Author

Nikos Fountas

Published

9 October 2026

Estimated Read time

6Mins

Nikos Fountas, Chief Operations Officer at Hack The Box, tells us why procurement teams use of AI has created a capability issue that needs to be addressed.

AI has huge potential to transform procurement. Generative AI can automate routine processes, analyse large volumes of information and support decision-making, while agentic AI will take on tasks and interact with other business systems.

But as procurement teams adopt AI, there is a capability issue that has to be addressed. As well as ensuring employees have the skills to use it, organisations need procurement professionals with the security awareness and judgement to recognise potential risks, challenge unsupported claims and know when specialist cybersecurity expertise is required.

In addition, while procurement teams need to be able to use AI securely in their own work, organisations need specialist expertise to assess, procure and secure the AI being introduced into other parts of the business. These are complementary capabilities but they are not the same.

Using AI securely in procurement

AI is becoming part of everyday procurement activity. It is used to analyse information, automate processes and support decisions, which means teams need enough security literacy to understand that AI can be exploited, recognise its limitations and know when its outputs need to be challenged or independently verified.

Elements of procurement roles will also shift from doing tasks to directing and supervising the AI systems that do them. Because of this, AI-augmented roles are emerging, where the value is not only in having the right AI tools but in knowing how to use them safely and effectively.

In practical terms, this means procurement teams need to develop the judgement to understand what an AI system is doing and when human intervention or further expert scrutiny is required. A system producing a supplier summary or analysing information presents one set of considerations. An agent capable of accessing data, making decisions or taking actions across multiple systems presents another. Essentially, the greater the autonomy, the more important it is that people understand the system’s capabilities, limitations and potential failures.

This does not mean procurement professionals need to become cybersecurity specialists. They do, however, need to know what questions to ask, recognise when an answer or claim needs to be queried and know when to bring in the appropriate security expertise.

Securing AI in procurement

When AI is embedded in procurement processes, securing the technology itself is clearly essential. It is vital to secure AI systems, defend against AI-enabled attacks and put appropriate governance around autonomous technologies. However, organisations also need the cybersecurity capability to put these measures into practice.

Security professionals need to understand new threats including prompt injection, data poisoning, model exploitation and attacks against AI agents. They also need to understand how AI changes established security assumptions, including data flows, permissions and trust boundaries.

This is also important when procurement teams are evaluating AI-enabled technology for other areas of the business. Vendor assessments have to go beyond conventional security questionnaires and certifications. It is essential to understand what an AI system can access, what permissions it has, where its data comes from, how its outputs are validated and what happens when the system is manipulated or behaves unexpectedly.

Procurement can’t be used as a substitute for the security team’s involvement. Its role is to help identify the right questions, challenge unsupported vendor claims and ensure that the relevant issues are properly considered. But the deeper technical assessment, testing and security validation has to sit with cybersecurity specialists.

The challenge for organisations is connecting these two capabilities effectively.

Cyber skills have to evolve alongside AI

AI security can’t be seen as a niche specialism that is understood only by a small group of experts. With AI being embedded across business applications and workflows, the security capabilities to assess and secure it also needs to develop. The latest Hack The Box Workforce Intelligence Report shows AI security is already a prominent area of professional development, with AI penetration testing, prompt injection, model exploitation and agentic AI security among the areas practitioners are focusing on.

When an organisation is either evaluating or deploying AI, it has to have access to people who understand these threats well enough to ask the right questions, assess the answers and test the technology where appropriate. In other words, an organisation’s cyber capability has to develop alongside its AI adoption.

The development also needs to be practical. Security professionals should have the opportunity to work with AI systems in realistic environments, test how they behave under pressure and understand how attackers might exploit them. Capability needs to be developed, practised and demonstrated. It can’t just be assumed.

Knowing when not to trust AI

AI can produce outputs that appear convincing but are inaccurate, incomplete or inappropriate and there is a danger people will accept something that seems plausible without questioning it. This automation bias is a risk as human judgement can weaken when people get used to accepting AI-generated outputs without checking them.

Procurement professionals using AI need to know when an output should be challenged or independently verified and when an issue requires specialist security input. Cybersecurity professionals, meanwhile, need to be able to interrogate AI and understand what information it has considered, what assumptions it has made and what it may have missed.

These capabilities can’t be developed by teaching people how to write better prompts. They have to have an understanding of how AI systems behave, where their limitations lie and for security professionals, how an attacker might exploit them.

Don’t automate away cyber expertise

There is also a longer-term workforce challenge. AI is effective at automating routine and medium-complexity tasks but those tasks have traditionally helped junior professionals develop their expertise. If AI takes over too much of this work without a development strategy in place, organisations could weaken their future talent pipeline, creating a capability gap over time.

When it comes to cybersecurity, AI adoption and cyber workforce development must happen together. Security professionals should be able to use AI to accelerate their work while continuing to develop the underlying knowledge and judgement to investigate independently, recognise failures and intervene when necessary.

For procurement teams, the challenge is ensuring that increasing reliance on AI does not remove the human judgement needed to question outputs and recognise when an issue needs to be escalated.

Building an AI-ready procurement function

Procurement teams need enough security knowledge to understand how AI can be exploited and when its outputs cannot be trusted. They also need access to cybersecurity expertise that can challenge vendor claims, understand the potential attack surface and determine what security testing is appropriate.

Procurement professionals should not be expected to carry out these technical assessments themselves. But they do need to know when they are necessary, ask the right questions and ensure the relevant specialists are brought into the process.

AI cybersecurity capability also has to be part of ongoing workforce development. A penetration tester needs to understand how to assess AI-enabled applications and agents. A SOC analyst needs to know when AI-generated analysis requires independent validation. Security architects need to understand how AI changes data flows, permissions and trust boundaries.

New AI models will emerge, with agents becoming more autonomous and further blurring the boundary between human and machine activity. For procurement, AI and security literacy and informed judgement will be essential. For cybersecurity teams, they need to develop and maintain the specialist technical capability needed to assess, test and secure those technologies.

The biggest barrier to successful and safe AI in procurement is having the right combination of procurement judgement and specialist cybersecurity expertise and connecting those capabilities effectively.

By Nikos Fountas, Chief Operations Officer, Hack The Box.

Author

Andrew Woods

Published

1 May 2026

Estimated Read time

10Mins

How Tiger Brands has turned a governance crisis into R265 million in savings and a blueprint for AI-powered procurement

How Stedrick Saayman, Group Procurement Director, Tiger Brands turned a governance crisis into R265 million in savings and a blueprint for AI-powered procurement across Africa’s largest food company…

Three years ago, Tiger Brands had a problem that went well beyond procurement. South Africa’s largest FMCG company – a €2 billion enterprise with 35 factories, 9,000 employees, and a portfolio of brands that has fed the nation for over a century – was in the middle of a governance crisis. The house, as insiders describe it, was on fire. Twelve separate business units operated with fragmented systems, manual processes, and limited visibility into how money was being spent. Compliance gaps were widening. Controls were inadequate. The board issued a clear mandate: digitise and govern across the entire organisation.

