Pactum, a pioneer in agentic AI for enterprise procurement, has announced the appointment of Paige Wei-Cox as Chief Product Officer.

From December 1st, 2025, Wei-Cox will lead efforts to accelerate Pactum’s evolution from product innovation to platform scale, expanding adoption across global enterprises and enhancing collaboration within procurement ecosystems.

Wei-Cox joins Pactum at a defining moment for both the company and the industry, as enterprise procurement transitions from digital workflows to intelligent, autonomous decision-making. Her appointment signals Pactum’s next phase of growth as it scales from category leader in autonomous negotiation to the intelligent decision layer for global procurement. Wei-Cox will oversee product, technology, product marketing, and ecosystem integration, bringing together innovation, execution, and customer value under one end-to-end product vision.

“Paige is one of the few product leaders who has shaped the global procurement landscape from within,” said Kaspar Korjus, Co-Founder and CEO of Pactum. “She has previously built and scaled the world’s largest business network, connecting millions of buyers and suppliers. Her track record of leading complex enterprise transformations, while inspiring teams and customers alike, will help Pactum bridge innovation and adoption as we redefine the future of procurement.”

Wei-Cox brings more than two decades of leadership experience across AI, SaaS, supply chain, and enterprise procurement. During her tenure at SAP, she led the SAP Business Network, including the Ariba Network, as well as supply chain portfolios such as Logistics and Asset Intelligence Networks, redefining how global enterprises connect, collaborate, and manage value across their extended ecosystems. Her leadership unified strategy across ERP, network, procurement, and supply chain domains, enabling the world’s largest organisations to digitize operations and build intelligent, collaborative value chains. She also served as Chief Product Officer at Everstream Analytics where she led a product-led transformation that scaled the company as a market leader in AI-driven supply chain risk management.

“Pactum is years ahead in defining what agentic AI means for enterprises,” said Wei-Cox. “I’ve spent my career helping organizations connect people, data, and technology to drive transformation. Pactum represents the next evolution, embedding intelligence directly into how companies make decisions. This is where customer impact, innovation, and AI come together at scale.”

Wei-Cox’s appointment further reflects Pactum’s momentum and market position as the first mover in autonomous negotiation, delivering measurable ROI for more than 50 of the world’s largest enterprises, including Suez, Novartis, Otto Group, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Honeywell. Backed by $100M+ in funding from Insight Partners, Atomico, Project A, and Maersk, Pactum’s platform is now the proven foundation for agentic AI adoption at enterprise scale.

Known for her customer-first approach, inclusive leadership, and ability to translate complex vision into scalable execution, Wei-Cox has been recognised as a Top 100 Woman in Supply Chain and a multi-year Supply & Demand Chain Executive Pro to Know.  She’s passionate about uniting teams around purpose, building trust, and driving meaningful outcomes through technology, and holds a Bachelor of Science from Purdue University and an Executive MBA from Mannheim University.

Learn more about Pactum here.

Procurement teams are feeling the pressure like never before. Tariff uncertainty, cost inflation and supplier volatility are combining with internal challenges – smaller teams, tough competition for talent and disconnected systems – to make an already demanding job even harder.

Together, these pressures are not only stretching resources to their limit and creating significant strain for procurement professionals, but are making commercial relationships far more complex. 

Misaligned expectations, changing requirements, poorly drafted documentation and payment delays are all becoming increasingly likely to spiral into disputes, which themselves are becoming more common, more expensive and slower to resolve than many professionals would like to think.

In fact, according to a recent survey – conducted as part of Resolutiion and the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS)’s Breaking the Deadlock report – 48% of respondents said the time to resolve procurement conflict and disputes is increasing. More specifically, 49% said that serious conflicts and disputes were taking up to six months to resolve and, in extreme cases, 13% indicated that it is taking more than six months to reach a conclusion to disagreements. 

Exacerbating the issue are the costs associated with resolving conflicts – from a financial, resource, and reputational perspective – which 73% said were on the up. A separate report published earlier this year from Resolutiion and World Commerce and Contracting (WCC) also estimated that the direct costs and publicly available data alone amounted to £671 billion ($900 billion).

While these challenges are enough to contend with alone, they are also seeing organisations rely on ad-hoc approaches rather than structured processes. In fact, many organisations currently only bring in legal help sparingly, which suggests there isn’t always a formal escalation path or decision rule, with procurement managers relying on personal judgment or internal politics to decide how to handle a dispute. This approach is one that’s only further delaying resolutions, straining supplier relationships even more, and causing additional operational disruption that is completely avoidable. 

Top strategies for improving conflict and dispute outcomes

The above findings may, on the surface, seem negative; relationships that are quietly consuming time and trust, ultimately impacting businesses’ bottom lines. But they also signal a clear opportunity for procurement professionals to rethink how they approach conflict and dispute management, in turn enhancing their resolution capabilities.

With this in mind, consider the following strategies:

1. Strengthen documentation clarity and upfront alignment: Put simply, better delivery documentation (not just contracts, but all documentation that governs the relationship) makes for less conflict and fewer disputes. So, consider how to make contract terms clear from the outset, defining deliverables and expectations upfront, and holding a clarification meeting after signing the contract. In doing so, organisations can pre-empt a large portion of conflict and disputes caused by misunderstandings.

2. Prioritise communication and supplier relationship management: Support a culture of ‘no surprises’ via regular check-ins, performance reviews, and putting early warning systems in place for potential issues. This can not only improve the ongoing dialogue with suppliers and internal stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of the relationship, but stop disagreements from escalating and reduce the frequency of conflicts and disputes.

3. Switch ad-hoc case handling to a more structured framework: By establishing a clear multi-tier resolution process (e.g. initial negotiation > management escalation > intervention), companies can handle conflict and disputes at the lowest appropriate level, saving time, money, improving efficiency and collecting data at each stage. 

4. Leverage available data: Following on from the above strategy’s reference to data collection, don’t just collect data, use it. Modern procurement systems generate vast amounts of data: on delivery times, quality issues, change orders, communications, etc. By applying analytics or AI, organisations can spot patterns or red flags (for example, a trend of late deliveries or increasing change requests in a project) that typically precede a dispute. Some forward-looking organisations are even beginning to implement predictive analytics on supplier performance data. Even without advanced technology, organisations can still track basic metrics to understand where conflict and disputes occur most often if a simple register is maintained.

5. Build conflict and dispute resolution into leadership and organisational culture: Conflict and dispute resolution objectives should be integrated into development plans, competency models, and performance evaluations for them to work most effectively. That means treating them in the same way you would other key metrics – for example, by celebrating examples of effective resolution like you would for cost savings being delivered or successful tenders.

6. Improve access to specialist expertise in a cost-effective way: Make specialist conflict and dispute resolution expertise more accessible as a built-in support for procurement. By lowering the barriers (time, cost, bureaucracy) to engage expert technology, companies can leverage their benefits with greater ease. Additionally, training internal procurement staff in negotiation and conflict management can raise the overall skill level. 

The bottom line here is that now is the moment to act – procurement conflict and dispute resolution must move from the margins to the mainstream of operational strategy. As 2026 approaches, commercial relationships are only set to become more complex and supply chains more interdependent; a trend that will see the ability to navigate disagreements constructively become a hallmark of high-performing organisations.

Written by Fayola-Maria Jack, Founder, Resolutiion. Resolutiion® is a human-centred global AI platform, purpose-built to help buyers and suppliers prevent, manage, and resolve commercial conflicts and disputes, with speed and precision.

Success in procurement doesn’t just happen.

A good procurement function delivers cost savings, timely deliveries and maintains robust supplier relationships.

But the journey isn’t linear, and procurement leaders get the strategy wrong at their peril. A disjointed procurement strategy could be an expensive mistake and lead to unexpected costs, significant delays and quality issues.

With this in mind, CPOstrategy explores five of the top procurement mistakes to avoid.

Lack of procurement strategy

Operating without a clearly defined procurement strategy is a dangerous game. Without a strong framework in place, organisations run the risk of inconsistent decisions, missed cost-saving opportunities and poor supplier relationships. It is a key reason why developing a procurement strategy aligned with wider organisational objectives, with clear metrics and KPIs, is vital. There should also be a standardised policy and governance as well as ensuring procurement goals are linked with wider company goals. Procurement leaders should regularly meet with senior leadership in order to ensure long-term synergy is achieved.

Lack of automation

Leveraging technology isn’t something that is optional any longer. All organisations must be digitally fluent and seek to embrace the latest innovations in order to keep up with competitors. The likes of spreadsheets and emails are prone to human errors, while a lack of visibility, brought on by the absence of real-time tracking of spending, causes issues. This is where the use of e-procurement platforms and spend analytics tools is essential in order to identify cost savings in real-time and result in greater efficiency.

Lack of communication

Poor communication in procurement leads to misaligned expectations across the function and suppliers. This could mean confusion over requirements, timelines and responsibilities as well as a lack of buy-in from internal stakeholders who are not involved in the procurement process. Instead, procurement leaders should engage all stakeholders early and use clear communication channels to provide updates to keep all relevant people informed.

Poor supplier selection

Choosing the right suppliers is arguably one of the most critical aspects of the procurement process to get correct. It is a problem because a short-term cost focus leads to low-bid vendors who are unable to deliver, while a lack of due diligence exposes the risk of financial instability, legal risk and supply chain disruption. Instead, procurement leaders should define clear selection criteria, take part in a thorough due diligence process and use a structured sourcing strategy.

Lack of budget control

A lack of budget control in procurement can lead to cost overruns, strained stakeholder relationships and missed financial targets. Untracked or unauthorised spending bypasses approvals and preferred suppliers, while overspending against departmental budgets can cause frustration within the organisation and could result in cost-cutting. Instead, good budget control in procurement requires a pre-approval process to be implemented alongside real-time budget tracking tools and categorising spend effectively. It is also important to stay on top of spend and conduct regular budget reviews.

2030 is regarded as the end destination for many sustainability and digital programmes.

The first part of this decade has been filled with complexity and uncertainty. From the likes of COVID-19, to the wars in Ukraine and Israel, to inflation concerns and Trump’s tariffs, the geopolitical landscape has appeared extra challenging in recent years. However, despite this disruption, procurement is still fighting back amidst an unprecedented and overwhelming plethora of new and exciting digital tools available on the market.

So, how does procurement map its way to 2030? CPOstrategy explores this burning question and hears from experts in the field who are tackling this conundrum head-on. 

Procurement transformation

Nicholas Walden, Europe Practice Leader, Procurement Advisory at The Hackett Group, believes that by 2030, procurement will be redefined as an intelligent and resilient function that helps guide the business on strategy and value capture, especially in a world characterised by sustained volatility and uncertainty. “Procurement will be closely aligned with overall business strategy and goals, supported by strong capability ‘muscles’ such as scenario modelling, risk management, supplier-led innovation, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance,” he says. “Procurement functions must also develop a culture of continuous learning to address new skill requirements and closing capability gaps. This includes adopting emerging technologies, particularly digital and AI-enabled tools, which will play a central role in enhancing productivity, improving decision-making, and handling time-consuming tasks such as regular revalidation of supplier data, certifications, and risk assessments. 

“Critically, business processes across procurement will operate at significantly greater speed – potentially one and a half to two times faster than today – enabling more agile and effective operations. In this future, procurement will be a proactive, insight-led partner to the business, equipped to navigate complex challenges and deliver sustained results.” 

Purposeful AI

Simon Geale, Executive Vice President at Proxima, explains that as procurement leaders continue to find meaningful use cases for AI, both build and buy, many are not yet scaling investment. However, in his view, it is set to change. “There are a few forces driving this transformation, and each will adapt and evolve during the next five years,” he tells us. “Firstly, platforms are seeking to reinvent themselves. The best of breed market has threatened to usurp platforms and looking forward, agents and orchestration make this possible and practical. Platforms must reinvent or retarget those businesses that do not have the capability to invest in resources or build programmes. 

“Secondly, the best of breed market is under attack from itself. What started as the easy antidote to complex platforms has become a complex market. The antidote to this could paradoxically be larger players and we should see some exciting consolidations and digital managed services or digital BPO arising.  

“Finally, the barriers to build are disappearing. It’s getting easier to build private LLMs and use agents to automate process and replicate many tasks. Looking to 2030, we can probably expect to see an industry around ‘build’ allowing for bespoke architectures. And we will still be focused on savings, and to some extent bemoaning that fact. I say own it! There are few things more strategic than helping a business to achieve its strategic objectives to the best commercial benefit.”

Powering decision-making

Jenny Draper, Managing Director at Barkers Commercial Consultancy, reveals that procurement in 2030 will be expected to take a far more strategic approach within organisations, driving not just cost efficiency, but also sustainability and innovation. “Effective risk mitigation will be crucial and will heavily depend on having accurate, real-time data across a range of critical factors,” she tells us. “Procurement teams will need to integrate diverse data points, including supply chain performance, political and regulatory developments, climate-related disruptions, and the availability of goods and services – using accurate, real-time data as forecasting processes to predict and respond to risks. From navigating geopolitical tensions, adapting to extreme weather events, or managing shortages and price volatility, the ability to underpin these unpredictabilities with accurate, real-time data will be vital in securing supply and supporting long-term business development.

“The widespread use of AI to scrape data and interpret it to create a scenario plan is already prominent, and the use of AI is already growing in real-time exponentially. It’s likely we will begin to have even more credence in AI as the years roll on, and procurement teams – especially where data analysts are crucial to strategy planning and decision-making – will obtain data interpretations from AI more. AI will likely feed into decision-making, making it a streamlined, easy way to obtain data insights and scenario modelling. People can then focus their energy on interpreting for the business and continuing to manage and foster relationships with supply partners. We will likely gain even more confidence in AI’s ability, with analysts, to mitigate risk, set direction, and forecast any of these disruptions.”

Future-proofing procurement

As the procurement function continues to shift and move, its role will transition to one heavily underpinned by technology. “It can do much of the strenuous work to present options in front of a human, with a high degree of real-time accuracy,” adds Draper. “However, as opposed to broader, end-to-end solutions, it’s likely we will see point solutions in procurement to address particular, specific needs of the business. By 2030, orchestration tools like Zip and ORO will play an integral role in procurement functions by seamlessly connecting workflows across multiple platforms and technologies. These orchestration tools enable organisations to use different systems for differing stages of the procurement journey, including sourcing, contract management, or supplier onboarding, without losing efficiency. 

“Orchestration platforms act as a workflow bridge, creating a unified, automated workflow that is tailored to specific roles within the business. Not only does this enhance user experience, but these tools also improve speed and compliance across processes. While these tools are already gaining traction in the market, their use is expected to escalate enormously as procurement becomes more digitally developed.”

Procurement’s journey ahead isn’t linear. Its way forward is a continuous journey of development and transformation. Indeed, the acceleration of new digital tools such as generative and agentic AI is set to continue to free up procurement practitioners and help deliver time and cost savings to the companies brave enough to adopt it into operations. As digital tools mature, innovations such as this will become increasingly popular options across the workforce. While digital transformation is the key, it is people which underpins procurement’s evolution. Procurement’s pathway to 2030 has never been clearer.

Managing tail spend efficiently is a challenge many organisations face.

Those small, scattered purchases can be hard to keep track of and can quickly add up in cost, complexity and compliance efforts. 

