an unpredictable world. This hybrid human-agent model has the potential to free professionals from administrative burden, allowing them to focus on building the relationships that underpin supply chain stability.”
However, Simon Geale, EVP at Proxima, is not getting carried away. He believes most of the rebrand conversation is driven by the procuretech ecosystem and not yet a reality. “Certainly not at scale, or the question wouldn’t keep resurfacing,” Geale reveals. “For me, much of the noise around purpose and brand is not driven by CPOs or procurement functions themselves, it’s driven by the vendor ecosystem that surrounds us, which as we know can be noisy. It’s also a conversation that’s run for decades, and is replicated across other functions like Finance and HR. So, we are in good company.
“Procurement’s brand will not be built on what we say we are, it will be built on a businesses’ experience of working with us. So, instead of being distracted by the macro debate, I’d be thinking “how do I build a world class service around the specific needs of my business, delivering what we commit to, and beyond that delighting by providing an experience which exceeds what our business thought we were capable of.
“There’s also a risk that our elevated profile today was born out of a pandemic and supply chain crisis and could erode without sustained business impact. Our businesses need to consistently move better, faster, safer because of procurement, and when the experience is consistently delightful and elevated, a rebrand will naturally follow.”
And Sam Pemberton, CEO at Skill Dynamics, believes that there is still a journey ahead for procurement. “The reality is that it’s technologically progressed, but capability-wise, there is a long way to go,” he says. “The CPOs who will succeed both in the short- and long-term are those who balance tech investment with an equal commitment to developing human intelligence, and who reassess how we develop talent to build the judgment and creativity that algorithms simply cannot provide.”
Looking ahead, it is clear that procurement’s rebrand is happening naturally – but not at great pace. While technology continues to elevate the function, lasting change to procurement’s image can be achieved by procurement leaders and their teams delivering consistent measurable business value.