Stedrick Saayman, Group Procurement Director, Tiger Brands

What has happened since is one of the more remarkable corporate turnarounds in African business. Under new executive leadership, Tiger Brands restructured from 12 business units into four, decentralised its operating model, and launched a multi-year transformation programme that has already made the front page of South Africa’s Financial Mail under the headline ‘Tiger Brands Finds Its Roar.’ Procurement has been a critical pillar of that turnaround.

Stedrick Saayman, Group Procurement Director, was tasked with building a modern, governed, digitally enabled procurement function from what, in his words, was a glorified accounts payable operation. No structured sourcing. No centralised contracting. 14,000 suppliers managed with limited governance. Invoices processed manually. Contracts scattered across shared drives.

The platform he chose was Zycus – a full Source-to-Pay suite with an integrated AI roadmap. The results in under two years: R265 million in documented savings, double-digit reductions from eAuctions in transport and packaging, Source-to-Contract live for over 18 months, and procure-to-pay now rolling out across all four business units.

But what makes this story worth telling is not just the numbers. It is the fact that procurement has become a visible, measurable contributor to a corporate turnaround that the board, the CEO, the CFO, and the market are watching. This is not a back-office efficiency story. This is a front-page business story, and procurement is at the centre of it.

Tiger Brands has been through a significant corporate transformation over the past three years. Where did procurement fit in that picture when you started?

Saayman: “It barely existed as a strategic function. When I looked at what we had, procurement was essentially a glorified AP function. Invoices came in. There was no contract behind them. There was no purchase order. My team would have to onboard the supplier after the fact, fight to get a contract signed after the service had already been delivered. We were reactive in every sense.

Meanwhile, the company was structured as 12 separate businesses, each with its own way of buying, its own suppliers, its own processes – or lack thereof. 14,000 suppliers. Six thousand contracts scattered across the organisation. No centralised visibility into any of it.

The board mandate was clear: digitise and govern. Not just in procurement; across HR, operations, quality, everything. But procurement was one of the most critical areas because that is where the money flows.”

You evaluated the major platforms. What led you to select Zycus?

“We looked at all the major players and we chose Zycus for very specific reasons. First, the digital backbone. We needed a complete, integrated Source-to-Pay suite – not modules to assemble, not bolt-ons. There were naysayers internally who said we could do catalogues in Oracle, or handle this piece in another system. But that is exactly the fragmentation we were trying to eliminate. We resisted the temptation of shortcuts and went with the integrated solution.

Second, the forward-looking approach. At the time we selected Zycus, the agentic AI functionality you see today was not yet operational. But they showed us what they were building, and we knew that in two to three years we would walk that journey with them. That was a pivotal factor – we were not just buying what existed. We were buying into where procurement technology was going.

We did not pave over the cow paths. We did not even try to map our existing processes, because 12 business units were all doing things differently. We said: let us build the superhighway. And that is what Zycus has done for us.

And third, partnership. This is not just a software provider. They have been a genuine partner walking this journey with us: through a major organisational restructuring, through scope changes, through the inevitable challenges of a transformation at this scale.”

You mentioned restructuring. Tiger Brands went from 12 business units to four, mid-implementation. How did you navigate that?

“That was one of the hardest parts of this entire journey. We started designing a centralised procurement office serving 12 business units. Halfway through implementation, the company restructured into four business units with a decentralised, federated operating model. Procurement teams moved into those business units. It was a significant change.

Two things saved us. First, we had chosen a platform that could flex. The Zycus system adapted with us; we pivoted, and the system pivoted. Second, the Zycus team adapted with us. They did not say ‘that is out of scope’. They leaned in and helped us redesign on the fly.

In Africa we say: when the music changes, so does the dance. The music changed dramatically. But we kept dancing.”

Let us talk about the results. R265 million in savings in under two years is a significant number for a company of Tiger Brands’ size. How did you get there?

“We didn’t try to boil the ocean. We applied a strict filter to everything we put in scope: does it drive compliance, efficiency, strategic value, or resilience? If yes, it went in. Anything else was deferred.

Then we went after the big targets. Transport, packaging, key ingredients – categories where you have many suppliers and where eAuctions and structured sourcing events can drive real, measurable value. We ran 44 sourcing events and delivered double-digit savings on several of them. The top five projects alone – mayonnaise jars, transport, cleaning, facilities, baby food ingredients – accounted for the lion’s share.

R136 million in FY24. R129 million in FY25. Over R100 million of that driven directly through eAuctions on the Zycus platform. These are not theoretical savings. They are documented, audited, and visible on the P&L.

R265 million in savings. Documented, audited, visible on the P&L. This is cash that went back into the business. And our benchmark was a two-year payback on the entire investment. We achieved it.”

Beyond the savings, what has actually changed in how procurement operates day to day?

“Everything. Before Zycus, sourcing was ad hoc: phone calls, emails, fragmented negotiations with no audit trail. Now it is structured, competitive, and traceable. Contracts were scattered across shared drives with no visibility into expiry dates or obligations. Now they are centralised, monitored, and managed. Supplier onboarding was manual and reactive; we would create vendor records in our system after the invoice arrived. Now, onboarding happens before the engagement begins, with proper due diligence and risk assessment.

And the digital footprint is the real game-changer. From the moment an intake request enters the system, you can follow it through the entire lifecycle: sourcing, contracting, ordering, invoicing, and payment. That end-to-end traceability is what the board asked for when they said ‘digitise and govern.’ We have delivered it.”

Tiger Brands’ turnaround has been recognised publicly; the Financial Mail front page, strong shareholder results. How visible is procurement’s contribution to that story at the executive level?

“That’s something I’m working on constantly. The reality is – and I think many procurement leaders will recognise this – executives tend to hear about procurement when something goes wrong. A PO is stuck. A supplier isn’t paid. An approval is delayed. The operational noise is what reaches the C-suite.

What doesn’t always reach them is the R265 million in savings. The governance framework that now covers 14,000 suppliers. The structured sourcing that delivered double-digit reductions in some of our largest spend categories. The fact that we went from no system to a full source-to-pay platform, through a major organisational restructuring, in under two years.

The turnaround story – ‘Tiger Brands Finds Its Roar’ – is a company-wide story. And procurement has been a critical part of it. Our CEO and CFO have led the charge on the overall transformation. What I want to make sure is that the contribution of procurement – the hard savings, the governance, the platform we have built – is clearly understood as one of the pillars that made that turnaround possible.

The turnaround is a company-wide story. But R265 million in documented savings, a governed supply base, and a digital backbone that did not exist three years ago. That is procurement’s contribution, and it needs to be visible.”

Looking ahead, Zycus is investing heavily in agentic AI. How does that translate into Tiger Brands’ next chapter?

“This is what genuinely excites me. We built the superhighway. Now I want to see how fast we can go on it.