But Candex, led by CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Lappin, is tackling this issue head-on.

While in his previous company, Lappin was tasked with invoicing a number of large organisations when he discovered there was a gap in the market to simplify the process for purchasing from small vendors and one-time purchases. 

“When I started Candex, I noticed that this problem was common to organisations all over the world,” explains Lappin. “So we decided to build a fantastic purchasing infrastructure to allow for the ability to invoice clients globally and then pay smaller vendors. We started focusing on recruitment vendors and then broadened into all types of vendors as we began to understand how things worked and how to better serve our clients. That’s the genesis of how Candex got to where it is today.”

Together with Co-Founder and Chief R&D Officer Shani Vaza, Candex was born. And today the company delivers a fast, compliant, and easy buying experience for requisitioners, while procurement gains automation, visibility, and control, reducing the vendor master by up to 80%.

Hitachi Energy was an early customer of Candex back in 2021. Lappin was introduced to Chief Procurement Officer at Hitachi Energy, Armin Ploetz, and his team in Switzerland.

The partnership continuously grew and developed into a strong alliance, which now acts as a template and best practice and helps shape how Candex works. 

The journey between Candex and Hitachi Energy started as a pilot in Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, but following a successful year, Hitachi Energy decided to roll out the Candex solution in 40 countries. The adoption rate has more than doubled each year, and this year the trend is even tripling.

Inside Candex

Over the years, some of the biggest challenges procurement teams have faced involve the likes of fragmented data, manual vendor onboarding processes, and administrative bottlenecks. This leads to time and resources being devoted to low-impact tasks, causing major strategic projects to receive insufficient attention. In many organisations, 70% of vendors represent only 5% of total spend. Candex enables procurement teams to efficiently handle this long tail of spend without increasing operational workload. As a result, teams can concentrate on strategic goals, shift spending towards preferred suppliers, and generate greater value for the business. Currently, Candex is supporting procurement in moving beyond just compliance and cost reduction to achieve something much more meaningful – transparency.

Procurement leaders often face resistance when implementing new systems. However, Candex has ensured high adoption rates and navigation through some of this initial inertia because of its unique and simple user experience offering. “Usually when our clients first deploy us, it starts a little slow because people aren’t familiar with Candex or how it works,” explains Lappin. “But over time, we see incredible adoption from our customers like Hitachi Energy, who have got a real feel for how compliant this methodology is. We’ve seen a very steady growth within our clients in very predictable ways which is amazing.”

Candex and Hitachi Energy: Strategic partnership

Hitachi Energy’s core markets are expanding rapidly, demanding full attention on strategic and high-impact suppliers. Candex plays a crucial role in supporting this growth by efficiently managing short-turn, low-risk tail-end suppliers, for example in R&D – allowing Hitachi Energy to stay focused on its key business relationships, products and services. 

Armin Ploetz explains that one of Candex’s biggest advantages is that it allows Hitachi Energy to act quickly and omit a lengthy supplier onboarding process for small-spend or one-time purchase suppliers.

“In R&D, teams often require unique suppliers for one-off tests of new materials or components – items they know they’ll purchase only once,” says Armin Ploetz. “Candex is ideal because there’s no need to qualify the supplier for ongoing production. Scalability checks aren’t required, making procurement much faster.”

“If a needed part isn’t available in our catalogue, R&D can use Candex to source it for their specific project. The key is clear communication because knowing when and how to use Candex makes all the difference. That’s why we stay in close contact with our R&D teams to ensure they use Candex as efficiently as possible.”

Building trust

As exemplified by the Hitachi Energy relationship, one of the things that stands out is the trust that exists in this partnership. In fact, Lappin reveals that his entire business revolves around trust. “It’s a relationship business,” he tells us. “Orders, invoices, and payments must go where they’re meant to, so the system has to function smoothly and any complexities should disappear into the abyss. It should feel simple and consistently dependable and like it always works.”

Before Candex, Hitachi Energy spent a significant time with onboarding and invoice alignment to specific countries, where their specific efforts often outweigh the cost or even the benefits. “Now, with Candex handling and streamlining this for their infrequent, low-value and low-risk areas, Hitachi Energy is able to better focus on where it matters most for them, their line of business, products, markets and their clients,” adds Lappin. 

The Candex difference

According to Armin Ploetz, the management of tail spend is an important area because it touches many stakeholders. “Imagine we run a one-time team-building event in the UK.” reveals Armin Ploetz. “Normally, bringing in a new supplier means going through a full onboarding process and checking the likes of cybersecurity, sustainability, and financial liability, which is similar to what we do for critical, strategic suppliers. While this process is necessary for our core business, it exceeds the actual need in other areas and consumes valuable time.” 

“For low-value, one-off events like this, it’s far more efficient to work with a company like Candex, which performs the essential safety checks without going as deep as our full supplier onboarding process. That way, we can onboard and purchase from such suppliers much faster, avoiding the specifics and additional efforts necessary for others. Payment, as a consequence, also becomes quicker, making the entire process smoother.”

Previously, internal requesters often found this process frustrating and questioned why a small, one-off event was difficult to arrange and why payment couldn’t just be made quickly. Now, there is a targeted solution – faster processing, better efficiency, and improved internal reputation. Lappin reveals how delighted he is that Candex is able to provide that value to organisations the size of Hitachi Energy.

“It’s humbling to see that a company like Hitachi Energy finds what we do to be so important, and that’s what drives us day in and day out,” he tells us. “We love listening to their suggestions for improvements and their excitement to bring us into new markets. We love how it makes their automation goals more achievable and makes their processes more efficient and easier to follow. I think that is the reward that we get from doing it and it’s always fun to see the surprise on their requisitioners’ faces at how effective our solution is and how easy it is to use.

“Hitachi Energy has been incredibly efficient and effective at how they’ve performed change management and rolled Candex out around the world to their people and got them using it. We’ve learned quite a lot from that experience in terms of collaborating and we’ve been able to use that learning with some of our other clients.”

However, success is not without challenges. According to Lappin, one of the biggest hurdles is being available within each individual country. He stresses that there are key criteria to meet such as following local rules and regulations, understanding how taxation works and opening new bank accounts. Fortunately, Candex has become well-versed in handling those challenges within different countries.

“The first part is being available in the countries where the clients need us, which is basically everywhere,” explains Lappin. “Then the second challenge is getting set up as a vendor in those countries with our clients and enabling the users in those countries to trust us for their purchases. They don’t want things to get messed up. They want everything to be right, because they know how things work in these countries. So, we have to work perfectly, and ensure Candex is working perfectly for the purchases that they’re making in these countries. Being good at this is one of the hardest challenges that Candex has.”

Future facing procurement

The future of the partnership between Candex and Hitachi Energy looks bright. Already using this alliance as a template for others, Hitachi Energy is set to continue to roll out Candex to as many countries as possible. “Our plan will be to go with them as far as we can go, because we currently see a massive increase in efficiency on our side since partnering with them,” says Armin Ploetz. “If Candex comes up with additional solutions in the future, we will certainly consider and evaluate these according to our needs, to embrace new solutions as long as they fit within our overall technology landscape. For the time being, we are still rolling out the existing solution and ensuring we drive the adoption of the tool but there is still a way to go.”

From Lappin’s perspective, he is well aware about how the future of payments in procurement is evolving and believes compliance is becoming increasingly important. “There’s a lot of sanctions and screening processes that are expected of companies,” he says. “The requirements on that front are getting more significant, and the government requirements on invoicing are similarly getting substantially more difficult. As time progresses, I think people will be even more concerned with compliance, and government processes will become even more complicated to deal with in terms of how invoicing needs to be done. I don’t see that trend stopping at all, nor do I see an easy way around it.

“In procurement, there’s some amazing analytical tools that are coming out that’ll be incredibly valuable that use AI to get real important knowledge out of what’s happening. I think that people will figure out how to use AI to help them find the right vendors, to help them create the right quotations and scopes for the projects that they’re embarking on. I don’t think the payment infrastructure will be affected as much as some of the other user-facing areas that are gaining traction in the space such as guided buying and orchestration. Everyone is focused on making the user experience easier and helping people make the purchases that they need to make.”

How do you ensure compliance and efficiency without slowing down business processes?

Jeremy Lappin: “One of our greatest strengths at Candex is the way we’ve engineered compliance into the purchasing process. Normally, making a compliant purchase means going through sanction screenings, verifying beneficial owners, and waiting for approvals before a vendor can act. This creates a common bottleneck, “I can’t do my part until someone else finishes theirs.”

“With traditional onboarding at companies like Hitachi Energy, vendors must complete a thorough and detailed process before a purchase order can even be released. At Candex, there’s no waiting period. Vendors can move step by step through our system without relying on others, which makes the process faster, smoother, and less complex.

“We’ve optimised it so purchase orders go through without delays, confusion, or unnecessary complexities. Of course, payments are never as simple as handing someone cash – there are still taxes, invoices, and compliance requirements. But compared to any other method, we make the process simpler and more efficient.”

Jeremy Lappin

CO-FOUNDER, CEO, Candex

Jeremy is one of the co-founders and the CEO of Candex. He is responsible for driving the company’s business innovation, overseeing product development, and implementing growth strategies.

Prior to Candex, Jeremy served as the CEO of Bounty Jobs, a prominent Enterprise Agency Management solution and recruiting platform. During his tenure, he successfully raised $18 million in funding and led the company to achieve over $20 million in annual revenue within three years. With a diverse background in the internet, financial, and technology sectors, Jeremy brings valuable entrepreneurial and management experience to the table. In 1998, Jeremy founded Versity.com, an internet software company where he developed enterprise course management software for universities. Jeremy managed to secure $12 million in funding for Versity and eventually sold the business for $80 million.

Jeremy earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and holds an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Outside of work, he enjoys skiing and playing tennis during his spare time.

Shani Vaza

CO-FOUNDER, Chief R&D Officer

Shani is the powerhouse behind Candex’s cutting-edge technology, where she serves as the Co-Founder and Chief R&D Officer.

Before joining Candex, Shani held the esteemed position of Director of Engineering at SuperDerivatives, a prominent Fintech company renowned for its expertise in derivatives.

Her journey into the tech world began in the prestigious tech unit of the IDF, where she honed her coding skills straight out of college.

Armed with a degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, Shani’s expansive knowledge forms the foundation of her unwavering dedication to achieving technological excellence.

Armin Ploetz, Chief Procurement Officer, Hitachi Energy

With more than 30 years of experience within the supply chain management realm, Armin is the Chief Procurement Officer at Hitachi Energy and leads Supply Chain Management and the Common Shared Services.

Armin is passionate about driving value creation beyond cost reduction and efficiency improvements. He is continuously improving sustainability maturity, leveraging technology and promoting diversity and inclusion at work. 

Armin’s most recent focus is on implementing robust risk management strategies and ensuring proactive supply chain regulatory compliance by leveraging artificial intelligence. Armin holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland and has held various leadership roles in multinational companies, such as Ernst&Young (EY) and IBM.

At companies like Hitachi Energy, onboarding high-risk, high-spend suppliers – especially those tied to critical production elements – requires rigorous due diligence and thorough evaluation. This process is essential to ensure compliance, quality, and operational continuity. However, for infrequent, low-value, and low-risk purchases, such extensive onboarding can be disproportionate. Candex streamlines this segment by enabling suppliers to onboard quickly and independently, without lengthy delays or complex dependencies – allowing procurement teams to focus their resources where it matters most.

Selecting the correct technology vendor in today’s crowded tech marketplace can be challenging. Product features and functionality remain essential considerations, but successful long-term technology partnerships depend on far more than “tech specs” alone. 

This issue becomes even more critical as organisations look to adopt AI – as yet a nascent but rapidly developing technology. Procurement and business teams with an eye on long-term successful results must go beyond surface-level product comparisons to identify technology partners who are truly aligned with their strategic objectives and operational realities – and much of this comes down to understanding a vendor’s business culture.

Who’s steering the ship?

For business procurement teams, evaluating a technology vendor’s “business culture” is far more than a superficial exercise or a vague impression from initial meetings. It’s a concrete discipline: understanding how a vendor is structured, how they operate day-to-day, and what truly motivates them as a company.

Begin with the basics – ownership structure. Is the vendor privately owned, publicly traded, or backed by private equity? Are they focused on long-term partnership and sustainable growth, or are their goals more short-term and transactional? 

Procurement professionals know that a sudden shift in ownership can upend product roadmaps and destabilise support, putting organisational objectives at risk. Ask vendors candidly about their ownership and future vision.

Equally important: Who’s developing the technology? The most effective solutions are created by people who have real-world expertise in the domain. Procurement teams should prioritise vendors whose products are built by insiders – sales experts designing AI-powered CRM software, legal pros building AI-enhanced legal tech, and so on. 

When cultural knowledge infuses the product design process, the resulting tools are more likely to address genuine pain points and evolve with industry needs. Vendors lacking this internal expertise may struggle to deliver lasting value, raising red flags for procurement teams seeking ongoing ROI from their technology investments.

Prioritising customer success

Successful technology adoption hinges on robust customer engagement. Procurement teams should scrutinise the vendor’s approach: Do they maintain dedicated account managers? What’s the ratio of customers per account manager – are you one of five customers assigned to that manager, or one of fifty? High-touch engagement models indicate a vendor culture focused on partnership, not just transactions.

Delve into success metrics. How does the vendor define “success,” and does this match your team’s own KPIs for technology adoption? Misaligned definitions can derail partnerships, so seek vendors willing to adjust their benchmarks to fit your organisation’s goals. 

Responsiveness also speaks volumes. When issues arise – software bugs, integration hiccups, or other bumps in the road – does the vendor proactively address them, or do they only react after multiple complaints? Procurement teams will benefit by leaning towards partners who treat problem-solving as an ongoing commitment, not a reluctant obligation.

It’s also worth evaluating how vendors handle customer feedback loops for their product, particularly for any new AI features or functionality. Do they actively solicit input and iterate on product features, or do they treat feedback as a formality? Vendors that embed customer insights into their roadmap demonstrate a culture of continuous improvement – one that’s more likely to deliver tools that evolve in step with an organisation’s own changing needs.

Pricing is important, but so are partnerships

Procurement’s responsibility for managing cost and risk makes transparent pricing non-negotiable. Insist on itemised breakdowns for every license, integration, and support service. Does the vendor’s quote encompass the true total cost of ownership, or are hidden fees lurking beneath the surface? Beyond clarity, pricing models should also reflect flexibility. Can licenses scale up or down based on usage or organisational shifts? 

Another consideration beyond price is the fact that modern organisations rely on tech ecosystems – not isolated solutions. You can have the fanciest AI tool in the world, but it won’t do you much good if it doesn’t “play nicely” with your existing technology stack or requires expensive integrations to make it work properly.

To mitigate this risk, procurement teams must closely examine the vendor’s partnership network. Does the vendor offer seamless integrations with existing technologies and core business applications? A well-developed partner ecosystem signals a culture of openness and collaboration, with an eye on helping the customer succeed. By contrast, a vendor that leaves integration burdens on the client sends a very different message.

Go beyond features and focus on the bigger picture

For procurement teams, due diligence extends far beyond ticking boxes on a feature matrix. Procurement’s mandate is to mitigate risk and enable value – tasks that demand a holistic assessment of the vendor’s business culture. Ask tough questions, dig into the vendor’s organisational DNA, and look for evidence of shared values and strategic alignment.

