Somewhere out past the P2P rollout and the third dashboard nobody opens lies procurement’s real final frontier: how people actually decide what to buy.
Organisations have thrown money at digital procurement technology for the last couple of decades. Many of them still struggle to realise the benefits the technology has promised, however. They’ve implemented dedicated eProcurement platforms, invoice automation technologies and kicked off transformation programmes, but savings remain elusive. The problem is, there’s a human-shaped elephant in the room that no amount of technology will resolve – how employees make purchasing decisions doesn’t fundamentally change, even with the very latest technology at their fingertips.
Nobody questions what the technology delivers: automated requisitions, electronic approvals and touchless invoicing. It enables Purchase to Pay (P2P) systems, automated workflows and approvals, accounts payable (AP) automation and comprehensive spend analytics and reporting capabilities. All of which should improve efficiencies and deliver savings. In reality, maverick spend and invoice exceptions persist and these inefficiencies continue to consume valuable resources because employees still decide what to buy, who they buy from and what price they pay.
Maverick spend and the free-text problem – the hidden cost of unchanged behaviour
Maverick spend refers to employees purchasing outside of approved channels, meaning negotiated supplier agreements get bypassed and volume leverage and contract savings disappear into the ether, according to a WBR Insights study. Free-text requisitions are often the starting point for inaccurate pricing, coding errors and invoice matching exceptions, all of which increase manual interventions. In effect, despite implementing digital systems and platforms, organisations have merely digitised inefficiencies rather than eliminating them altogether.
Behavioural change – procurement’s next frontier
Technology is very good at telling organisations what’s happened, but without effective employee guidance in place, it can’t influence what happens next. Procurement teams are good at analysing spend after the fact, but what they really need to work on is influencing purchasing decisions beforehand. Good behaviours drive good performance. Every purchasing decision impacts price, contract and regulatory compliance, processing costs and risk exposure. Organisations need to recognise that alongside the technology implementations, it’s only when guided buying becomes the norm that real benefits emerge.
A roadmap to improved purchasing decision
Guided buying has been likened to GPS navigation for procurement functions – and it’s exactly what Proactis Marketplace is built to deliver. When employees receive clear direction, rather than starting from scratch for every purchase, efficiency naturally follows. This involves surfacing approved suppliers first, as in ensuring critical supply chain data is presented to a buyer on screen when a buying decision is made is essential. Embedding agreed pricing structures into operational spend, presenting compliant options by default and standardising descriptions and categories also empowers good employee purchasing decisions without them even thinking about it.
Ease of use leads to more effective compliance
Deloitte’s 2025 Global CPO Survey found that organisations where technology is combined with human capabilities and behavioural change achieve the strongest procurement performance. But that technology needs to be user friendly. If systems aren’t intuitive and are cumbersome to use, employees look for workarounds.
Without properly structured foundations, encouraging employee adoption is difficult. Hackett Group research reveals that poor fundamentals, like badly structured catalogues and clunky user experiences, become barriers to effective eProcurement adoption. It’s worth noting that occasional buyers often make up a procurement function’s largest user group. If the systems are structured and intuitive, compliance is embedded in the purchasing decision. If they aren’t, maverick spend is the inevitable outcome.
Where AI takes guided buying next
This is where AI starts to earn its keep – not by replacing procurement judgement, but by catching a bad purchasing decision before it happens rather than analysing it afterwards. AI-assisted guided buying can flag a free-text requisition in real time and point the buyer to a compliant, catalogued alternative before it ever becomes an invoice-matching exception. We’ve already seen what AI does at the invoice end of the process: Betfred cut accounts payable processing time by 47% in a two-week trial of Proactis’s AI Accelerator on top of Invoice Capture. Apply that same logic upstream, at the point of purchase, and the case for guided buying gets a lot harder to ignore.
Practical solutions that change behaviours
Measuring free-text requisitions enables organisations to track purchases sitting outside of structured buying channels. If high levels are detected, it’s time to step in and educate users about how to buy properly and work within the established system. Making approved purchasing simple and straightforward encourages adoption and deters users from bypassing control measures. Clearly delineating approved suppliers ensures they’re the buyer’s first port of call and they’ll benefit from highly visible contract pricing when making their decision.
Reducing the supplier base increases organisational leverage and reduces the administrative burden. Managing multiple low-value suppliers individually just encourages inefficiencies, it’s much better to work with a smaller base that’s more easily structured and controlled to tackle tail spend effectively. It’s also critical to understand that technology is just an enabler. Transformational eProcurement functions must be seen as a change programme. Lasting results will only be achieved if executive sponsorship is evident and reinforced with effective communication, training and a concerted effort to change employee behaviours.
In search of tangible value
Tangible procurement value won’t come from processing invoices faster or approving acquisitions more efficiently – it will come from reshaping employee behaviour. Making compliant, value-focused purchasing decisions easy, intuitive and automatic in a properly structured purchasing function is where the real value lies. It will enable employees to capture more of the savings negotiated by the organisation, reduce waste and resource-heavy manual interventions and improve supplier performance. Procurement’s final frontier needs to go beyond technology and embrace behavioural change to buy well and prosper.
Charlotte Carter, VP of Product, Proactis
Proactis has worked closely with mid-to-large businesses and public sector organisations for more than 25 years. It provides solutions to more than 1,000 organisations with two million users. Its high performing, spend management technology helps clients drive value and deliver process improvements through enabling more effective eSourcing, supply chain, contract and supplier relationship management.