The agentic AI capabilities that Zycus showed us this morning – autonomous negotiation for tail spend, continuous monitoring of pricing and fraud through iRisk Radar, intake as an AI-powered control tower – these aren’t theoretical. We’ve seen them. We’ve discussed them in the AI Council. And we are planning the rollout.

What I find particularly exciting is the continuous monitoring in the background by agents. A system that does not wait for someone to run a report, but proactively highlights pricing anomalies, possible fraud, renewal opportunities. That changes the role of my team fundamentally.

AI does not replace procurement professionals. It gives them superpowers. My team becomes more strategic, more enabled, more impactful. And for a company going through the kind of transformation Tiger Brands is going through, that is exactly what we need.

We built the superhighway. Now I want to see how fast we can go on it with AI. It does not replace procurement professionals. It gives them superpowers.”

For a procurement leader in a similar position – governance crisis, board pressure, fragmented operations – what would you say?

“Three things. First, don’t pave over the cow paths. If your existing processes are broken, mapping and digitising them just gives you automated chaos. We deliberately chose not to map our as-is processes. We built for where we wanted to be, not where we were.

Second, resist the temptation of bolt-ons and shortcuts. There will always be voices saying you can do this piece in Oracle, that piece in another system. Fight that. The power of an integrated platform is the end-to-end traceability from intake to outcome. You lose that the moment you fragment.

And third, choose a partner, not a provider. The technology matters. But the willingness to adapt, to co-innovate, to walk the journey with you through changes you cannot predict – that’s what makes the difference. We restructured our entire company mid-implementation. Our technology partner adapted with us. That is not something you can put in a contract. That’s partnership.”

About Stedrick Saayman

Stedrick Saayman is Group Procurement Director at Tiger Brands, South Africa’s largest FMCG company. He leads the digital transformation of procurement across four business units spanning 35 factories, 9,000 employees, and 14,000 suppliers. Under his leadership, procurement has delivered R265 million in documented savings and deployed a full Source-to-Pay platform in under two years. He was recognised with the Transformative Trailblazer Award at Zycus Horizon EU & UK 2026.

About Tiger Brands

Tiger Brands is South Africa’s largest food, beverage, and home care company, with a portfolio of iconic brands that has served the nation for over a century. Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation exceeding R50 billion, Tiger Brands operates 35 manufacturing facilities, employs approximately 9,000 people, and distributes across 22 countries. The company is currently executing a multi-year turnaround strategy under CEO Tjaart Kruger, focused on operational excellence, digital transformation, and sustainable growth.

About Zycus

Zycus is a global leader in AI-powered procurement technology, recognised as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Source-to-Pay Suites, Forrester Wave Leader for Supplier Value Management, IDC MarketScape Leader for Procurement, and Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice 2025. Its platform delivers Intake-to-Outcomes powered by Agentic AI across a single, unified architecture.

Check out the full edition of CPOstrategy here.

Author

Andrew Woods

Published

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Tenneco purchasing director Bislim Goxhufi explains how his trust in Zycus is helping drive a new era of AI in procurement.

Tenneco purchasing director Bislim Goxhufi explains how he is helping drive a new era of AI in procurement at the company…

Procurement is no stranger to artificial intelligence (AI). Machine learning, automation, and smart dashboards are commonplace. But at Zycus Horizon EU & UK 2026 in Vienna, a harder question dominated three days of conversation: what happens when AI starts deciding and delivering outcomes? The move from source-to-pay to intake-to-outcomes, powered by autonomous agents, is already underway — and Zycus is leading the change. 

Bislim Goxhufi is the Purchasing Director for Direct Materials (Europe) and Global Lead for Supplier Quality, Development, and Vendor Master Processes at Tenneco, a global automotive components manufacturer. As a long-time Zycus partner, this isn’t his first event. “It’s my fourth or fifth time joining Horizon,” he tells us, in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel. “Every year, it’s interesting to learn where the world is going, where transformation is going, and how procurement is developed through Zycus.

Tenneco Purchasing Director Bislim Goxhufi

This year, the event was firmly centred around agentic AI. The sessions covered everything from autonomous negotiation to procurement maturity models and getting agentic-AI-ready, with Zycus showcasing live demos of its Merlin Agentic Platform that left attendees rethinking what’s possible in procurement today.

Finding the right partner

Tenneco has seen Zycus’s offering expand over the years since they partnered. In 2012, Tenneco started the search for solutions that could handle its growing complexity. With multiple ERP systems, high spend, a large number of suppliers, and fragmented tools, a comprehensive platform was crucial. “The best environment offered was Zycus,” explains Goxhufi. “We got the feeling they would adapt the tool to our business, and we wouldn’t need to adapt ourselves to the tool.”

Building trust in agentic AI

This took Tenneco from several fragmented systems that didn’t talk to one another to a single platform. Working closely with Zycus ensured implementation went smoothly. Since then, Tenneco has built significant trust in Zycus, having extended its contract three times. Indeed, during the third day of the event, Goxhufi spoke on a panel about securing the right partner in an agentic era. The session covered what’s needed as AI develops beyond being a passive tool. This is where trust is most important. “I trust Zycus. If I didn’t, I would not consider agentic sourcing and autonomous actions,” says Goxhufi. Agentic AI is still early, but Zycus’s willingness to put a live product in front of customers — and invite hard questions — is exactly what gives partners like Tenneco the confidence to move forward.

There were a lot of questions for Goxhufi and others at the event. He says, “Are the agents acting on our behalf according to our requirements? Do we have the transparency there? How are they choosing the suppliers? How are they evaluating them?” 

Zycus’s Merlin Agentic Platform, which handles everything from intake through to autonomous negotiation, is where those questions become real for procurement teams. For Tenneco, the answer lies in a controlled pilot exploring agentic AI across two or three categories. “We will look at how we are progressing before we go to a larger version,” says Goxhufi. “This pilot will help us build trust in the tool.” It’s a smart, phased approach — and one that Zycus actively encourages, building confidence through real results rather than promises.

Goxhufi is clear that AI isn’t replacing people. Instead, it’s reframing their roles to remove some of the mundane tasks. “We are not looking to eliminate the people,” he says. “We want to make their lives easier, so they don’t need to pick up the phone or write emails. The time should go into decisions and strategy.”

Check out the full edition of CPOstrategy here.

Author

Andrew Woods

Published

Estimated Read time

11Mins

How Bolt’s John Mahjoubi turned hypergrowth chaos into an agentic AI-led source-to-pay engine, powered by Zycus

How John Mahjoubi turned hypergrowth chaos into an agentic AI-led source-to-pay engine…

Bolt has never been a company that waits.

From moving its first passengers in Tallinn to scaling across more than 850 cities and serving over 200 million customers in 50+ countries, its story has been defined by speed, ambition, and an almost obsessive focus on winning markets. Ride-hailing, micromobility, car-sharing, delivery, groceries; five business lines running simultaneously across a 4,000-strong workforce that still operates with the instincts of a startup. Growth was not linear – it was exponential. And like most companies that scale at that pace, the front office raced ahead while the back office quietly struggled to keep up.