Purchasing technology is never just about software – it’s about investing in a partnership. This truism has only been become more important in the age of AI.

Aligning with the right vendor culture will support your long-term goals, streamline implementation, and de-risk future investments. When procurement teams prioritise these cultural factors, they position their organisations for more reliable and innovative outcomes, today and tomorrow.

Global leader in procurement intelligence, Green Cabbage, has announced a $40 million Series B investment from Sageview Capital, a growth equity firm based in Silicon Valley and New York.

The funding will fuel the company’s international expansion and the continued launch of advanced multi-channel spend cubes, furthering its mission to redefine procurement intelligence.

“We’re honoured to welcome Sageview Capital as a partner in our growth journey,” said Eric Cunningham, CEO and Founder of Green Cabbage. “The trust we’ve earned from some of the world’s largest enterprises by delivering billions in savings across Technology, Third-Party Labor, Marketing, and Travel & Expense has validated our model. With Sageview’s support and global network, we’re expanding the depth of our spend categories and extending our solutions from large enterprises to mid-market organisations worldwide.”

Jeff Klemens, Partner at Sageview Capital, added: “We’ve been following Green Cabbage for over a year and are impressed with their vision, product momentum, and consistent execution.  With annual growth more than 100% and an exciting technology roadmap, it’s clear they are bringing unmatched innovation to procurement & finance. The combination of strong customer ties across private equity, consulting, and global enterprises, plus an experienced and energised leadership team, positions Green Cabbage for long-term, sustainable success.  We are excited to partner with Eric and the entire Green Cabbage team to support their growth journey.”

This funding follows Green Cabbage’s Series A investment from Sorenson Capital just one year ago. “We’ve been fortunate to align with the right partners at the right time, and we couldn’t be more excited to have Sageview join us,” said Eric Cunningham. “Our clients have been asking for deeper insights through a multi-channel spend cube platform, and we are delivering. We’ve also built a world-class leadership team across the globe, and our clients’ results speak for themselves.”

Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for the full interview with Green Cabbage in our upcoming DPW Amsterdam Takeover Edition.

Procurement isn’t the simple purchasing function it once was.

Over the past decade, procurement has been given a shot in the arm and is today almost unrecognisable from what it once was. Indeed, the function of 2025 is complex and is filled with various nuances and ever-changing disruptions amid a dynamic geopolitical environment. One of the biggest reasons for the evolution of procurement has been the introduction and acceleration of new digital tools that offer exponential cost and time savings.

As part of that, procurement orchestration has become an important piece of the puzzle to company strategy. Procurement orchestration represents the entire strategic integration of all processes that comprise an organisation’s procurement strategy. It focuses on putting the various tools and processes that cross-functional departments and stakeholders use. It is a powerful, broad view which consists of tools and strategies that allow for spend visibility to be maximised and enable the efficiency of procurement teams.

CPOstrategy explores five of the biggest ways to benefit from procurement orchestration.

Fragmented procurement processes

Orchestration platforms automate mundane procurement tasks such as purchase order creation, approvals and invoice matching. As a result, it reduces manual errors, decreases cycle times and frees up procurement professionals to focus on strategic activities. If one or more common procurement solutions have been implemented, then companies could have experienced siloed workstreams and data. Over time, these inefficiencies can compound which leads to the likes of manual, ad hoc workflows to coordinate the procurement process. Orchestration links systems together such as legal, IT and other teams, to enable them to work in their preferred systems while finance and procurement gain full visibility into all stages of the process.

Power of data

Orchestration allows for a single source of truth and can help guard against potential issues. Problems such as incorrect purchase orders, mismatched invoices and delayed payments can strain supplier relationships, cause financial losses and mean operational inefficiencies. Orchestration minimises errors by automating key tasks, enforcing data validation standards and processes as well as connecting purchasing and AP invoicing. By consolidating data from sourcing, contracts, spend analysis, and supplier performance, orchestration platforms support better-informed decisions. AI and analytics can further optimise category strategies and supplier selection.

Rogue spending

Procurement can sometimes be a lengthy process. This means that sometimes spending happens outside of approved supplier contracts. This happens when there is low employee adoption of procurement systems, a lack of centralised procurement policies or limited spending visibility. The result of this can mean higher costs, decreased negotiation leverage and the prospect of non-compliance. However, orchestration can solve this problem through stricter controls and approval workflows that eradicate unauthorised spend and improve financial governance. This will enable better visibility, control, data integrity as well as allow for a greater user experience.

Agility

Today’s world is unstable and is filled with complex challenges. Take the past few years, for example. In 2019, few could have predicted what the next six years would hold for procurement and supply chain. But the likes of Covid, wars and inflation issues, among others, have caused major changes to the way procurement works. One of the biggest challenges of 2025 has been President Trump’s tariffs imposed on various goods. This sparked a trade war with China and retaliatory measures from other countries. As such, an agile response to geopolitical disruptions is imperative in order to avoid being left short and having to change supplier contracts and pricing strategies. However, orchestration can help provide a centralised system that powers quick and strategic decision-making. Ultimately, it means that organisations can pivot quickly and avoid disruption despite sudden economic changes.

Improved supplier collaboration

All good relationships with suppliers are built on trust. In truth, it is impossible to be successful in the modern business world without partnerships. This means that if an organisation is still reliant on legacy systems, it risks inefficiencies creeping into operations. Indeed, poor supplier collaboration not only delays procurement functions but also exposes companies to compliance risks and excessive costs. But, this is where orchestration can help. Improved process organisation enables businesses to share information in real-time via centralised systems. As a result, this means suppliers can monitor order statuses, compliance and workflows without the requirement for continuous back-and-forth communication. Through better supplier collaboration via orchestration, it should allow for less friction, increased efficiency and better delivery over strategies to lead to a greater chance of achieving long-term success within procurement.

This month’s cover story features Roche leaders, Marielle Beyer and Patrick Foelck, who share their insight on procurement transformation that goes beyond traditional tactical procurement and creates real value for the business.  

Over the next few years, procurement leaders will need to execute another transformation, taking their functions beyond sourcing, negotiations, and category management. The aim? To make procurement an embodiment and an enabler of the broader organisation’s strategic ambitions relating to everything from contributing to core business objectives and delivering shareholder value to sustainability. 

At least, that’s the future that Beyer and Foelck believe is coming. And it’s the one they are working towards today. 

Elsewhere in this issue, we have full coverage from DPW New York 2025 where we were in the thick of the action across a jam-packed week filled with innovation and discovery. Inside these pages are exclusive interviews with the likes of Candex, Digital Mirror, Vroozi, Valdera and so much more! 

Also, be sure to check out our in-depth overview of Zip’s AI Summit which delved deeper into agentic orchestration and what it means for Zip and its guests.

Read the latest issue of CPOstrategy here.

The procurement function of today is almost unrecognisable.

Transformation and innovation is shaking the space up with no sign of slowing down any time soon. As a result, Chief Procurement Officers and leaders should buckle up and steer into the chaos.

From digital transformation to sustainability, CPOstrategy explores five of the hottest trends shaking up procurement.

Advanced technologies

Firstly, we can’t talk about procurement trends without mentioning AI and the advancements in new digital tools redefining the function. The likes of generative AI and now agentic AI have created quite the industry-wide buzz with significant benefits to optimise decision-making and deliver greater efficiency. Via embracing AI technologies, procurement teams can have better clarity through making data-driven decisions, such as predicting demand fluctuations or identifying the most reliable suppliers.

Sustainability

An equally dominant item on a Chief Procurement Officer’s agenda today is sustainability and ensuring the integration of ESG procurement practices. As a result of a shift in customer demands and changing government regulations, companies are forced to prioritise environmental and social responsibility whether they want to or not. Stricter government legislation is forcing procurement teams to be conscious of emissions and failure to meet regulatory requirements could mean costly penalties that impact the bottom line.

Procurement orchestration

Another buzz for 2025 is procurement orchestration and how this approach can link all processes and systems within the function to create a seamless experience for all users. In recent years, there has been a real explosion of platforms that have hit the market, each offering ways to integrate spend analytics, e-sourcing, supplier negotiation and contract lifecycle management with predictive orchestration. Orchestration increases employee adoption and decreases cycle times by simplifying request routing and unlocking savings opportunities via AI-powered insights. It allows full transparency and visibility across the entire purchasing process and enables better insights which in turn leads to bigger process optimisation and cost savings.

Supply chain resilience

Given the nature of the geopolitical landscape, disruption happens and often quickly with little warning. As a result, diversifying supplier bases with nearshoring operations and leveraging predictive analytics is essential to getting in front of anything that could derail operations early. Establishing a plan B is key to avoid single-supplier dependency should the worst happen as well as improving adaptability and agility in situations such as COVID-19, regional conflicts or shipping problems.

Talent transformation

We can’t forget the human in the loop. As transformational as technology is, it doesn’t work unless there’s a human at the end checking it. Upskilling employees to make them digital savvy, from utilising AI for data analytics to managing digital procurement platforms, is essential for success in the world of 2025. Empowered with the knowledge of AI tools, procurement professionals will be able to make more strategic decisions armed with the necessary skills to focus less on the mundane, transactional tasks.

A new report released by HP Wolf Security has highlighted a lack of procurement collaboration between the function, IT and security to define printer security standards.

According to the report Securing the Print Estate: A Proactive Lifecycle Approach to Cyber Resilience, the report showcases the challenges of securing printer hardware and firmware and highlights the implications of these failures across every stage of the printer’s lifecycle. A global study of 800+ IT and security decision-makers (ITSDMs) reveals that organisations are overlooking platform security, creating concerning security gaps.

One of the major report findings revealed that only 38% of IT and security decision-makers (ITSDMs) say procurement, IT, and security teams work together to define printer security standards – with 60% warning that this lack of collaboration puts their organisation at risk.

Exploring four lifecycle stages, the report reveals that during the ongoing management stage, just 36% of ITSDMs apply firmware updates promptly. This is despite IT teams spending three and a half hours per printer per month managing hardware and firmware security issues. Failure to promptly apply firmware updates to printers unnecessarily exposes organisations to threats that could lead to damaging impacts, such as cybercriminals exfiltrating critical data or hijacking devices.

Alongside procurement’s lack of collaboration, further security gaps revealed across the other stages of the printer’s lifecycle include:

Supplier selection and onboarding stage

• RFPs going unchecked: 42% of ITSDMs fail to involve IT/security teams in vendor presentations; 54% fail to request technical documentation to validate security claims; and 55% fail to submit vendor responses to security teams for review.
• Inability to verify the printer’s integrity: Once the printer arrives more than half (51%) of ITSDMs cannot confirm if the printer has been tampered with in the factory or in transit.

Remediation stage

• Inability to detect and remediate threats:  Many organisations are struggling to keep on top of patching devices. Only 35% of ITSDMs are able to identify vulnerable printers based on newly published hardware or firmware vulnerabilities, not to mention zero-day threats that areunknown to the vendor or the public.  Only 34% can track unauthorised hardware changes made by users or support teams, and only 32% of ITSDMs can detect security events linked to hardware-level attacks.
• Not just cyber – print risks are physical too: 70% of ITSDMs are increasingly worried about offline threats, such as employees printing and mishandling sensitive company information.

Decommissioning and second life stage

• End of life risk: 86% of ITSDMs say data security is a barrier to printer reuse, resale or recycling – a big problem, given that on average ITSDMs report having approximately 80 printers that are redundant or are in the process of being decommissioned within their organisations.
• Lack of confidence: ITSDMs lack confidence in current sanitisation solutions, with 35% saying they are uncertain whether printers can be fully and safely wiped. Meanwhile, 1-in-4 believe it’s necessary to physically destroy printer storage drives, and 1-in-10 insist on destroying both the device and its storage drives to ensure data security.

“Printers are no longer just harmless office fixtures – they’re smart, connected devices storing sensitive data,” warns Steve Inch, Global Senior Print Security Strategist at HP Inc. “With multi-year refresh cycles, unsecured printers create long-term vulnerabilities. If compromised, attackers can harvest confidential information for extortion or sale. The wrong choice can leave organisations blind to firmware attacks, tampering or intrusions, effectively laying out the welcome mat for attackers to access the wider network.”

The report offers recommendations on how to address these security challenges across the printer’s lifecycle, including:

• Ensure IT, security and procurement teams collaborate effectively to define security and resilience requirements for new printers.
• Require and leverage manufacturer provider security certificates for products and / or for supply chain processes.
• Apply firmware updates promptly to minimise exposure to security threats.
• Leverage security tools to streamline printer policy-based configuration compliance.
• Deploy printers that can continuously monitor for zero-day threats and malware with the ability to prevent, detect, isolate and recover from low-level attacks.

Select printers with built-in secure erasure of hardware, firmware and stored device data to enable safe second life and recycling

Read the full report here.

New HFS Research, in collaboration with KPMG, has revealed that 96% of procurement leaders are changing sourcing strategies in response to trade volatility, AI adoption, and cybersecurity threats.

As a result, legacy sourcing models built for cost control are becoming strategic nerve centers managing real-time AI risks, data residency laws, and geopolitical escalation.

Inside the research

The study, surveying 402 senior executives across seven major industries across the United States, showcases a fundamental misread of the moment: enterprises treating structural volatility as temporary disruption. “Stability is an illusion,” warns the research. “The stable world of predictable business cycles is history. Success will belong to enterprises built to thrive amid volatility, not those waiting for turbulence to pass.”

HFS Research also revealed that while 83% of US business leaders are fast-tracking AI and automation initiatives in response to trade uncertainty, 69% remain stuck in tactical reactions or have frozen strategic investments, waiting for ‘more clarity’ that may never come.

The research identifies a growing divide between first-movers using disruption to redesign how work gets done and those still waiting for policy dust to settle. Winners are embedding AI and automation into infrastructure, modernising procurement from cost-focused to capability-focused, making cybersecurity and data control top priorities, and addressing culture change directly.

“This is a rare moment—a convergence of pressure and possibility,” the report states. “Tariffs may not be the root cause of transformation, but they are the long-delayed catalyst.”

Data sovereignty anxiety is driving concrete infrastructure changes, with 64% extremely concerned about data control, leading to increased private cloud adoption (53%) and requirements for country-specific data storage (49%).

Key findings

• Automation leads the response: 83% of enterprise leaders are accelerating AI and automation initiatives to counter trade disruption, with 40% acting within the next 12 months.
• Outsourcing is collapsing as services shift to software: Traditional outsourcing will plunge from 55% to 37% over the next two years, while platform-based service delivery will surge from 14% to 30%.
• Geographic flexibility trumps cost: 56% now prioritize delivery location flexibility over traditional vendor selection criteria like cost (35%) and expertise (28%)
• Contracts built for volatility: 52% are inserting renegotiation clauses tied to economic triggers, while 41% are breaking contracts into smaller, modular scopes
• Procurement is evolving from cost gatekeeper to AI strategist: 96% of procurement leaders are changing their sourcing strategies to address trade risk, cybersecurity, and AI integration.
• Data control and digital infrastructure drive decisions: 64% of leaders are highly concerned about data sovereignty amid tariff and trade uncertainty, fueling private cloud adoption (53%) and a surge in country-specific data storage requirements (49%).

“Business leaders face an urgent call-to-action: Stop waiting for policy clarity or global calm,” the research concludes. “This volatility isn’t temporary, it’s structural. If you’re still stuck on ‘pause,’ you’re not just missing a moment—you’re risking your future relevance.”

Read the full research here.

Today’s Chief Procurement Officer has to wear many hats.

Whether it’s driving digital transformation, exploring more sustainable solutions or dealing with the latest geopolitical headwind, leaders have a lot on their plates.

With this in mind, CPOstrategy examines five of the biggest challenges that Chief Procurement Officers face today.

Managing geopolitical uncertainty

In the past five years alone, the world has been disrupted by the likes of a pandemic, several wars, inflation, global disasters, and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It has not been quiet. As a result, keeping a finger on the pulse of the latest geopolitical developments has never been so important. Supply chains have been hit considerably and having a plan B, and even a C, D and E in some cases, isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ any longer.

Digital transformation

Embracing new technology solutions is one of the most pressing challenges that procurement leaders need to get right today. Innovation could be the difference between winning and losing, so CPOs need to ditch the legacy systems that are slowing them down in favour for digital alternatives that offer time and cost savings. Real-time data in the supply chain is vital in order to obtain accurate analytics for forecasting models that impact decision-making.

Sustainability

Another important aspect to get right is sustainability. Customer demands and government regulations are constantly shifting so it means organisations must seek greener solutions in order to keep up with legislation and meeting compliance obligations. However, a challenge is that sustainable options often come with higher upfront costs which means that there can be contention between achieving short-term financial goals versus reaching long-term sustainability ambitions.

Supplier management

Today’s procurement function deals with a multitude of different suppliers. These relationships range from transactional to strategic with each requiring a different engagement style in order to reach the best outcome. Supplier management isn’t simply about managing cost or contracts, but actually involves risk mitigation, compliance and performance, among other things, in order to achieve success.

Cost control vs value creation

Procurement’s primary mission is to deliver cost savings and drive strategic value, however, often the two can cross paths. There is a pressure to expect procurement to deliver broader value in terms of innovation, sustainability, resilience, speed and develop and maintain key, strategic partnerships. Procurement leaders should not choose between cost and value but instead balance the two and aim for a happy medium within the business to achieve better results long-term.

AI-powered construction procurement software platform Parspec has raised $20 million in series A funding.

The round was led by Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ), with participation from existing venture investors including Innovation Endeavors, Building Ventures, Heartland Ventures, and Hometeam Ventures.

The global construction industry represented a $16 trillion market in 2024, with over $5 trillion flowing through the materials supply chain. Despite this scale, much of the industry still relies on outdated procurement processes managed through email and phone. These methods are time-consuming and error-prone, resulting in labour costs that are double comparable industries such as auto parts and electronics.

Parspec’s customers consistently report 50-100% improvement in labour productivity, while simultaneously improving bid quality and compliance. “With Parspec, we’ve been able to significantly reduce quote and submittal turnaround times,” said Rama Theekshidar, Chief Digital Officer at U.S. Electrical Services Inc. “This efficiency empowers our team to pursue and win more projects—fueling profitable growth across the business. The team at Parspec are true thought leaders, consistently pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in our industry, and we are proud to partner with them.”

A key differentiator for Parspec is their ability to instantly identify products available in the market that satisfy complex specifications provided by the customer. To do so, Parspec has developed cutting-edge multimodal AI models which extract these requirements from design drawings and specification documents. Next, a ranked set of compliant products are surfaced to the user from a database of over six million products. To ensure Parspec’s product catalogue is current and comprehensive, they have developed an automated data pipeline which extracts and organises product information from thousands of manufacturer websites on a daily basis

Parspec plans to invest the majority of their Series A capital into product development, focused in two main areas:

• Distributor Order Management: Providing an end-to-end solution for the project order lifecycle including quote, submittal and fulfillment phases.
• Contractor Portal: Providing construction material buyers live access to project documents, order status, delivery tracking and real time communication and collaboration tools.

“We’re excited to partner with Threshold to accelerate our mission to enable a more connected and efficient construction supply chain,” stated Forest Flager, Cofounder and CEO of Parspec. “With this new funding, and in close collaboration with our existing customers, Parspec plans to expand our platform to support the full order lifecycle and to create a unified digital environment for collaboration between contractors, distributors, sales agents and manufacturers.”

Mo Islam, Partner at Threshold Ventures, added: “Forest, Pratyush and the Parspec team are tackling one of the largest opportunities in the construction industry. They have developed an AI-native product to automate construction materials procurement, unlocking massive value for their customers.”

Powered by its best-in-class quoting and submittal platform, Parspec has experienced four times revenue growth over the past 12 months and now supports hundreds of distributors, and sales agents—including four of the five largest electrical distributors in the US, who collectively represent $70 billion in global annual sales.

Parspec started in 2021 with a focus on lighting and electrical products and has since expanded to support mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) products. Together, MEP products represent approximately one quarter of the total US construction material spend.

The procurement function requires a specific kind of Chief Procurement Officer.

As the industry continues to change and shift amid seismic transformation brought on by the likes of a digital revolution and sustainability drive, standing still isn’t an option. 

In this article, CPOstrategy explores five key characteristics every successful Chief Procurement Officer needs to have in order to succeed in the modern world.

Be strategic 

CPOs need to be able to think long-term and be focused on future-proofing the organisation against potential disruption in the future. As a result, it is important to identify cost-saving opportunities, develop sourcing strategies and create influential relationships with key suppliers that will benefit the company in the years ahead.

Negotiation skills

The core task of a CPO is buying items at the best possible price. This is impossible without negotiation with suppliers to effectively communicate the needs of the company and work out favourable terms to ensure a good deal. In order to do this correctly, a CPO must demonstrate excellent communication skills, an understanding of the current landscape and possess an ability to build relationships.

Be ethical

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals are becoming increasingly critical to today’s CPO. Procurement leaders must be aware of legislation and relevant rules and regulations while ensuring corruption is prevented via engaging in fair business practices.

Demonstrate leadership

Successful Chief Procurement Officers must be confident in being able to lead and manage a team of procurement professionals. They should be able to motivate their teams to improve efficiency and help their people to achieve high performance. CPOs should be able to provide guidance and support while also allowing for development opportunities for team members which is fundamental for a robust procurement function.

Agile mindset

The world today is volatile and changes quickly. It means that great CPOs need to be able to pivot at short notice and adapt to geopolitical problems as they happen. Being agile is particularly key as new innovations come to the market so being responsive and open to transformation is important.

As global trade tensions escalate and tariff uncertainties mount, manufacturers face an increasingly complex challenge: managing supply chains where minor demand shifts can cascade into major operational disruptions. The recent wave of trade disputes has intensified what supply chain experts call the “bullwhip effect”, where slight changes in consumer purchasing patterns create disproportionately large order variations. 

With tariffs creating volatile cost structures and forcing rapid supplier changes and variability in logistics providers like ocean and air freight, understanding and mitigating the bullwhip effect has become essential for maintaining operational stability and competitive advantage. 

Understanding the bullwhip effect 

The bullwhip effect occurs when minor, short-term shifts in consumer demand at the retail level generate increasingly severe fluctuations upstream for wholesalers and manufacturers. This disrupts manufacturing planning and operations, creating cascading effects across production, inventory, and logistics. 

For example, in anticipation of a new 10% tariff on Chinese electronic components, a U.S.-based consumer electronics company decides to front-load orders to avoid increased costs. The distributor assumes long-term demand has increased and triples its own order from the manufacturer. The manufacturer ramps up production, increases procurement of raw materials, and invests in overtime or new equipment. The raw material supplier expands capacity and raises prices due to perceived higher demand. Once the tariff deadline passes and actual demand plummets, the supply chain is left with excess inventory, higher holding costs, and under-utilised capacity. Upstream suppliers now face cancellations or delayed orders, while downstream players struggle with inventory glut. 

Root causes of supply chain amplification 

Multiple factors drive the bullwhip effect, particularly within the current volatile trade environment: 

Distorted demand interpretation compromises forecasting precision, magnifies upstream variations, and triggers poor ordering patterns. Tariff-induced pricing instability further warps these signals as organisations struggle to distinguish between authentic demand evolution and tariff-related buying behaviour. 

Bulk, sporadic ordering practices generate irregular demand flows. Organisations confronting tariff unpredictability frequently submit larger, more infrequent orders as protection against anticipated cost increases, intensifying demand inconsistency. 

Cost variations stemming from marketing campaigns, discounts, or tariff-driven pricing adjustments create short-term demand surges, prompting excessive replenishment responses. In the current trade environment, pricing instability is now standard practice. 

Extended procurement cycles magnify demand change impacts, as upstream participants modify orders using obsolete data. Supply chain diversification initiatives responding to trade pressures have frequently created lengthier, more intricate sourcing pathways. 

The true cost of supply chain disruption 

The bullwhip effect imposes substantial financial and operational penalties throughout the supply chain. Warped demand indicators force organisations to shift between inventory gluts and shortages, resulting in waste, missed sales opportunities, and customer frustration. 

Such inefficiencies escalate expenses through urgent shipping requirements, extended working hours, and expanded storage needs. Manufacturers frequently shoulder the heaviest burden of these challenges due to their distance from genuine consumer demand patterns. 

Raw material procurement becomes especially challenging. Manufacturers face the dilemma of stockpiling excessive materials to satisfy apparently inflated demand projections or rushing to obtain emergency supplies when inventory runs low. These sourcing difficulties directly impact production timing, generating unused capacity or overtime demands. 

Ocean and air freight transport is also impacted by sudden, exaggerated swings in shipping demand. When companies over-order in response to perceived spikes freight demand surges, leading to container shortages, port congestion, and sharp increases in shipping rates. Conversely, when demand collapses after the initial surge, freight volumes drop, leaving carriers with excess capacity and triggering volatile price swings. This cycle of over- and under-shooting disrupts logistics planning, reduces transport efficiency, and makes freight pricing highly unpredictable across global supply chains. 

Most troubling is the operational instability the bullwhip effect introduces to strategic supply chain management. Continuously responding to unpredictable adjustments complicates accurate demand prediction, extending periods of surplus and shortage. From a relationship perspective, constant and unexpected order modifications stress partnerships between supply chain participants, undermining the confidence essential for productive collaboration. 

Strategies to mitigate impact 

Although the bullwhip effect cannot be completely eliminated due to fundamental supply chain complexities, procurement leaders can substantially reduce its impacts through four strategic approaches: 

1. Implement real-time demand sensing 

Progressive demand sensing employs live data streams and machine learning algorithms to support agile short-term demand planning. Rather than traditional forecasting approaches that depend primarily on historical information, demand sensing integrates dynamic indicators including meteorological conditions, regional events, and regulatory changes like tariffs additional external variables to detect consumer behaviour shifts in real-time. 

This allows manufacturers to respond swiftly to demand variations whilst constraining bullwhip amplification. For products affected by weather conditions, promotional activities, tariffs, and external influences, demand sensing reduces both stockout and surplus inventory risks. 

2. Strengthen downstream collaboration 

Strategic retail planning and collaboration establishes structured connections between manufacturers and retail partners to enhance supply chain transparency. Partners must exchange essential information including location-specific demand projections, current inventory levels, promotional schedules, and product range modifications. 

This gives manufacturers clearer understanding of consumer demand trends, enhancing production scheduling precision, replenishment planning effectiveness, and delivery coordination accuracy. 

3. Enhance upstream planning 

Streamlined production planning and supplier collaboration guarantee precise demand indicators reach manufacturing facilities, suppliers, and contract manufacturers. This upstream planning methodology optimises production through utilising better-coordinated demand information as decision-making foundations. 

Advanced demand visibility provides suppliers adequate response time, helping manufacturers prevent last-minute disruptions and identify alternative sources during supply interruptions. Comprehensive supply chain transparency enables manufacturers to minimise delays, reduce expensive disruptions, balance inventory levels, and enhance production scheduling. 

4. Optimise inventory planning and distribution 

To mitigate the bullwhip effect from a logistics perspective, supply chain planning tools must enable better synchronisation between demand planning and transportation execution. Advanced systems integrate real-time order data, shipment tracking, and carrier capacity to provide end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. This allows logistics managers to anticipate and adjust to demand fluctuations before they ripple upstream. Safety stock levels should be customised for different products according to their strategic significance and demand predictability. Products demonstrating consistent demand. patterns need reduced safety stocks compared to those exhibiting unpredictable variations, ensuring effective resource distribution across the supply chain. 

The path forward 

In an environment where trade tensions and supply chain disruptions have become standard rather than exceptional, procurement leaders must progress beyond reactive approaches. Organisations positioned to succeed are those that proactively tackle the bullwhip effect through improved collaboration, real-time transparency, and intelligent demand sensing. 

Change management demands executive commitment and coordinated incentives throughout the supply chain. Leading manufacturers establish shared performance indicators with retail partners for mutual responsibility, encompassing sell-through percentages, shelf availability, and inventory rotation. 

As global supply chains continue confronting unprecedented challenges, controlling the bullwhip effect transcends operational efficiency – it involves transforming supply chain obstacles into competitive benefits that serve all participating stakeholders. 

By Rohit Tripathi, VP, Industry, CPG & Manufacturing, at RELEX Solutions 

Risk management in procurement is one of the most important areas to get right.

All procurement functions are prone to risks and industry leaders need to be aware of what they are in order to safeguard their organisations. This has only been amplified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Following that disruption, the procurement and supply chain function rose and became a strategic enabler for businesses. 

Against the backdrop of the likes of digital transformation and the sustainability agenda, today’s Chief Procurement Officer is spinning many plates. However, risk management should not be overlooked. Procurement risks need to be appropriately managed within the supply chain as they can have a major impact on the long-term viability of a company. And it might not even be the fault of your own company, risks could involve unreliable suppliers, which could have a knock-on effect. 

With this in mind, CPOstrategy explores five of the biggest risks in procurement today.

Inaccurate needs analysis

Every procurement process starts with needs analysis. It’s key because procurement functions must first understand what is required, when it is and at what cost in order to make the company operate. This is also where the importance of forecasting comes in. Implementing real-time tracking and visibility is key in order to spot potential issues within the supply chain and get ahead of unfortunate events that could impact a company’s bottom line. Understanding how much of a product you have and what you need more of is key to ensuring business continuity and avoiding disruption.

Supply chain disruptions

Staying with the disruption theme, the necessity of a plan B has become clear over the past few years. The likes of political instability, pandemics, natural disasters and geopolitical events have all taken their respective toll on procurement and supply chain and the industry still has the scars to show for it. However, lessons have been learned and procurement and those within it have bounced back stronger by incorporating a ‘just-in-case mindset’. Keeping a finger on the pulse and being agile is at the heart of achieving long-term success.

Poor supplier selection

Success is impossible to achieve without collaboration. Selecting the right suppliers is a key piece of the puzzle of any procurement function because suppliers can make or break an organisation. Supplier relationships should act as a mutually beneficial partnership where both sides get value. When it comes to items on the agenda such as sustainability and digital transformation, alignment is vital. If a supplier cannot guarantee fair labour practices then subsequently it could lead to your own organisation getting into trouble and production process disruption. 