John Mahjoubi, Bolt’s Global Procurement Director and CPO

Procurement, in particular, was never designed for this level of complexity. It wasn’t broken; it simply didn’t exist as a function. There were no structured purchase order processes, no centralised sourcing function, no unified contracting framework. Every country operated independently. Invoices – all 120,000 of them per year – were processed manually. More than 20,000 suppliers were onboarded with limited governance. Across 50+ countries, there were 50+ ways to buy. The machinery of spend was running, but it was running on instinct rather than architecture.

What Bolt needed wasn’t incremental improvement. It needed a reinvention of procurement itself: one that could match the company’s DNA: fast, intuitive, global and intelligent.

That’s where the partnership with Zycus becomes central to this story. Not as a software vendor, but as the architect of something far more ambitious: an agentic AI-powered autonomous procurement platform, built on a truly comprehensive source-to-pay suite, designed to operate at the speed of Bolt. 7+ modules. Globally. Built from zero. A five-year strategic partnership. This was not a technology purchase. It was a bet on the future of procurement itself.

At the centre of this transformation is John Mahjoubi, Bolt’s Global Procurement Director and CPO, who stepped into chaos and chose not to control it, but to redesign it from the ground up.

What follows is not just a transformation story. It is a blueprint for what procurement becomes when AI, architecture and ambition align.

Bolt is a company synonymous with scale and speed. What does that actually look like from the inside of a procurement function?

Mahjoubi: “It’s intense, in the best possible way. Ride-hailing, micromobility, car-sharing, delivery, groceries – each one operating almost like its own ecosystem, with its own supplier base, its own cost structures, its own regulatory requirements. And we have over 4,000 people, who we call Badgers, across all of these markets. But what defines Bolt is not just scale – it is how quickly that scale was achieved. The company grew by empowering people to move fast, make decisions and win markets. That creates a very unique environment. It is incredibly dynamic, but it also means not everything grows at the same pace.”

And procurement was one of those areas that had not kept pace with the business?

“That’s a polite way of putting it. The reality was, procurement had not been formalised at all. There were no structured PO processes. Sourcing was not centralised. Every country had its own way of doing things. 50+ countries, 4,000+ Badgers, 50+ ways to buy. The word I used on stage was chaos and I meant it.

People were buying what they needed, when they needed it. Suppliers were onboarded after services were already delivered. Invoices were processed manually. Every single one of them.

Now, to be clear, that was not dysfunction. That was hypergrowth. The company was focused on winning, and it succeeded spectacularly. But when you reach a certain scale, you need a different operating model.”

There is a striking irony you have spoken about: Bolt could move 200 million people seamlessly, but could not move a purchase order. How did that land with you when you stepped into the role?

“It was one of those moments where you step back and think: this is both incredible and unsustainable. We had built one of the most efficient mobility platforms in the world. But internally, something as fundamental as raising a purchase order was not standardised. That contrast became the burning platform. We were not broken. We simply did not exist as a function. And once you see it that way, you are not fixing – you are building from zero.”

What made transformation particularly challenging in Bolt’s environment?

“Three things, all at once: scale and speed of growth, culture and technology.

On scale: We were in hypergrowth and the entire company was laser-focused on the front office – growth. Back-office functions weren’t forgotten, but they certainly weren’t first.

On culture: Bolt is a startup at heart, even at its current size. It runs on autonomy. People do not respond well to rigid policies or heavy processes. If something slows them down, they will find a way around it. The culture is very much ‘done is driven’.

On technology: we had built native solutions for the front office, but procurement had no core capabilities. There was no strategy for it. No platform. Nothing to build on.

So the challenge was: how do you introduce control without killing speed? That is not a technology problem. That is an operating model problem.”

You tested a wide range of platforms before selecting Zycus. What became clear through that evaluation?

“We tested everyone and evaluated them thoroughly. What became clear was that many solutions still carried legacy constraints, rigid workflows, and fragmented user experiences across the process. Others were strong in specific areas, such as intake, but lacked a true end-to-end source-to-pay capability or the ability to support autonomous sourcing and negotiation. 

For Bolt, that separation was exactly the problem we were trying to solve. We did not want to assemble procurement from different components or adapt our operating model to fit the limitations of individual tools. We needed something that could work as a connected, end-to-end system from day one, with intelligence embedded across the entire flow – not added on later.

Zycus’ Merlin Agentic AI Platform was the clear choice – full intake-to-outcomes capability under one roof, no cobbled-together tools. The vision they demonstrated? We didn’t just like it. We shared it and aligned with it completely.”

What specifically made Zycus stand out?

“Four things. First, shared vision. From the very first conversation, Zycus talked about the future of source-to-pay; the role of AI, the roadmap. They were not selling us what they had today. They were showing us where procurement was going, and it aligned with where we wanted to be.

Second, transparency. Zycus told us what they couldn’t do. That built more trust than any perfect demo ever could. During implementation, there were difficult scope discussions, moments where things were simply not possible, and they were openly called out. That honesty is what made the partnership work.

Third, end-to-end S2P depth. This wasn’t intake-only, not P2P-only – it was a full suite across 7+ modules. That mattered enormously to us.

And fourth, the co-innovation model. This is a five-year partnership with a roadmap tailored to Bolt’s priorities. We are not just customers; we are shaping the product.”

You mentioned 7+ modules, globally, built from zero. Describe the scope of what you are deploying.

“This isn’t a module deployment. It is one platform, one process, every market. Phase 1 is live. Our full Source-to-Contract capability: Merlin Intake for S2C, iSource for RFx and bidding, iSupplier for onboarding and supplier relationship management, iContract for CLM lifecycle.

Phase 2 is launching now. Procure-to-Pay, going live in March 2026: Merlin Intake 4.0 for P2P, eProcurement for catalogue and PO, eInvoicing for AP automation, AP Smart Desk for exception AI, and Supplier Portal for self-service.

From zero to full S2P and Merlin AI in months. Not years. That is what this partnership has delivered.”

You have described Zycus’s approach as ‘agentic.’ For readers who may not be steeped in the AI conversation, what does that mean in practice?

“We didn’t want procurement to be something people learn. We wanted it to be something that guides them. The idea is simple: you do not expect users to understand procurement processes. The system should understand the user. That is what Merlin agentic AI enables.

With Zycus, the intake layer becomes the entry point – a kind of intelligent interface that takes the user through the journey, makes decisions, routes requests, and ensures compliance in the background. So, instead of forms and workflows, you get something closer to a guided experience.

Our vision for how procurement should work is built around an Intake Management Control Tower – eProcurement, sourcing, supplier risk and performance management, contracting, spend analytics – all connected through one intelligent layer. That’s a completely different paradigm.”

What were the biggest operational pain points you prioritised?

“Invoice processing was a big one. We handle around 120,000 invoices a year, and all of them were processed manually. Coding, approvals, tax decisions – it was a huge operational burden. Then supplier onboarding. We had over 20,000 vendors, onboarding hundreds more every month, with very limited control. And finally, the lack of structured sourcing and contracting. Sourcing cycle times were unacceptable. These were not just inefficiencies; they were risks.”