Inefficient contract management

Poor contract management can happen when contracts are left unmonitored after they have been signed. Contracts are not only agreements for purchasing, they allow for the development of mutually beneficial relationships, risk mitigation and a reduction in costs. If a company is armed with dependable vendors and poorly constructed contractual procedures, it could spell trouble for an organisation. This means that getting ahead of a scenario and regularly conducting an audit for the contract management process for inefficiencies and subsequent failures.

Lack of automation

The acceleration of new digital tools has had a major impact on how procurement functions operate. Automation can prevent bottlenecks and lead to fewer delays and errors. Many tasks can take up a lot of time but have little impact on important KPIs. As a result, this can lead to lower employee productivity, lengthy processes and more room for miscalculations and incorrect data entry. In today’s market, there are an ever-increasing number of SaaS tools to support the entire sourcing and supplier management process. Implementing good processes and workflows is essential to preventing supply chain disruptions.

Amid ongoing global shifts, trade disputes, and economic instability, building resilient supply chains remains an essential part of the automotive industry. Emerging tariffs now act both as hurdles and prompts, pushing companies to reevaluate their sourcing strategies, cultivate stronger supplier relationships, and boost procurement adaptability. 

The World Trade Organisation forecasts a 3% rise in global trade growth by 2025 driven by easing inflationary pressures. Despite this, trade uncertainty remains constant and conditions unpredictable, meaning this landscape could change rapidly.

Success in automotive will hinge on the ability to anticipate and respond to trade disruptions with speed and precision. Manufacturers and suppliers that prioritise agility, diversify their sourcing, and invest in strategic, long-term supplier relationships will be better equipped to manage volatility. By embedding flexibility into procurement strategies, these companies can enhance resilience, safeguard continuity, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly unpredictable global market.

A typical motor vehicle can contain between 15,000 and 25,000 component parts that cross multiple global borders before final assembly. With even small changes in trade agreements, there can be ripple effects across the entire production process. The industry is at a heightened risk of increased costs, delays, regulatory hurdles, and production bottlenecks. These issues can no longer be treated as temporary changes. They must be addressed through proactive risk management and strategic planning.

Modernising procurement practices

Procurement in the automotive industry has been driven by price competitiveness historically. As traditional sourcing models are disrupted by the impact of changes in global trade. Companies are finding a narrow focus on cost reduction can leave them vulnerable to sudden market shifts. Businesses are realising that a more sustainable approach prioritises supplier reliability, transparency, and shared business objectives.

Focusing solely on short-term cost savings in supplier selection, without considering broader factors such as reliability, transparency, and strategic alignment, can expose businesses to unnecessary risk. Cost competitiveness remains an important consideration. However, it must be balanced with a supplier’s ability to support long-term operational continuity and shared business goals. Establishing deeper collaboration with key suppliers helps to ensure a steady flow of high-quality components while safeguarding against unexpected disruptions. A 2023 survey by Deloitte found that 79% of manufacturing executives believe supplier collaboration is critical to supply chain resilience, yet only 43% have structured programmes in place. A strong supplier relationship won’t happen overnight. They need to be an evolving relationship built on mutual investment and a shared vision for growth.

Managing tariff risks

One of the most effective ways to manage tariff-related risks is through structured supplier engagement programs. Tiered supplier relationships — where businesses prioritise partners that demonstrate operational agility, proactive risk management, and long-term investment in innovation — offer a natural buffer against trade uncertainty. Companies that formalise supplier relationships will gain a significant advantage in managing trade-related disruptions.

Supplier engagement programmes create incentives for suppliers to maintain high performance and invest in shared business objectives, from technological innovations to sustainability initiatives. In return, suppliers benefit from greater transparency, access to executive support, and long-term business continuity. This reciprocal approach doesn’t only strengthens the supply chain. It also ensures that companies can pivot more quickly when faced with external disruptions. Manufacturers can future-proof their procurement strategies while fostering stronger, more aligned supplier relationships by integrating a framework that rewards innovation, agility, and reliability.

Adapting through strategy: The evolving role of strategic sourcing

Tariffs also present the chance for the automotive industry to reassess its sourcing strategies and uncover efficiencies. Some organisations are leveraging trade policy shifts to diversify their supplier base. This is also while reducing dependence on single-source suppliers and exploring alternative markets that offer competitive advantages. Nearshoring and regional manufacturing have gained traction as viable solutions, reducing logistics complexities and minimising exposure to volatile trade policies. Investing in regional suppliers not only mitigates risks associated with tariffs but also encourages economic growth in key markets.

At the same time, the growing trend in some areas of the world toward reshoring manufacturing and reducing reliance on imports has the potential to reshape global supply chain dynamics. While this creates opportunities for local industry, it can also lead to constrained global sourcing options, capacity bottlenecks, and intensified competition for domestic supply. Companies must weigh the benefits of proximity and control against rising input costs and potential limitations in supplier availability. Balancing these pressures with strategic diversification remains critical to building long-term supply chain resilience in a more fragmented trade landscape.

Closer supplier collaboration can drive joint innovation efforts, particularly in areas such as value engineering, alternative materials, and localised production. By working together to optimise component designs and streamline manufacturing processes, suppliers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can uncover cost savings that help offset tariff-related expenses. This collaboration encourages suppliers to propose new materials or manufacturing techniques that enhance efficiency and sustainability. Auto companies that take a forward-thinking approach to supplier partnerships will be better positioned to capitalise with shifting trade policies. The auto companies that continue to operate with rigid, transactional relationships will struggle to adapt when new challenges arise.

Sustainability and supply chain resilience: Clash or complement?

A significant part of the conversation around supply chain resilience must also include sustainability and ESG considerations. Per a recent report from BCG and CDP, Scope 3 supply chain emissions were, on average, 26 times greater than their emissions from direct operations. Despite this, Scope 3 emissions continue to be overlooked. Only 15% of corporates have set a supply chain emissions target according to the report.

As regulatory scrutiny on environmental, social, and governance factors increases, supplier selection should consider long-term sustainability commitments. Companies that align procurement strategies with sustainability goals won’t only mitigate financial and regulatory risks. They also position themselves favorably in an industry where environmental impact is under growing scrutiny.

Suppliers with a high share of renewable energy in their mix seemingly managed to get through the European energy crisis in 2022/2023 much better than those relying on gas and oil. Hence embedding sustainability into the supplier relationship framework ensures that resilience is truly built into the supply chain.

The future of automotive supply chains

Disruption is not a new concept in the automotive industry. However, today’s industrial landscape, posed with emerging challenges, offers an opportunity to rethink procurement strategies, and strengthen supply networks. By staying agile and fostering long-term, strategic supplier relationships, companies can position themselves to navigate future trade uncertainties with greater confidence. The key to long-term success lies in transforming unpredictability into strategic advantage. With a focus on collaboration, innovation, and adaptability, the industry can build supply chains that are not only resilient but also prepared to support sustainable growth in the years ahead.

To some, 2015 might seem like only yesterday.

But in the case of procurement, the function moves quickly. Today, procurement has taken on a completely different identity from a decade ago. No longer a purely cost-cutting entity, its rise has been driven in part due to an acceleration of advanced digital tools which has been heralded as a ‘game-changer’ for procurement. From organisations going entirely paperless to offering new ways to manage supplier data, the advancement of technology has provided procurement functions with unprecedented time and cost savings that were previously unimaginable. 

In this article, CPOstrategy explores five of the ways procurement has evolved over the past 10 years.

Collaboration with suppliers

A major shift over the past decade has been the importance of developing key, strategic relationships with partners. The days of an alliance being solely regarded as transactional or one-way. In order to succeed long-term, business partnerships need to be built on trust and have a similar outlook on important topics such as sustainability. Success is impossible to achieve alone and on the back of recent geopolitical problems, companies recognise the role good partnerships can play. A good supplier experience can lead to stronger supplier relationships, increased collaboration and increased supply chain performance. 

Digital transformation

One of the biggest shifts over the past 10 years has been the acceleration and maturity of advanced digital tools. With the likes of AI, Big Data, cloud and blockchain all shaking up procurement, CPOs now have a massive opportunity on their hands. The range of tools at a procurement executive’s disposal is staggering and allows for much greater efficiency and cost savings. The latest buzzword to reach the procurement industry is the potential of generative AI and the exponential value it brings. Procurement processes are increasingly becoming more digitalised with the number of procurement software vendors booming in recent years. 

The CPO role

A Chief Procurement Officer has never had to wear so many hats. Gone are the days when procurement professionals were siloed and kept out of the way of the action. Today, they are front and centre of an organisation and help make key decisions. This even extends to where a CPO is located during work hours. Even five years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home was rare. However, since then, there has been a major shift in workplace attitudes, and hybrid models have become increasingly popular.

Sustainability drive

No longer simply a ‘nice to have’, there has been a significant emphasis on the importance of sustainability and implementing ESG principles in recent years. While legislation is one reason for this, another is changing customer demands as the world has woken up to the fact that more needs to be done to save the planet. There is also the visibility of extreme climate change such as wildfires notably recently in Los Angeles which caused 170,000 people to evacuate from their homes as thousands of buildings were destroyed. Climate action sits among 17 Sustainable Development Goals to achieve significant reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030.

Greater resilience

The past decade has seen unprecedented ‘black swan’ events unlike ever before. From the pandemic to wars, there has been a number of external disruptions to the global supply chain. It has meant that supply chains and those within them must be agile and keep their finger on the pulse of the latest risks. The pandemic demonstrated the importance of having a backup plan and those with robust supplier relationships are less likely to be impacted. In the tumultuous and ever-changing world of today, procurement professionals must be vigilant and ready to respond. 

As leaders within procurement have found out only too well over the past few years, disruption is an almost daily occurrence. With SaaS inflation pushing your software costs up by 11.3% compared to 12 months ago – for exactly the same contract – and SaaS spend per employee per annum reaching an all time high of $9,100, the majority of procurement leaders are stuck in a never ending cycle of dealing with rising costs out of their control whilst simultaneously trying to be cost efficient and optimise their tech stack. 

Guarding against this requires a SaaS procurement setup that is robust, adaptable, and strategic. One that can secure services that comfortably accommodate both today’s ambitions, and future growth plans. 

To achieve this, companies need full visibility over their entire SaaS procurement processes, from renewal dates, contract terms and usage analytics to pricing benchmarks, peer comparisons and negotiation playbooks. And all the while, they need to be able to see, manage and optimise every procurement process in finite detail. Enter Vertice.

It’s a view that many teams don’t have, can’t get or in some cases don’t even see the value in it. But not having it allows known costs to skyrocket, unknown spending to balloon and procuring new software becomes the Wild West. In the end, you’re stuck with a bloated tech stack full of ineffectual tools on long, costly contracts, and no idea how to control it all. This isn’t enabling the business to grow, it’s actively preventing it.

In an exclusive article with CPOstrategy, Nick Riley, Head of Procurement, EMEA, Jordan Tang, Director of Procurement, APAC, and Michael Keller, Director of Procurement, US, at Vertice explain why procurement visibility is the key to unlocking this, and the disadvantages and real costs to those that don’t provide it.

Why is visibility such an important factor in optimising SaaS procurement for organisations today?

Nick Riley: “You can’t negotiate in the dark. Visibility into your tech stack, how it’s used, and how its cost and make-up compares with similar businesses transforms procurement from reactive firefighting into a strategic function that delivers real business value. Without it, you’re just hoping for generosity and good deals instead of making them happen.”

Michael Keller: “Totally agree. And as you alluded to, visibility comes in two parts – understanding your own environment and also understanding it in the context of the wider SaaS landscape. Having both lays the foundation for not only optimising usage and eliminating waste, but also for getting the right price. You can’t optimise what you can’t see.”

Jordan Tang: “Here’s an example: imagine having total clarity on the proportion of licences you bought in the last contract term that were actually used, then applying that knowledge to the current renewal request, and also having up-to-date intel on the best negotiation strategies and levers to pull with that vendor. That’s the sort of visibility that most procurement teams can only dream of.”

You mention cost savings, but how does a lack of visibility lead to missed opportunities ?

Nick Riley: “It’s amazing how little understanding some businesses have of their SaaS stack. But what you don’t track, you risk overpaying for. Poor visibility means duplicate tools, bloated licences, and auto-renewals slipping through unnoticed. A single blind spot can cost six figures—scale that across an entire SaaS stack, and the waste is staggering. Our data shows that on average as much as 45.7% of SaaS applications are either underutilised or totally unused.  With an average SaaS spend per employee per year at $8.9k, this means $4,094 per employee per year is ‘wasted spend’. That’s a lot of waste!”

Jordan Tang: “SaaS visibility is not just about licences and waste though. It’s also a route to identifying unapproved spend and shadow IT, which isn’t just a cost issue but also a compliance risk.”  

Michael Keller: “And don’t forget overlapping products. When you get totally to grips with your SaaS stack, you inevitably find that you have more than one vendor serving the same purpose. Usually this is because of rogue spend, but not always. Often, vendors have developed and expanded their products to increase their value to their customers, but ended up overlapping with others elsewhere in the stack. If you don’t look for this risk, you’re instantly limiting your ability to spend smart.”

So if SaaS procurement visibility has such potential value, what are the key challenges procurement teams face? Why is it so hard to achieve? 

Nick Riley: “SaaS can be the Wild West – different teams buying tools, no central oversight, and suppliers pushing for opaque terms. Vendors also understandably don’t always make things like usage data readily available. Shadow IT thrives when no one’s watching, making it easy for budgets to leak. Even when data exists, people often scatter it, let it become outdated, or get it wrong.”

Michael Keller: “The biggest challenge always comes back to data. The lack of a central tracking system, or integrations between systems, are major hurdles for complete SaaS visibility. Without these, procurement teams and those negotiating contracts have to rely on guesswork and ballpark figures, which shift the negotiating power to the supplier, not the customer.”

Jordan Tang: “But it’s not just about your own data. You also need external data to benchmark your vendor selection and costs against. A single procurement team will likely only negotiate with its SaaS vendors every year or two. That’s nowhere near often enough to truly understand whether a vendor is the right one for your business and its ambitions, or their drivers, needs, negotiation style, or what prices are possible. There’s just no substitute for external perspective, as well as internal visibility. 

How have you seen the best organisations leverage data analytics to gain better visibility into their SaaS spend and usage?

Nick Riley: “Data turns gut feel into leverage. Benchmarking exposes overpayment, usage tracking highlights waste, and predictive insights stop bad renewals before they happen. The best procurement teams aren’t just negotiating—they’re forecasting, optimising, and outmanoeuvring suppliers.”

Michael Keller: “That’s right. They’re using data analytics to identify usage patterns, uncover hidden costs, optimise contract renewals, and even predict future needs based on real-time insights.

Alongside data, what role does advanced technology play in enhancing visibility and streamlining SaaS procurement processes?

Nick Riley: “The old way—manual tracking, spreadsheets, chasing teams for answers—doesn’t scale. AI and automation surface insights instantly, turning SaaS chaos into control. The best tools don’t just track spend; they predict, prevent, and optimise it.” 

Michael Keller: “Modern procurement technology, and the data and analysis it can provide, has changed not only what is possible, but now also what is expected of effective procurement teams. The top procurement leaders we speak to are not surprised by the ability to track licence use, access benchmarks, monitor workflow performance, or even to understand vendors and the landscape better. Instead, they expect this capability and are more interested in how they can best put this insight to work and identify the biggest opportunities for improvement.”