Bolt operates in a very modern, Slack-driven environment. Did that shape the design?

“Absolutely. We don’t operate on email. Everything happens in Slack. So, if procurement sits in a separate system, adoption becomes a challenge immediately. What we’ve built is an experience where requests, approvals, and interactions happen within the tools people already use, while Zycus runs the intelligence and governance in the background.

That’s how you drive real adoption: by embedding procurement into the flow of work. The user experience has gone from ‘procurement slows teams down’ to a Slack-native experience with great adoption and genuine promoters across the business.”

The speed of this transformation is remarkable. How are you achieving that pace?

“Focus and partnership. We broke the implementation into phases, starting with Source-to-Contract, and now moving into Procure-to-Pay. But more importantly, we aligned internally and worked very closely with Zycus as a single partner.

For any project to succeed, it always depends on the team. It was not only the Zycus project team that has been all in on this – we have seen equally strong support and teamwork on the Bolt side. Round-the-clock discussions, continuous feedback, collaborative testing. Each phase has been a collaboration masterpiece from both teams. That combination of clear vision, strong internal ownership, and a unified platform, allowed us to go from zero to full S2P in months, not years. That pace is quite unusual for transformations of this scale.”

What role did leadership alignment play?

“A huge one.From day one, we involved leadership across the organisation – CEO, direct reports, country managers. This was not positioned as a procurement initiative, but positioned as a business transformation. That makes a significant difference when you need people across 50+ countries to change how they work.”

How would you describe procurement’s evolution inside Bolt today?

“It has gone from blocker to enabler. We’re not at the finish line, but we’re well into the journey, and the progress is good. Procurement used to be something people encountered after the fact, if at all. Scattered emails. No governance. No audit trail. That’s behind us now.

We’ve built a fit-for-purpose operating model, surrounded ourselves with a team of superstars, and fundamentally redefined what procurement means to this business. The relationship with our stakeholders isn’t transactional anymore. It’s a genuine partnership, and the value we’re delivering reflects that. Now, we’re focused on making the transformation complete.

Zycus is the final piece – bringing intelligent, guided, self-service procurement into one connected experience. Intake through to outcomes. Sourcing, contracting, supplier management, and invoice processing are all joined up. And because it’s embedded in Slack, where our people already work, adoption isn’t a battle. It’s natural. The foundation is solid. The team is ready. We’re finishing what we started.”

Looking ahead, what does success look like—and where does Zycus fit in that future state?

“Success is delivering real value and being recognised for it. The goal is for people across the business to say “we have a great procurement organisation” not because we’ve automated for automation’s sake, but because we’ve built something that genuinely serves the business end to end.

We are working towards a self-serve and autonomous model that covers the full procurement lifecycle from supplier onboarding and contracting through to the majority of purchase-to-pay actions where the business can move quickly without being dependent on procurement as a bottleneck. Processes run through a modern, connected tech stack with minimal manual intervention, and procurement operates as an intelligent, value-generating function rather than a set of administrative tasks.

Zycus is central to that vision. What they have built is not just a Source-to-Pay suite, but a foundation for end-to-end procurement excellence from intake to outcomes. And for a company like Bolt, that’s exactly what we need: a platform that doesn’t just support growth, but scales with it intelligently, and helps us deliver the kind of procurement experience the business actually notices.”

About John Mahjoubi

John Mahjoubi is Global Procurement Director and CPO at Bolt, the European mobility super-app spanning 50+ countries and serving over 200 million customers. He was recognised with the High Performing Leader Award at Zycus Horizon EU & UK 2026 – a reflection of what he’s built at Bolt: a global, AI-led procurement function stood up from scratch, in a hypergrowth tech environment.

Before Bolt, Mahjoubi honed his craft across procurement and operations leadership in Banking, BPO, and FMCG. Tech is a new arena, but the results speak for themselves.

Check out the full edition of CPOstrategy here.

Author

Andrew Woods

Published

Estimated Read time

8Mins

Zycus’ Horizon event in Vienna brought together procurement leaders to examine the shift from processes to outcomes

From agentic AI to human-centric transformation, Zycus’ Horizon event in Vienna brought together procurement leaders to examine the shift from processes to outcomes. Across industries and geographies, one message rang clear: the future isn’t just automated – it’s been reimagined…

From transactional to transformational

A defining theme at Horizon was procurement’s evolution from a transactional function into a strategic business partner – a shift driven by both necessity and opportunity.

Benoit Severin-Delos, Associate Director, Global Procurement Operations, Bristol Myers Squibb

Benoit Severin-Delos, Associate Director, Global Procurement Operations, Bristol Myers Squibb, framed this transformation through the lens of operational change and user experience: “By the end of 2027, our operations will be very much agentic-oriented and self-service, allowing the business to move much faster and get answers instantly. That’s where I see the real opportunity – not just efficiency, but a fundamentally better user experience across the whole intake-to-pay journey.”

Marco Maffè, Procurement Director, Università Bocconi, reflected on a similar shift within a complex university environment: “We started from a very transactional situation, very manual and human-intensive. Now we are trying to move towards something more automated and business partnership-driven, where procurement is not just processing requests but actively supporting decision-making.”

For Philip Halanen, Procurement & Sustainability Director, Chelsea Football Club, that transition is already changing internal perceptions: “Procurement is now seen much more as a business partnering function – a source of value rather than just process. It’s about stretching budgets, yes, but also about getting more out of supplier relationships over time.”

Sydney Tshibubudze, Procurement Executive, highlighted how transformation is ultimately about unlocking value at scale: “We are moving from very traditional purchasing into a model that is centre-led and focused on category management and strategic sourcing. The goal isn’t just efficiency, but to bring real value uplift to the organisation – improving how we serve customers and how procurement contributes to the business overall.”

Vlad Tomita, Purchasing Director EMEA, Bekaert, underlined the ambition behind this shift: “We are moving from just serving the business to becoming a real partner – contributing to margin improvement and bringing added value into the organisation, not just executing transactions.”

Andre Brockmoeller, Director Global Sourcing, Filtration Group

Andre Brockmoeller, Director Global Sourcing, Filtration Group, reinforced the broader organisational impact: “Procurement has to bring visible value to the business – not just pushing orders or negotiating prices, but actively shaping decisions and helping the organisation respond to market changes.”

Agentic AI: From curiosity to capability

Agentic AI dominated the Horizon agenda – not as a distant concept, but as an imminent capability reshaping procurement functions.

Severin-Delos pointed to both the excitement and uncertainty surrounding it: “What’s interesting is that everyone has a different view on what agentic AI will become. But what’s clear is that in two to three years, the world will look very different, especially in how quickly we can respond to user needs and orchestrate processes.”

Maffè balanced enthusiasm with realism around adoption: “We are trying to transform the procurement activity from manual human-intensive activity to a more automatic and internal, customer-driven model. A business partnership rather than a transactional activity.”

Halanen offered a grounded, practical warning: “The key takeaway for me is don’t run before you can walk. If your underlying processes aren’t right, then layering AI on top won’t work – you need strong foundations before you scale.”

Tshibubudze focused on the strategic upside of AI-enabled transformation: “When you look at a solution with AI capability, it’s not only about savings. It’s about efficiency – how fast you can serve your internal customers, how effectively you can operate with fewer resources, and how procurement can deliver more value across the organisation.”

Vlad Tomita, Purchasing Director EMEA, Bekaert

Tomita focused on immediate priorities: “Right now, our focus is on automating repetitive processes. That’s where AI can bring quick wins – freeing up time and allowing us to move forward in a smarter, more structured way.”

Brockmoeller highlighted the operational upside: “Today, even senior buyers are tied up with transactional work. If AI can take that away, it allows them to focus on real procurement activities – strategy, supplier relationships and value creation.”

The human advantage in an AI era

Despite the technological focus, Horizon repeatedly returned to one critical point: procurement remains a fundamentally human discipline.

Severin-Delos challenged the language often used around AI: “I don’t really see it as ‘human in the loop’. It’s more a partnership – AI complements what we do and removes the work we don’t want to focus on, so we can bring more value as humans.”

Maffè emphasised the enduring importance of people: “Technology is a support, not a substitution. We still need the human contribution – the ability to understand stakeholders, interpret needs and make the right decisions.”

Philip Halanen, Procurement & Sustainability Director, Chelsea Football Club

Halanen pointed to the organisational challenge beyond procurement: “My team is ready and open to AI, but the real challenge is bringing the rest of the business along that journey. Change management is going to be just as important as the technology itself.”

Tshibubudze emphasised the irreplaceable role of human judgement and capability: “AI still needs the human touch – especially for the thinking, the strategy, and the reasoning behind the data. Technology can support, but organisations need people who can interpret and apply that insight, particularly in areas where there is no data.”

Tomita framed AI as a mindset shift: “It’s important that people don’t see AI as a threat, but as a partner. The real challenge is helping teams adapt and understand how to use it effectively.”

Brockmoeller reinforced the irreplaceable role of human relationships:

“To build real partnerships with suppliers – to share strategy, to innovate together – that requires human interaction. AI can support it, but it can’t replace it.”

Unlocking value through data and automation

Beyond efficiency, leaders consistently pointed to AI’s ability to unlock new forms of value from insight to influence.

Severin-Delos outlined the strategic potential of data: “With more automation, we can gather better data and use it to drive smarter decisions – improving financial accuracy, cash flow, and ultimately building more trust with stakeholders and investors.”

Maffè expanded the definition of value: “It’s not only about savings. It’s about transparency, compliance and trust – especially in an environment where we are expected to operate with a very high level of accountability.”

Halanen linked value directly to focus: “We spend too much time on the long tail of suppliers. AI can help us manage that more efficiently, so we can concentrate on the areas where procurement really makes a difference.”

Sydney Tshibubudze, Procurement Executive

Tshibubudze connected procurement transformation directly to business performance: “Better procurement means better service delivery. In our case, it means ensuring assets like vessels spend more time operating and less time idle – that’s where the real strategic value comes in, because it directly impacts growth and shareholder value.”

Tomita highlighted smarter operations: “By combining our existing tools with AI, we can move forward in a much smarter way – improving how we manage processes and make decisions.”

Brockmoeller connected AI to resilience and responsiveness: “Being able to quickly understand the impact of market changes – whether it’s pricing, regulation, or supply – is critical. AI can help us react faster and make better-informed decisions.”

The power of peer insight

Finally, Horizon’s value lay not just in its content, but in its community – a shared space for validation, challenge and inspiration.

Severin-Delos praised the authenticity of shared experiences: “What makes this event valuable is hearing real journeys – not theory, but customers talking openly about what worked and what didn’t.”

Marco Maffè, Procurement Director, Università Bocconi

Maffè highlighted the reassurance it brings: “You realise that the challenges you face are not unique – others are already dealing with them, and in some cases, solving them successfully.”

Halanen’s verdict was unequivocal: “If you’re considering coming, absolutely do it. It’s always good to be around fellow procurement professionals. You get a lot of like-minded individuals who will be in exactly the same space. The agenda really mirrors what I’m trying to achieve. And it’s really interesting to hear different perspectives from different industry sectors.”

Tshibubudze encouraged a mindset of openness and opportunity:

“The most important thing is to be open-minded. Instead of focusing on what could go wrong, focus on what could go right because with something like AI, the potential upside is what will really drive progress.”

Tomita pointed to the clarity it provides: “You leave with a much better understanding of how important AI will be and how you might approach it in your own organisation.”

Brockmoeller captured its practical impact: “It helps you take ideas that are still abstract and make them concrete – something you can actually take back and apply.”

Check out the full edition of CPOstrategy here.

Author

Andrew Woods

Published

25 November 2025

Estimated Read time

3Mins

Guests at Zip’s AI Summit – The Future Of Agentic Orchestration, CPOstrategy hears from Zip co-founder Lu Cheng, Director, Enterprise…

Guests at Zip’s AI Summit – The Future Of Agentic Orchestration, CPOstrategy hears from Zip co-founder Lu Cheng, Director, Enterprise Advisory, Michael Rooney, and their customers from Lighthouse and Flow Traders

When Lu Cheng, Zip’s Co-Founder and CTO, takes to Amsterdam’s TOBACCO Theater stage, there’s a sense of conviction that comes from having built something genuinely unique. Founded in 2020, Zip didn’t simply build another procurement tool. It created a brand-new category.

“My Co-Founder Rujul (Zaparde) and I started Zip around the premise that spend had decentralised,” Cheng explains to the sold-out crowd. “There were more requesters in purchasing than ever before, and procurement had become one of the most complex workflows in any business. We wanted to create one front door for employees to engage with procurement, giving visibility and control across the entire purchasing process.”

That vision became the foundation of procurement orchestration – a central layer that connects procurement, finance, legal, compliance, IT and other business functions through a single intake process. It’s a design that has since helped hundreds of enterprises simplify complexity, accelerate decision-making and drive measurable outcomes – attracting large enterprise customers across a range of industries, from AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic, to Prudential, Arm, AMD, and more

Across Zip’s customer base, the platform has delivered average annual savings of 3.6%, reduced cycle times by over 5%, and doubled compliant purchases. But for Cheng, the true differentiator lies in Zip’s approach to user experience and scalability. “We’ve seen over 50 million comments posted within Zip in the past year,” he notes. “That shows us it’s become a true collaboration space for procurement.”

The AI orchestration frontier

Zip’s next frontier is artificial intelligence and Cheng’s enthusiasm is palpable when he describes the company’s ambitions. “The orchestration layer is the perfect place to embed AI,” he tells us backstage, following his presentation. “All the data, systems and people are connected in one place, so our AI can make better, faster decisions.” Read the full story here!