Nick Riley: “The investment in refreshed/new procurement technology remains a key topic for CPOs but not all businesses are ready for this investment. Vertice has created a self assessment to help companies identify how mature their procurement processes are and provide suggestions for improvements.”

Is visibility in SaaS procurement just a short term play to improve contracts and pricing, or can it contribute to vendor management and long-term strategic partnerships too?

Nick Riley: “Suppliers respect informed buyers. When you bring real data to the table, discounts improve, contract terms get fairer, but suppliers also invest in your success. Strong relationships aren’t built on trust alone—they’re built on transparency, alignment, and mutual growth.”

Michael Keller: “We definitely see the same dynamic in the US. Better visibility ensures you’re making the most out of your relationships with key strategic partners. You’re spending what you should and identifying optimisations, but you’re also able to spot opportunities to try new tools, upgrade to the next tier up, or even beta test new features. And in doing so, you can easily track and benchmark performance based on shared goals, so that when you win, they win.”

The question of visibility always brings concerns around privacy. So how do organisations balance this when tracking SaaS usage across departments?

Nick Riley: “Visibility isn’t surveillance—it’s control without intrusion. The right tools anonymise usage trends while surfacing inefficiencies, keeping compliance tight without breaking trust. Procurement should empower teams, not police them.”

Michael Keller: “There are clear guardrails organisations can put in place, such as anonymising data, implementing role-based access controls, and establishing clear data governance policies to protect user privacy while maintaining necessary visibility.”

If an organisation has neglected visibility in their SaaS procurement processes, what risks would arise, what are the warning signs, and how can they be fixed?

Nick Riley: “When no one owns visibility, everyone loses—overspending, compliance gaps, and security risks pile up fast. Auto-renewals trap companies in bad deals, and shadow IT exposes them to unknown liabilities. The fix? Proactive oversight, structured procurement, and a refusal to let suppliers dictate the rules.”

Michael Keller: “Businesses risk far more than spiraling costs, though that’s a chief concern. If they start seeing an increase in even minor compliance issues or security vulnerabilities as their tech stacks grow, then those are classic signs of procurement not quite having full control over the process. And as we all know, these issues can have their own consequences, whether financial, legal or reputational. Implementing a robust SaaS management strategy with clear visibility in your data—what it’s capturing and who can access it—can help mitigate these issues.”

In your mind, how exciting is the future within Vertice and the wider industry?

Nick Riley: “The game is changing, and we’re leading the charge. Procurement is shifting from a cost-centre mindset to a strategic advantage, and the best executive teams will use it to outpace the competition. At Vertice, we’re proving that SaaS procurement isn’t just a function—it’s a force multiplier for the entire business.”

Michael Keller: “The future is incredibly exciting! The SaaS market continues to grow, and Vertice is at the forefront, empowering organisations to take control of their SaaS spend and unlock its full potential. As a business, we are working with some of the largest businesses globally, helping them optimise their constantly growing SaaS environments. 

“We can see that SaaS price inflation is outrunning market inflation by a factor of more than 4x – and that’s not the only reason that SaaS cost per employee is climbing so high (currently as much as $8.9k for mid-market and enterprises). This alone creates plenty of opportunity for us to deliver extraordinary value for our customers, but add to that our rate of product development, and we are also seeing the number of ways that we can have impact growing rapidly too.”  

Anything else you’d like to add?

Nick Riley: “Procurement is a science in preparation, an art in execution. The teams that master both will win bigger, move faster, and turn SaaS from a black hole into a growth engine. The future isn’t just about savings—it’s about control, strategy, and impact.”

Michael Keller: “Proactive SaaS management, driven by strong visibility, is no longer a luxury but a necessity for organisations looking to thrive in today’s cloud-driven world.”

Jordan Tang: “Negotiation is an art, the more time you have with partners, the higher chance you can generate greater value on both sides.”

Read more about Vertice here.

In March, CPOstrategy attended Ivalua Now 2025, a gathering of over 800 procurement leaders in Paris. As is the case with virtually all procurement events right now, two topics dominated the discourse: disruption and artificial intelligence (AI). Whether caused by tariffs, market fluctuation, shifting regulations, the skills shortage, or climate-crisis-driven destabilisation in vulnerable regions of the world, disruption is the risk at the top of every CPO’s agenda — according to a recent Gartner report. Ivalua CMO Alec Saric, who opened the event, began by acknowledging the myriad challenges facing the procurement sector in 2025, reflecting that “on top of everything else that’s been going on, it seems like we now have to contend with weekly changes to trade policies.” The increasingly uncertain sourcing and procurement landscape, Saric continued, is forcing the industry “to assess the impact on our organisations, reassess our supply strategies, and it’s all happening so fast.” 

Ivalua’s newly appointed CEO, Franck Lheureux, echoed the sentiment. “Procurement has never been [this] critical to your organisations,” he said. “I think about the word, and I’m not shy about using it, is chaos.”

Whether to sidestep said disruption or to unlock new opportunities for procurement to create value, generative AI feels like the hopeful counterpoint to discussions of disruption — a way for organisations to mitigate their most pressing pain points and seek new opportunities to elevate the procurement function beyond its traditionally reactive, functional role. Ivalua itself is throwing itself into a fully-committed exploration of GenAI; its founder and previous CEO, David Khuat-Duy, recently handed off the CEO role to long-time Ivalua exec Lheureux, assuming the newly created role of Chief AI Officer in order to focus on unlocking the technology’s potential. 

The AI hype gap in procurement 

However, bridging the gap between the things generative AI’s creators claim the technology can (or, very soon, will be able to) do and what it’s actually capable of, is a matter that the whole sector seems to be grappling with. And not always with a great deal of success, despite considerable financial and human capital investment. 

Saric acknowledged that “I know many of you have already started using AI to some extent and we can be honest: so far, the impact has hardly been transformational.” 

However, he added that, despite use cases being slower to appear than expected, he doesn’t believe that AI is “just another hype technology” like blockchain or the metaverse. Nevertheless, he stressed that “the changes that are taking place, both in terms of their speed and magnitude, are really unbelievable.” 

At Ivalua Now 2025, CPOstrategy spoke to procurement sector leaders from some of the biggest organisations working in the discipline, from consultants to software vendors, to explore the degree to which they’re adopting GenAI. And, more importantly, whether it’s living up to the hype. 

George Nico, Director, Optis Consulting

To what degree is Optis investing in GenAI, and how is it measuring up to your expectations for the technology?

“Just like most organisations right now, we’re still trying to get a lay of the land in terms of what’s working and what isn’t. I can’t necessarily say exactly how much we’re investing, but we’re starting to break off a part of our business to focus on GenAI, specifically. 

“As for how valuable GenAI is proving to us or to our clients? I think I’m going to give you the same answer as a lot of other people: It’s not there yet. 

“Sure, it’s very exciting. Some of the most interesting work that we’re doing now is helping us prepare for when GenAI actually is valuable — we’re starting to think about the use cases work with our partners like Ivalua, who are doing good work building their architecture for AI. But, right now, it’s really just experimenting to figure out what works and what doesn’t.”

Are there any areas where you’re seeing GenAI work particularly well?

“Simple things like note-taking, having it record our calls and being able to answer questions based on those conversations.”

So, mostly efficiency stuff at the moment?

“At the moment, yeah.”

The main goal for this technology eventually is for GenAI’s outputs to become trustworthy and valuable, right? What kind of timeline are you seeing for potentially getting to that point? Or do you think there’s a disconnect between the narratives around that timeline and what’s actually happening?

“Yeah, I think people and companies are quite enthusiastic about the timeline between now and then — as they should be. I think the technology is moving quite quickly and, by the time AI is coding itself, it’s going to get even faster. 

“Especially in terms of what Ivalua has been doing, we already have some clients that have deployed some valuable use cases for themselves, but as it continues to grow over the next year or so, and especially as Ivalua releases their V 10, I think that’s where it’ll really hit the ground running.”

Fraser Woodhouse, Digital Procurement Lead, Deloitte

How is the value GenAI is creating in procurement right now measuring up against the expectations for that technology? Are we at a stage where things are maybe a little overhyped?

“I think that’s probably incorrect. The hype is real and for good reason. I’d say a lot of procurement’s ability to access the latest GenAI innovations is lacking for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, they don’t have the tech that implements the newest features, or there are too many controls and risks around data security. There are many reasons why people can’t access those latest GenAI features, but when it does come, it is going to completely revolutionise what we do as a discipline.

“Right now, what you’re seeing in most tools on the market are single-point solutions for specific use cases. There are many tools that do one thing very well. 

“I think where we’re heading for the moon is the progress we’re seeing towards unscripted, multi-step, AI agent-driven, contextually intelligent toolsets that operate autonomously. That’s coming not just to procurement, but everywhere, and it’s going to change how we think about the entire department.”

How long is that runway in your opinion, between now and the moon?

“Between now and the moon? I think there will always be a “moon,” no matter what it is. As soon as one thing comes out, the next thing becomes the “moon.” If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, I would have thought we’d be further along by now. 

“You saw those first-generation use cases flooding the market a couple of years ago, and it’s taken longer than expected to really connect them. Many organisations still aren’t seeing the value. A recent survey showed that almost 90% of CPOs have piloted something related to GenAI, but only roughly 40% are starting to see the value.”

How would you say we close that gap? 

“There are a few ways to access GenAI right now. One option is agentic AI, where you can build something yourself. Honestly, I think this is where we’re seeing the biggest return on investment—when organisations have the funds and skill set internally to build something, or when they engage the right partner to co-develop a solution tailored to their specific use cases. That’s one way.

“Another option is buying a specialist tool, a point solution. The challenge there is integrating it within your processes. It may do one thing very well, but it can be clunky if you have to jump between tools or deal with the technical debt from all those activities. Alternatively, you can “sweat” your existing tech stack. But honestly, a lot of the existing suite providers have been slower to innovate compared to some of the newer solutions on the market.”

“So one answer to your question is to wait for that existing tech stack to catch up. However, that’s not appealing to many. If you want the latest and greatest, you’ll need to make some interesting choices. Speak to someone who can help guide you through those decisions, or you’ll be asking the same question next year when the latest GenTech solutions come out.”

So, in part, you’re suggesting that people resist the FOMO?

“No, I don’t think you should resist it. There are many ways to access time-saving features now. For example, Deloitte is shortly releasing a GenAI marketplace, which gives you low-barrier access to generative AI use cases. Some of the tools you hear about have marketplaces where you can pick high-impact use cases without the burden of cumbersome integrations. That’s often what prevents organizations from pursuing these technology journeys. So, there are ways to access the latest now, while also preparing your foundation for when the “moon” comes.”

Oh, that’s really interesting. Can you tell me a little more about the marketplace, maybe providing an example of a more plug-and-play AI solution?

“As I mentioned earlier, there are different ways people can access GenAI. One way is through an enterprise AI tool, like a copilot or something similar to ChatGPT. A lot of what procurement organisations are doing now is copying and pasting data into these tools. It works, but it’s not perfect—it still saves time, but to really get value, people need to learn how to write effective prompts, which can be challenging for many.

“It would be great if you didn’t have to think about prompts in the same way, and if you had a tool with a language model specifically trained for procurement use cases. This would allow you to easily input what you need, get the results, and move on. It would be like a pay-per-use solution—simple, efficient, and targeted for procurement.”

Alec Saric, CMO, Ivalua 

Earlier you spoke about GenAI’s potential to take existing data and platforms to offer new recommendations and pull new insights from different bits of data. How close are we to getting users and customers to a point where they trust those recommendations?

“Right now, there’s still absolutely a human in the loop. We’re not at the point where things are completely autonomous without any human involvement. That’s mainly because of trust, and in some cases, the capabilities aren’t fully there for certain processes. But for the most part, it’s a trust issue. Right now, AI is typically used to provide a draft or a recommendation, which can save a lot of time. However, organisations are still not fully trusting those outputs to be used without human review.”

It feels similar to how driverless cars evolved over the last five years. You can get it 90% of the way there, but a human is still needed in the process. Is the ultimate goal to reach a fully autonomous situation, where you can trust AI recommendations and let it “take the wheel,” so to speak? That’s the final goal, right?

“Yeah, that’s an interesting question. From a technology perspective, the aim is to make the AI so reliable that it could be fully trusted. However, we’re not recommending that strategic activities be completely handed off to a robot. 

“For really strategic decisions, it will always make sense for humans to be involved. But for more tactical items, like sourcing a one-off purchase from a tail spend category, it can be a time-consuming task for procurement. It doesn’t have a major impact or reputational risk. The worst-case scenario is that an employee doesn’t get the item exactly when they expect it, because the supplier is unreliable.

“For these more transactional and tactical activities, the goal is to remove the human from the process as much as possible, so people can focus on strategy, relationships, and making final decisions for more significant matters. From our perspective, that’s the direction we want to go in: freeing up people to do what they do best—focus on relationships and strategy—while technology handles the rest.”

What was the expectation and hope that AI would be delivering by now, and how far away do you think we are from that stage, based on the current rate of progression?

“I think the gap we’re seeing is the level of use within organisations. There may have been an expectation that, by now, we’d have 40 use cases doing things across the organisation. But it was never expected to be fully autonomous at this point—that has become more of a recent development with generative AI. What was expected, though, was that more people within the business would be using it. 

“The reality is that consumers adopt technology much faster than businesses. Businesses are more risk-averse; they have policies, regulations, and the cost of a mistake can be far greater for them than for an individual making a poor decision, like ordering the wrong item.

“What we’re also seeing is that there’s an assumption that you can just take AI “out of the box” and apply it directly to your organisation. That works in some cases, like summarizing a contract—it’s a fairly universal task. But in many cases, it requires some refinement. For example, one organization was pulling a category intelligence report with recommendations for sourcing strategies, and it was about aluminum. The organisation is a steel producer, so they have very specific market indices they use for tracking aluminum prices. The model gave a good recommendation, but it referred to a different third-party source than the one they use.

“These kinds of adjustments are necessary, and what we’ve found is that AI tends to work better when it’s rolled out for specific use cases on a pilot basis. You can evaluate and refine the tool based on those use cases and then roll it out more broadly.

“Of course, you can have general AI tools to find information on the web that can be made available to users, but I think that refinement step is important in many cases. This will be even more crucial as we approach a more autonomous state. 

“If we’re going to automate complex, multi-step processes—especially ones where humans aren’t involved—organisations will need to be sure they understand exactly what processes are being followed and how decisions are being made.”

Marc Ofiara, Procurement Innovation Category Management, and Ryan Whitmore, Procurement GenAI, Process Orchestration, and S2P eConnectivity, make up two thirds of Bayer’s recently-founded procurement innovation department. Ofiara has been with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company for nine years, focusing on driving digital strategies across sourcing roles, while Whitmore has been part of the company for a decade. The two conducted their own talk at ORO Imagine, an official side event preceding DPW Amsterdam 2024. The discussion – ‘Make procurement work for our people’ – delved into how procurement can be leveraged for business users, suppliers, and internal teams, and how ORO Labs’ orchestration solution has allowed Bayer to level up.