Author

Andrew Woods

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Estimated Read time

2Mins

At the forefront of procurement transformation, Zip is pioneering a new era of orchestration and AI-driven efficiency. Co-founder and CEO…

At the forefront of procurement transformation, Zip is pioneering a new era of orchestration and AI-driven efficiency. Co-founder and CEO Rujul Zaparde speaks to CPOstrategy about redefining intake-to-pay workflows, empowering procurement to focus on strategic value, and the company’s bold ambition to process one billion AI-assisted reviews by 2030…

When Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, reflects on his time at Airbnb, he remembers the frustrations that sparked a new category in procurement technology. “Lu (Cheng) and I were both in engineering and product,” he recalls, “and every time we needed to make a request, we had to go through a fragmented procurement process – legal, IT, risk, privacy, and so on. It was a black box.” 

That “black box” became the inspiration for Zip, a platform designed to orchestrate procurement intake and automate the complex workflows that sit between departments and systems.

Founded just five years ago, Zip has grown at lightning speed, now serving over 600 enterprise customers across industries from tech and financial services to oil and gas and manufacturing. For Zaparde, that diversity is proof of how universal the problem really is: “Every enterprise in the world has this challenge.”

The depth beneath the surface

While the concept of orchestration might seem simple, Zaparde stresses that the success of Zip lies in its depth. “The challenge is everything under the iceberg,” he says. “It’s all the details – auditability, user management, permissioning – that have to work perfectly to make orchestration successful.”

He points out that many procurement leaders underestimate the technical and organisational complexity involved. “To get value from orchestration, you need to deploy it across a broad base of employees. It’s a high-impact, high-risk change. So when you do it, it has to really work.”

Zip’s uniqueness, he explains, lies in its enterprise scalability and end-to-end capability. “We’re the only company in the world that does intake to procure to pay – and can actually handle the downstream for you over time.” Read the full story here!

Author

Andrew Woods

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Estimated Read time

2Mins

Unite’s enterprise sales manager, Bob Van de Laar, on transforming indirect procurement through transparency, efficiency and trust… As European procurement…

Unite’s enterprise sales manager, Bob Van de Laar, on transforming indirect procurement through transparency, efficiency and trust…

As European procurement faces unprecedented complexity, indirect spend remains one of its toughest challenges. Fragmented supplier bases, compliance pressures and the growing weight of sustainability reporting continue to stretch teams already asked to do more with less. 

For Unite, formerly known as Mercateo, tackling those challenges has been its mission for over 25 years. Building on its roots in European procurement, Unite now enables compliant, ESG-driven, and audit-ready procurement aligned with EU frameworks, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), German regulation for public procurement below the EU threshold (UVgO), and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive(CSRD) – promoting responsible, transparent, and fair business practices. As a trusted European alternative to global marketplaces, Unite champions a model built on trust, compliance and long-term partnership.

Today, Unite marks its next evolution – from marketplace to procurement partner – empowering procurement teams to achieve measurable performance built on efficiency, transparency and trust.

Van de Laar explains that procurement teams are being asked to juggle multiple priorities and want to focus on strategic initiatives. Still, indirect procurement often takes up a disproportionate amount of their time. Unite’s role, he says, is to simplify that through one environment that delivers efficiency, transparency and compliance without compromising control.

From marketplace to procurement partner

Unite operates as a platform that combines a marketplace with procurement services. across 12 countries, serving over 40,000 customers with access to over 100+ million products from thousands of pre-vetted suppliers. This provides organisations with broad choice while enabling procurement teams to maintain full oversight.

Traditionally, Unite’s strength lay in creating a single, digital buying environment for catalogue-based goods. But as markets mature and digitalisation deepens, the company has evolved into something more sophisticated: a procurement performance partner. Read the full story here!

Author

Andrew Woods

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3Mins

Without accurate supplier data, even the most ambitious digital transformations are doomed to fail. At DPW Amsterdam, Boston Consulting Group’s…

Without accurate supplier data, even the most ambitious digital transformations are doomed to fail. At DPW Amsterdam, Boston Consulting Group’s Tyler Vigen and TealBook’s Alex Denomme discuss why getting the basics right is the smartest move a CPO can make…

At this year’s DPW Amsterdam, amid a sea of stands proclaiming the virtues of artificial intelligence, automation and digital transformation, two procurement experts made a simple but crucial point: none of it works without reliable supplier data.

For Tyler Vigen, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Alex Denomme, Solutions Engineer at TealBook, the message is clear. Procurement’s grand ambitions for AI and automation are meaningless unless the foundation – supplier data – is clean, connected and current.

Garbage in, garbage out

“Just about every booth downstairs has AI on the back of it,” says Vigen, “but you can’t do AI unless you have the right data to feed it.”

Within procurement, BCG advises global enterprises on optimising operating models, integrating digital tools, and creating sustainable value through advanced analytics and AI. With experts such as Tyler Vigen at the forefront of digital procurement strategy, BCG is shaping how large organisations reimagine source-to-pay in an era defined by data and automation. Vigen advises clients across the US on procurement operating models and digital transformation. He’s seen time and again how poor supplier data can quietly cripple progress. “When a procurement leader tells me their team spends 30% of their time manually fixing supplier records, that’s a clear sign there’s a breakdown in the process for collecting that data,” he reveals. “It means you’ve either expanded your scope without resetting your data foundations or you’re working with inconsistent processes.”

Those inconsistencies ripple through the business. “If you’re spending that much time on manual data entry, your process probably isn’t deterministic,” Vigen adds. “Different people are producing different results depending on how they interpret things. You end up with inconsistent records, which causes chaos down the line.”

Entity Resolution: A persistent blind spot

One of the most persistent issues in procurement data management is entity resolution — the process of accurately identifying and linking supplier records to the correct legal entity, even when names, identifiers, or formats vary across systems. “Most organisations can’t tell how many unique suppliers they’re doing business with, or which ones share the same legal entity,” says Vigen. “That creates huge challenges. If a supplier knows more about how much you’re spending with them across divisions than you do, they have more leverage in negotiations. You’re also missing opportunities for consolidation and risk management.”

Read the full story here!

Author

Andrew Woods

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Estimated Read time

2Mins

With their latest venture, Levelpath, Scout RFP founders Alex Yakubovich and Stan Garber are rebuilding procurement from the ground up….

With their latest venture, Levelpath, Scout RFP founders Alex Yakubovich and Stan Garber are rebuilding procurement from the ground up. Their mission? To make the buying experience not just faster and smarter, but genuinely delightful…

Alex Yakubovich and Stan Garber, co-founders of Levelpath, take their seat, sporting identical ‘Delightful procurement’ bomber jackets. They spar with each other like a well-versed double act. After all, between the pair, they’ve already built and sold one procurement success story. Their first company, Scout RFP, was acquired by Workday for nearly $540 million in 2019. And, after leading Workday’s procurement practice, they walked away with a clear mission: to start over and rebuild procurement for the AI era.