Bayer’s main driver for implementing orchestration has been improving the user experience. A common reason, certainly, but one that’s evergreen in terms of its necessity. “In the end, we want to make sure procurement works for our users,” Ofiara explains. “Procurement as a function has been very much focused inwardly on increasing internal tools, how we can improve the work of our procurement teams, and so on. Really, we wanted to bring the value of procurement to the business users, and process orchestration really came in as a great segue to tackle this end-to-end. We’re not focusing on a single element in the process, but tackling it from start to finish.”

“The users brought the problem to us,” Whitmore adds. “They gave us the feedback that there were too many procurement systems to access to figure out what to do. So really, the reason we brought ORO Labs into our company was due to that user need for a better solution. They wanted something that identified what they needed to buy and give them better transparency about procurement processes.”

Problem-solving with orchestration

Bayer is tackling a lot of major issues through leveraging orchestration. It is now solving problems it’s never been able to solve before. “One is the whole issue of supply onboarding, which is a huge pain point and a very complex process,” says Ofiara. “Another is identifying the right category for what the business user wants to buy. These are all little building blocks that need to be solved as a whole before you can make the entire end-to-end process work. By deconstructing the big problems we’re facing – and have been for decades in the procurement space – we’re now able to move at a much faster pace, tackling them one by one.”

In many cases, orchestration also helps with issues a business didn’t even know it had. As Whitmore mentioned, it was the users who brought Bayer’s problems to light. But the interesting thing is that Bayer thought it was already serving the users well. “We were living kind of a lie, because we thought what we had put in front of the business users was sufficient,” Ofiara says. “With good intentions, you can just find your way around the system. But we found that we were asking a lot of our stakeholders. 

“By starting with process orchestration as the centrepiece and finding a solution where we can build into multiple use cases is really helping with our strategy. We now have building blocks on how we can plug in GenAI not only as a buzzword, but as something that makes a process work. At the same time, having the spectrum of conversational interface to orchestrate entire workflows gives us the whole toolbox that we need in order to tackle things capability by capability. Also, we have to make sure that we build internal capabilities with our people. Process orchestration, for us, is a great starting point towards digital transformation.”

Preparing for orchestration

Of course, as with any implementation, it’s important to know what you’re letting yourself in for with orchestration. Knowing whether it will solve your issues starts with understanding what your issues are. This requires reflection on your business and careful consideration, as well as management of expectations. 

“The best advice I can give is to really map out the user journey of the inputs and outputs of what you expect,” says Whitmore. “At the start of this project, we thought we were starting at a very high level with a simple process. But what we’ve realised is our process is much more complicated than we realised. We even have to think about when we notify a user, how we do that, what the best channel is, and what information we should include. So my best advice is: think end-to-end before you start really designing the workflow.”

Ofiara adds: “Think of it in increments. You’ll discover many more issues and problems along the way, so be prepared. Nothing should be found to tight deadlines; give yourself the freedom to grow, to learn the capabilities to build that stack. This is a long-term transformation – not a short-term investment to fix something that’s urgent.”

In the future, orchestration will play more closely with AI. This will lead to even better problem-solving for Bayer, and for many other businesses, as the pace of technology continues to sprint on. “AI with process orchestration will allow us to really grab information out of documents in a way we’ve never been able to, and then summarise it” says Whitmore. Ofiara adds: “The biggest one for me is the combination of conversational interface to a workflow, and having almost endless possibilities on how to combine this. Like Ryan said, by solving problems that couldn’t be solved before GenAI, you can really bake this into a process. So it’s a great combination.”

“The world around us is changing rapidly — the train has already left the station.”

Speaking to us exclusively at DPW Amsterdam 2024, Sebastien Bals, Chief Procurement Officer at Merck KGaA, doesn’t mince his words.

Indeed, procurement functions are already in the midst of equipping AI tools into their operations amid an accelerated interest in digital transformation.

AI, and in particular generative AI (GenAI), is one of the biggest buzzwords today in procurement. And the reason is clear. The ability to offer exponential cost savings and deliver efficiency is music to many CPO’s ears. According to Gartner’s predictions, 50% of supply chain organisations will invest in applications that support artificial intelligence and advanced analytics capabilities by the end of 2025. It is a key reason why supply chain organisations are leveraging AI and advanced analytics in order to navigate an ocean of data to figure out what is happening in their business now and in the years ahead.

Procurement transformation

Bals believes that the acceleration of GenAI acts as a critical enabler for procurement and those who embrace the latest innovations are poised to succeed long-term. “We can’t continue relying on solutions from the past. This is an exciting time to be in procurement, but only for those who are ready to embrace it,” explains Bals. “For those who aren’t willing to adapt, it’s going to be a frustrating time. It’s not about the train leaving, it has already left. You’re either on it or you’re not. If you’re on it, you’re in for an incredible ride. For those who aren’t, they’ll have to figure out how to catch up when it comes back around.”

Having been involved in procurement for the past 15 years, Iris van der Harst, Chief Procurement Officer at Equans, explains the reason she is so passionate about the space is the function’s ability to transform over time. “When I was younger there weren’t many further education courses in procurement that you could do. Everyone just grew into procurement from different backgrounds,” she says. “The reason why I still love being in procurement is that it evolves all the time. It’s always changing and it’s getting increasingly relevant. It is an exciting time and I think it still will be in 10 years.”

Like van der Harst, Michelle Baker, Interim Chief Procurement Officer at Virgin Money, has also had a front-row seat to procurement transformation and believes technology is the heartbeat to business strategy today. “Technology has always been an interesting thing and I’ve grown up with it,” reveals Baker to us at DPW Amsterdam 2024.

“So when I started work, there were no PCs on desks. The only person who had a typewriter was the managing director’s secretary. So technology for me has always been really interesting in terms of how it can augment our lives. If you look at DPW behind me, we’ve got 1,400 attendees excluding exhibitors. That is a massive number of people who are interested in technology now. If we’d had the same conference 10 years ago, we’d barely have filled a room of 100 people. I think there’s a sense now that data analytics, digital, all of these cool words actually have an impact upon your business and it’s an inescapable, unavoidable impact.”

Change management

Jurriaan Lombaers, a procurement senior executive and formerly Chief Procurement Officer at Air-France KLM, explains that one of the most important areas of consideration for CPOs today is around how to navigate change management successfully. “Scaling fast is all about adoption,” reveals Lombaers. “There’s still a long way to go to get these things embedded into the organisation. That’s why you have to start small and take people by the hand. People might be a bit frightened about all the automation on offer because it is taking work away that they have done for many years. What we need to learn is that it’s taking some of the more administrative or repetitive work away. Secondly, as part of 10X, there’s so much more that the business is asking of procurement that needs to be done that can be utilised by the time you gain from further automation.”

But change management comes from within and ultimately the workforce is most impacted. Recognising this all too well is Chris Platts, Director of Procurement Operations at SSE. Without good people, success is impossible which means getting the best out of procurement teams could hold the key. “A big piece of this work is ensuring they’re not bogged down by poor processes, excessive admin, and constant queries,” says Platts. “How can we free them up from these inefficiencies? It’s a major challenge, but I believe there are solutions out there that can help.”

Platts adds that as a result of the geopolitical risks scattered throughout the supply chain, complexity is to be expected. “Most organisations, including ours, have a global supply chain, so we need to navigate many increasing geopolitical challenges, work out what kind of relationship we want with high-risk jurisdictions and ensure our supply chains are as resilient as possible in the event of a global shock.” 

Sustainability drive 

Driven by regulatory and customer changes, sustainability is another key topic on the agenda for many CPOs. At DPW Amsterdam 2024, Kristina Andric, Product Sustainability Director at Tetra Pak, tells us that she recognises three factors that influence a greater sustainability focus across companies. “One issue is that people generally want to contribute, but they often don’t know how or struggle to see the impact of their efforts, when it comes to sustainability,” she explains. “The second issue is the perception of sustainability as a cost driver rather than a value driver. Companies need to recognise that sustainability goes hand in hand with the total cost of ownership. While there may be higher upfront costs, it ultimately leads to long-term benefits and cost savings. Finally, companies often deprioritize sustainability in favor of other initiatives, creating another challenge.”

The sustainability boom is driven partly by the Paris Agreement which is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. Adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, the mission is to unite countries and stakeholders for people, planet and prosperity. Climate action sits among 17 Sustainable Development Goals with the aim by 2030 to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature to increase 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

“This is why that mobilisation is very, very important,” Bertrand Conquéret, Co-Founder of Together for Sustainability (TfS) and The Sustainable Procurement Pledge (SPP), tells us. “At the same time, many companies and countries have also committed to sustainable goals in 2025, 2030, 2040, etc. But the how is the challenge. We have very limited time, so we need to manage the how now. That’s why we have that scalability requirement. This is what we have learned through the TfS initiative that there is the possibility to enable change through that collaboration at scale. The power of collaboration through business sectors is visible through procurement. We have learned that in our companies when it comes to collaboration internally and with strategic relationship management with our suppliers. Together, we are stronger.”

Future facing

Working collaboratively with TfS since 2019 is The Sustainable Procurement Pledge. The SPP is working to make the industry more sustainable by embedding all procurement practices with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Science-Based Targets by 2030. “I would say the underlying principle is that this is a challenge that we need to do together in an open, inclusive and collaborative manner,” explains Thomas Udesen, Steering Committee Member for TfS and a Co-Founder for SPP.

“That ideology is something we get from TfS because we have been living it now for the past 13 years. And it was also that spirit that triggered us to think that despite our company hats along with all the other CPOs in our day jobs, we have an industry dimension where we work within certain boundaries, but we also have a procurement community that we need to tap into. It’s really those three dimensions that we want to boost all the cylinders because at the core of this sits the same knowledge. It is about the likes of decarbonisation, a responsible inclusive economy, supplier diversity and water usage. Our role at SPP is to empower and equip all the practitioners along the value chains to do the same thing. The essence of what good practice looks like is universal and something that we can improve together.”

Looking ahead, today’s Chief Procurement Officer has a lot on their plate. From navigating the best way to unleash AI into processes, to managing the next generation of talent and adopting more sustainable practices amid changing legislation and customer demands, there isn’t a moment to lose. But procurement holds the cards and it is up to the function’s practitioners to determine when to play them correctly.

Eliminating complexity is music to most Chief Procurement Officers’ ears.

In a world with so much uncertainty, efficiency is king. And for Vertice’s founders and brothers Eldar and Roy Tuvey, simplifying procurement is at the heart of everything the duo believes in. 

Indeed, their company Vertice is on a mission to remove obstacles and barriers in order to simplify procurement. Today’s procurement teams need a smart, agile framework that orchestrates all aspects of purchasing with precision. Armed with accurate data, real-time pricing benchmarks and deep insights into the best solutions, CPOs can be sure that the decisions they make are as informed as possible. According to Eldar and Roy, procurement platforms have so far failed to unite procurement leaders’ requirements into a single seamless platform. 

This is where Vertice comes in. The company is aiming to become the integrated backbone of the procurement and finance stack, empowering its customers to scale effortlessly and efficiently. By eliminating friction, Vertice enables organisations to focus on growth and innovation while maintaining full, transparent control over their financial processes and procurement spend. 

In an exclusive article with CPOstrategy, Eldar Tuvey, CEO of Vertice, talks us through why simplifying procurement via a unified orchestration layer enriched by data and insights supports better, faster buying decisions.

Briefly introduce us to Vertice. What, for you, differentiates it from other companies in this space?

Eldar Tuvey: “Vertice is the only spend optimisation platform that enables businesses to simplify their procurement workflows, gain granular control and visibility of their spend, and realise cost savings of as much as 30%. 

“It is the only solution that combines SaaS spend management, procurement workflows and cloud spend optimisation under one roof. Because of this, we can provide a full spend management service to our customers, helping them combat rising business costs.”

What are the biggest problems you are aiming to solve for procurement?

Eldar Tuvey: “When we founded Vertice, we built it to last. From day one, we knew that capital discipline and taking back control of inefficient spending were always going to be important to businesses regardless of the economic landscape. Today, that focus on smart procurement is more prevalent than ever before which has been accelerated by high-profile news such as Elon Musk’s US government ‘DOGE’ and the UK government’s commitment to cutting costs.

“While scrutiny of spend has increased, the ability to drive real savings hasn’t kept pace. Businesses operate globally. Vendors are multiplying, and they often have overlapping capabilities. Buying is increasingly decentralised. Data remains fragmented while actionable insights are rare. This all undermines the core goals of best practice procurement: control, visibility and transparency.”

Can you tell us about the journey of Vertice? Since being founded in 2021, what have the past few years been like?

Eldar Tuvey: “It’s been incredible to see the rapid growth of Vertice as a business, but also the rapid success we’ve delivered for our customers. We now manage over $3.4 billion of software, cloud and direct spend for high-growth customers in over 30 countries and we are rapidly growing across the US, Europe and APAC. We’ve helped our customers achieve an average of seven times ROI and saved them millions of hours of employee time, and we’re just getting started.

“When my brother Roy and I founded Vertice in 2021, we saw the opportunity to solve an urgent problem in the market – SaaS spend was soaring out of control. With procurement and finance leaders feeling enormous pressure on SaaS costs, plus a combination of our product development, our excellent negotiation service and our fiercely independent stance, we grew phenomenally quickly, establishing ourselves across US, Europe and APAC in only two years – and earning a track record of routinely delivering extraordinary 30% cost reductions.

“We then noticed an opportunity to expand this approach into cloud costs – finance and procurement’s next biggest cost worry. Then, we added a cloud cost optimisation service that creates a single, shared view of cloud costs for both finance and procurement and their IT and cloud colleagues. We run continuous optimisation tests and help businesses make the right financial and technical decisions to reduce costs – again with an average of 30% reductions.

“Both of these showed us the importance – and underperformance – of procurement workflows. We therefore launched Intelligent Workflows, a procurement orchestration tool that brings automation and intelligence to the purchasing process. It eliminates manual approval routing and re-routing, anticipating bottlenecks, and reducing the daily workload for procurement teams – all while improving control and speed of outcomes. It’s the boost procurement teams need to ease the manual burden upon them.

“It’s a game-changer for the procurement industry, and we are already seeing results. Customers are now halving their approval cycle times and doubling purchasing compliance savings just from how they conduct procurement workflows.

“Crucially, we have integrated all three of these areas into a single offering. The market’s current response is fragmented with disparate point solutions tackling procurement workflows, contract negotiation, benchmarking data and Saas spend optimisation in isolation. But Vertice has become a leader in procuretech via an alternative approach and delivers a range of capabilities through a single, unified platform.”

How would you describe the past few years in procurement as a result of the influence of tools such as GenAI and LLMs? And are we actually seeing the true value of it yet? 

Eldar Tuvey: “We’re seeing GenAI and LLMs begin to impact procurement in data analysis and content generation (in contracts and negotiations), but it’s not a mature area yet.

“Automation is what’s providing true and tangible benefits right now. Accelerating the whole process, reducing the manual effort required in each stage, ensuring better alignment and buy-in from stakeholders – this is transforming modern procurement.

“We conducted a recent survey of over 300 global procurement leaders and found that those with modern, robust automation within their procurement processes are 29% faster at bringing new services and products to market, and are 32% more able to implement new initiatives. Procurement automation empowers business performance.”

What are the biggest considerations that CPOs need to think about when seeking to use automation as a business strategy in procurement?

Eldar Tuvey: “Introducing automation to your procurement strategy has obvious benefits, across multiple areas including compliance, speed to market, and budget control. But it’s not as simple as bringing it in and watching it immediately improve your setup.

“Automation needs to be introduced strategically. If it is integrated into a setup where deployment is still manual, unsophisticated, and is lacking in data hygiene, centralisation or even access, then it won’t be much help. 

“Getting your ducks in a row is essential before introducing automation. Otherwise, you’re building from uneven foundations that will restrict your growth and become even trickier to fix down the line.”

In your view, what is the best way procurement professionals can make more data-driven decisions? 

Eldar Tuvey: “The biggest obstacle to data-driven decision-making is simply not having ready access to data in the first place. There is so much data available to procurement teams in terms of price benchmarks, contract terms and supplier information. But it’s laborious and complicated to extract for teams that are already time-poor. 

“Even if they do have internal data, this might not be representative of the whole industry. If, for example, your original contract was 30% over the normal standard price, and you renewed at a 10% discount, you’re still unknowingly paying 20% more than standard. Access to wider industry data requires a lot of research or costs a significant amount to purchase from a third party, often without context. 

“This is why Vertice has information from over 16,000 global vendors to provide an unbeatable array of data points that customers can analyse to make better procurement decisions and negotiate more effectively.”

How do you retain good people and encourage them to join/stay with Vertice?

Eldar Tuvey: “People are at the heart of Vertice, and the Vertice team is our greatest asset. Nothing makes me happier than witnessing a young hire with drive and a bit of experience progress over the years. I love seeing them manage significant partnerships or lead teams. Reflecting on how far they’ve come since they first joined us is incredibly rewarding.

“And we keep them by constantly growing Vertice. The business has such large potential – and we’ve grown so rapidly – and this is down to the drive, expertise and commitment of our people. Everyone plays an active part in doing so and they can see their own impact before their very eyes – that’s really rewarding and makes working here so attractive.”

Anything exciting you’d like to share? Any announcements?

Eldar Tuvey: “Vertice is currently enjoying phenomenal momentum. We have grown by more than 13x in two years, now managing more than $3.4 billion of software, cloud and direct spend for customers across more than 30 countries. “We are excited to be celebrating our next milestone – a $50m Series C funding round from Tier 1 investors Lakestar. This funding will allow us to open new offices, triple our engineering team and accelerate our product development – all single-mindedly geared towards our mission to make procurement simpler, unified and enriched by data and insights that support better, faster buying decisions.”

Managing procurement risk is a continuous journey.

Procurement risks happen when the process of purchasing products, resources, or services becomes unreliable. Given the importance that any disruption to the supply chain can have on a business, procurement risk needs to be appropriately managed as it could have a significant impact on an organisation’s overall performance.

In truth, every acquisition comes with risks. But the important component is that these are managed correctly. Procurement risks could be related to cost, delivery, quality, customer expectations and supplier reliability, among others. Risks could be generic, but they can also be specific to a sector, geography or industry. Risk management revolves around closely monitoring and mitigating these risks in order to avoid disruption.

In this article, CPOstrategy uncovers five tactics to managing procurement risk both in the short and long term.

Identify procurement risks

The first task on a CPO’s agenda should be working out where an organisation’s issues are. This should include assessing both internal and external risks throughout the entirety of the supply chain. The reliability of an organisation’s vendors and any risks they are exposed to should be carefully considered as a business is only as robust as the companies it engages with.

As has been clear over the past few years, the next ‘black swan’ event could be just around the corner. As such, it is important to determine weak spots before they become problems and to stay as alert as possible to potential risks. Being able to respond quickly to disruption could be the difference between winning and losing in challenging situations.

Work with the supply chain closely

In an ever-increasing globalised business world with complex supply chains, procurement professionals face their fair share of challenges. CPOs should seek to develop strong risk management processes to ensure that their teams understand their responsibilities to mitigate risk and ensure operations are secure now and in the future.

Ultimately, success in the supply chain relies on a company’s ability to maintain constant communications with the partners it receives items from as well as those it delivers to.

Supplier Relationship Management

Establishing and maintaining a strong relationship with suppliers is important but it does take work. Managing suppliers effectively can help mitigate disruptions in the supply chain such as bad quality products or late deliveries. As a result, this has led to the importance of supplier management software and online inventory management as tools to help track suppliers to readily check supplier information, detect possible supply risks and measure performance. The information gathered from performance tracking will also help to avoid poor supplier selection in the future, unethical sourcing and deal with potential problems.

Spend analysis

Spend analysis is essential to ensuring a CPO has visibility over where an organisation’s money is going. When analysing spend data, valuable information can be obtained which reveals procurement spend, such as unidentified payments, redundancies, double invoices, rogue spending and certain suppliers who may be open to re-negotiation.

It is also important to diversify a supplier base as relying on a single supplier for vital goods and services is a significant risk. Should this supplier be delayed for any reason, a company’s entire supply chain could go down. Spend analysis helps work out if too much money is being spent on specific suppliers or if there is an overreliance on any particular ones too.

Compliance

Government regulations can often change which means it is essential to be agile and adaptable to the latest rules. Risk management in procurement includes introducing procedures to maintain compliance with ever-evolving regulatory requirements. Failure to do so could result in penalties and even more disruption to the supply chain.

Contract compliance is also a key area and should be reviewed often. This will help work out how well suppliers are keeping to pre-set terms and conditions such as efficient delivery of quality goods.

Amazon Business aims to make life simpler for organisations.

Today, more than five million businesses are streamlining employee purchasing with a one-stop shopping experience, real-time analytics and time-saving features. And it’s big business. In 2023, Amazon Business reached over $35 billion in annualised sales which showcases the acceleration of demand for smart procurement solutions.

Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy, Martin Schueler, Director and General Manager, Amazon Business Europe, discusses the transformation of the procurement function and how his organisation is thriving in an ever-changing and complex world.

Briefly introduce yourself. What, for you, differentiates Amazon Business from other companies in the procurement space?

Martin Schueler: “I’m Martin Schueler, Director and General Manager of Amazon Business Europe. I’ve been with Amazon for 13 years and I’ve had the privilege to lead Amazon Business in Europe for the last two and a half years. Before that, I headed several Amazon Retail businesses in Germany.

“Amazon Business does for business customers what Amazon.com has done for shoppers for over 25 years – provide convenient, intuitive and personalised shopping experiences they already know and love, with unique benefits designed for businesses. Our innovation is driven by listening intently to businesses of all sizes. To name a few examples, we know that business customers want unmatched selection, so we continue to expand our store which now includes hundreds of millions of items – offering a truly differentiated product catalogue. Equally, we recognise our customers want to focus time on their core business mission, not buying and sourcing goods. That’s why our shopping experience is intuitive and easy to use, so finding the right products can be achieved in just a few clicks.

“B2B commerce is ripe for innovation, and we are uniquely positioned to reinvent that experience with Amazon Business. Whether it’s a local hair salon, global corporation, school, non-profit, hospital, or government agencies we have the solutions to meet the needs of your organisation.”

The procurement space itself has undergone major transformation over the past decade and suddenly, it is so much more than just a back-office function out the way of everyone else now. Few could have predicted such an exponential rise, could they?

Martin Schueler: “It’s hard to understate the transformation the procurement function has gone through in the past decade. Procurement is no longer a back-office function, but a strategic value and growth driver for organisations. This shift has not only been fuelled by advancements in technology like data analytics, but also a growing set of priorities businesses are expected to respond to such as sustainability, keeping up with today’s challenging macroeconomic climate and supply chain volatility. Organisations now realise the significant impact procurement can have on all these areas.

“We’ve seen this first-hand at Amazon Business. We reached over $35 billion annualised sales as of 2023, demonstrating how demand is increasing for smart procurement solutions. But also, when we talk to our customers, we see them leveraging an increasingly diverse range of Amazon Business tools that drive value beyond cost. For example, we are noticing an uptick in those using our Guided Buying tool to select sustainable products helping to contribute to wider organisational ESG goals.

“The exponential rise of technology has also empowered procurement teams to make more data-driven decisions that further improve their organisations’ bottom line. In short, it is an exciting time for procurement, and we are thrilled to be part of this transformation.”

In what ways has the role of the Chief Procurement Officer evolved over the years? What does a good one look like in today’s ever-changing and data-driven world?

Martin Schueler: “The role of the CPO has evolved from being focused on cost reduction to an essential leadership position that drives strategic sourcing, supplier relationship management, and innovation. Today’s CPOs are strategic partners to their organisations, supporting them in navigating the complexities of procurement. In an increasingly challenging global economy, the CPO plays a pivotal role in addressing supply chain complexities, adapting to regulatory changes, and advancing sustainability initiatives – all of which enhance resilience and help to maintain a competitive edge. Having the CPO in the boardroom and involved in executive level decisions shows just how important procurement has become in driving business growth.

“A good CPO knows the value that data and advanced analytics can bring when it comes to a range of areas from risk, supply chain to sustainability and diversity. In fact, according to our recent State of Procurement Report, 98% of procurement leaders are planning investments in analytics, automation, and AI. CPOs recognise leveraging these tools in procurement will completely transform what’s possible in the future, and be key in reducing costs, increasing operational efficiencies and fuelling growth initiatives.”

What are the underlying issues in how companies are currently storing and looking at their supply chain data? Why is this a problem and how can they overcome those challenges?

Martin Schueler: “Many companies struggle with fragmented and siloed supply chain data, that is spread across diverse systems and departments. This scattered approach means it is almost impossible to obtain a complete picture, resulting in poor decision-making and missed opportunities.

“Amazon Business can help tackle this issue by centralising data and making it more accessible. With all information consolidated in one site, businesses can gain enhanced visibility and transparency across their organisation. Additionally, with machine learning, Amazon Business can process and connect vast amounts of data, offering a comprehensive view that facilitates smarter decision-making, anticipate disruptions, and streamline operations. By breaking down data silos, this solution boosts operational efficiency and creates a more resilient supply chain management system.”

In what ways can companies better collaborate with suppliers to drive mutual success and innovation?

Martin Schueler: “Collaboration needs to be built on a deep understanding of customer challenges, how they are evolving, and what you can do as a business to respond to them. At Amazon Business, we aim to supply our customers with the best business purchasing experience possible. And when it comes to driving mutual success and innovation, we’ve learned some things along the way.

“Consistent and open communication is critical. We’re always talking directly to our customers about the issues they are facing and how we can innovate, expand, and fine-tune our capabilities to resolve them. For example, our Buy Local feature, that helps buyers to easily identify sellers near to their location, was inspired by conversations we had with a public sector customer. They needed to respond to recently passed legislation which mandated the organisation to increase its spending with smaller businesses. It was a win-win situation, while it allowed them to successfully and easily comply, we were able to develop a feature that could help future customers facing similar problems.”

How exciting is the future of procurement and supply chain? Some people say that now is the greatest time to be in procurement. Is that true?

Martin Schueler: “Absolutely, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be in procurement as the rapid advancements in technology are transforming how we operate. This evolution allows us to predict trends, manage risks more effectively, and make more informed decisions, which is thrilling for anyone in the field.

“Moreover, the strategic importance of procurement has never been higher. Procurement is no longer a back-office function. Companies are realising that a well-managed supply chain is a significant competitive advantage and are relying more on their procurement function to drive value and meet diverse business goals. It’s not just a cost centre anymore; procurement is responsible for driving innovation, sustainability, and resilience.

“This shift in perception makes now a fantastic time to be in procurement, as it is offers those working in the field increased opportunity to directly impact their organisation’s future.”

What’s next for your department within Amazon Business? Anything exciting on the horizon?

Martin Schueler: “Amazon Business is committed to continuous innovation for our customers, with plans to expand our offerings this year. For example, at 2024 Amazon Business Reshape, one of the new initiatives shared by our CTO Doug Gray was about Program Dashboard, a new Business Prime exclusive feature. This powerful tool will provide data-driven insights to help our customers better manage their spend agreements and optimise their procurement strategies.

“In addition, we’re expanding our partnerships to offer even more seamless experiences for our customers. We’re introducing a new Punch-in integration with SAP Ariba and a Punchout integration with Oracle NetSuite’s Suite Procurement module. These integrations will allow for smoother workflows and better compliance within existing e-procurement systems.

“These innovations are just some examples of some of the upcoming developments and they reflect our commitment to leveraging AI, enhancing personalisation, balancing compliance with ease of use, and expanding our business services. We’re excited to bring these advancements to our customers and continue transforming the procurement landscape.”

Procurement is changing. That much is clear.

At the forefront of this are advanced technology tools that are altering the way procurement lives and breathes. Indeed, the market is changing which is driven by digital agendas, sustainability initiatives and geopolitical problems which is causing Chief Procurement Officers to think on their feet. Customer expectations are also changing and this means that future-proofing supply chains has never been so important with many customers demanding quicker shipping times and more product availability all while delivering on their own sustainability ambitions.

With this in mind, here are five important lessons procurement learned this year.

1. People remain the secret sauce

Despite technology’s increasingly important influence, humans ultimately determine whether an organisation succeeds or not. With the ever-increasing complexity of global supply chains, the necessity of skilled and adaptable procurement professionals has never been greater. As technology matures, data-entry tasks that previously would have been best-placed for graduates can be undertaken by AI which means new starters need to learn more strategic skills quicker. If procurement’s digital transformation is to be managed successfully, people will hold the key. There is no doubt about that. 

2. A better understanding of generative AI

One of the biggest buzzwords of 2024 has been generative AI and the potential it has to reinvent procurement. For CPOs, GenAI is seen by many as a significant step forward in the value their teams can deliver to the business. This showcases the way to faster, more accurate decision-making, higher resilience, increased sustainability and lower operating costs. But it’s not all smooth sailing. There are challenges associated with implementing GenAI such as data quality and ethical considerations. These remain barriers to widespread use and are being continuously navigated in the world of GenAI in procurement.

3. Sustainable procurement isn’t an option anymore

Sustainable procurement isn’t something you can pick. Governments and consumers are past encouraging, there is now a real demand that organisations implement ethical and sustainable practices. Sustainability in procurement supports the green goals of an organisation and optimises the environmental, social and economic impacts over the lifecycle of a product or service. Sustainable procurement requires organisations to develop robust approaches to risk management in order to work out potential problems within their supply chains. Companies are focusing on carbon reduction targets and are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, eliminating waste from their supply chains and incorporating sustainable business practices. Stakeholders are now also implementing action ESG and corporate social responsibility initiatives as part of their sustainability agenda, thus driving the necessity for sustainable procurement.

4. Risk management strategies

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is the importance of having a back-up plan. In 2024, the geopolitical landscape is unstable and volatile with the threat of potential problems seemingly ever present. This year, several significant elections have taken place which always brings uncertainty with the ripple effect potentially leading to trade disputes and shifts in global market access. With this in mind, procurement teams should seek to diversify their suppliers while also identifying risks and using data-driven decision-making. By developing regional sourcing strategies, recognising geopolitical risks and expanding contingency plans can help limit exposure to these risks.

5. Supplier collaboration

Companies can’t treat their suppliers like a transaction any longer. The necessity of developing key, strategic partnerships and alliances in the modern world is too important. Previously a ‘nice to have’, delivering a great supplier experience is paramount to success in 2025 and beyond. In the wake of global challenges, organisations need support and cannot do it alone. Being open with suppliers to create a mutually beneficial relationship where both sides gain value is key.