Rebuilding procurement from the ground up

“After Workday, we wanted to start from a clean slate,” CEO Yakubovich explains. “Everything we’d learnt pointed to one conclusion – the world needed a completely new procurement platform, built AI-native from day one.” Levelpath’s entire premise rests on that idea. Where others are layering AI onto legacy systems, Yakubovich and Garber built theirs around it. “We built it from the ground up,” details Yakubovich. “That means every workflow and every process has AI embedded from the start, not added later.”

Garber, Levelpath’s President, adds: “It’s platform focused. We’re not a single app doing one job – sourcing, supplier management or contracting – we’re the framework that connects them all. The AI can tap into any part of the system at any time. That’s how software should work, but rarely does.”

The art of ‘delightful procurement’

Behind the technology lies a simple but powerful philosophy: procurement should be delightful, as endorsed by the branded bomber jackets. “Everything we do starts with that idea,” says Garber. “How do we make the experience delightful for everyone involved? The business user, the procurement professional, even the supplier.”

“We’ve had customers tell us they didn’t know procurement software could actually be enjoyable,” says Yakubovich with a grin. “That’s the whole point. The technology should get out of your way and let you focus on strategy.” Read the full story here!

Author

Andrew Woods

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Estimated Read time

3Mins

When BT Sourced’s procurement team took a closer look at tail spend, they found an ideal partner in Candex, aligned…


When BT Sourced’s procurement team took a closer look at tail spend, they found an ideal partner in Candex, aligned in their focus on simplicity and speed. Together, they’ve made buying, paying, and partnering smoother and more efficient, replacing complexity with digital ease. CPOstrategy took a chair with Diarmuid O’Donoghue, Head of the Digital Procurement Garage at BT Sourced, and Jeremy Lappin, Co-founder and CEO of Candex, to find out more…

Diarmuid O’Donoghue is Head of the Digital Procurement Garage at BT Sourced and his remit is clear: digitise procurement for one of the world’s most iconic technology companies. “My role involves scouting, piloting and implementing technologies across our ecosystem,” he reveals. “BT Sourced was set up to revolutionise how we do procurement. Building trust was vital – not just with our stakeholders, but with our suppliers too.”

When BT Sourced decided to reimagine how procurement operated across its global business, one of the earliest challenges it tackled was tail spend – that long, tangled list of low-value suppliers that quietly eats up time, energy and resources. This motivation led BT Sourced to Candex. “Tail spend management is messy,” O’Donoghue recalls. “It isn’t a true enabler for the business. We had thousands of small suppliers making up a small percentage of spend. We needed a solution that was compliant, simple for our users and global in nature. Candex ticked every box.”

A startup’s breakthrough

Since its founding in 2011, Candex has been redefining how enterprises manage their long tail of suppliers. What began as a solution to procurement’s long-standing challenge – handling countless small, low-value transactions – has evolved into a trusted platform for the Global 2000 that makes it effortless for companies to buy from any supplier, anywhere. Behind the vision are Co-founders Jeremy Lappin, CEO, and Shani Vaza-Wahrmann, Chief R&D Officer, who set out to bring simplicity and speed to every supplier relationship.

“We were out there hustling,” recalls Candex CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Lappin. “We met with executives, searching for those first pilot partners who could help us prove the technology’s value. To BT Sourced’s credit, they’re an innovative team, and they recognised the potential and had the courage to take a chance on us.” Read the full story here!

Fotograaf: Daan Jeurens

Author

Andrew Woods

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Estimated Read time

2Mins

This month’s bumper edition is bursting with exclusive content from DPW Amsterdam 2025. The theme this year was ‘Put AI…

This month’s bumper edition is bursting with exclusive content from DPW Amsterdam 2025. The theme this year was ‘Put AI to work’ for what was an unforgettable week. 2025 was DPW Amsterdam’s biggest conference yet. More than 1,700 people from 65 different countries and 37 industries made their way through the Beurs van Berlage doors with 129 sponsors, over 100 speakers across 70+ sessions filling the expo space with lively discussion and invaluable insights. Every seat was filled, all tickets sold out. There is a demand for DPW unlike any procurement conference out there today.  

“People always say that it’s the most exciting time to be in procurement, but I truly believe it,” DPW Founder, Matthias Gutzmann tells us. “Armed with the amount of innovation coming through, the next generation of leaders are so inspiring. I believe the future of procurement is being written at DPW Amsterdam.” 

We were certainly busy out in Amsterdam, meeting procurement leaders and AI vendors from a whole host of big-name enterprises, including… Zip, Axiom, PepsiCo, Pactum, BT Sourced, Bridgestone, Candex, Boston Consulting Group, Valdera, Tonkean, Rolls Royce, Zeiss, True ValueHub, Unite, Nomia, Levelpath, HICX, Givaudan, Köse Advisory, Aptiv, Green Cabbage, TealBook, askLio, BeNeering and Resourcely.  

DPW to one side for a moment, we were also lucky enough to enjoy a chat with Andrea Sordi, SVP Global Procurement for Indirect, Packaging & Energy at dsm-firmenich, who shares his insights on the most vital elements for procurement transformation and success.  Enjoy!

Read the latest issue here!

Cover image of CPOstrategy issue 66
Fotograaf: MichielTon.com

Author

Mark Boswell

Published

10 November 2025

Estimated Read time

5Mins

Procurement is entering a new era, one shaped by the accelerating capabilities of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.

These innovations offer procurement leaders the opportunity to rethink how value is created, how decisions are made, and how teams operate. Written by Mark Boswell, a Partner at independent management and technology consulting firm, BearingPoint.

From drafting contracts to surfacing negotiation insights, these tools streamline workflows and empower users to make faster, smarter decisions. By integrating AI into daily operations, teams can unlock new levels of efficiency and responsiveness. For example, AI can assist in identifying relevant clauses from previous contracts, flagging potential risks, and suggesting alternative language based on organisational preferences. Enterprise AI tools like Copilot can help users navigate complex supplier data, generate reports, and prepare for stakeholder meetings, all within a familiar interface. But unlocking this potential requires more than just adopting new tools. It demands a strategic, human-centred approach that balances innovation with accountability.

Data: The Foundation of Intelligent Procurement

AI is only as powerful as the data it consumes. Clean, structured, and well-governed data is the foundation of any successful AI deployment or integration. Procurement teams must prioritise data readiness, ensuring that systems are configured to support intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and real-time decision-making. This means going beyond basic data hygiene. For instance, when supplier master data is standardised, AI can instantly flag duplicate vendors, detect missing compliance certificates, and even predict late deliveries based on historical patterns. Organisations must invest in data architecture that enables interoperability across platforms, consistency in taxonomy, and transparency in sourcing. Without this, even the most advanced AI tools will struggle to deliver meaningful insights.

Technology Implementation: A Strategic Journey

Deploying new technology is not a plug-and-play exercise. Success hinges on aligning tools with organisational goals, engaging stakeholders early, and embedding change management throughout the process. Piloting solutions with real organisational data helps validate their relevance and build trust across teams. Implementation must be tailored, not just to the technical environment, but to the culture and maturity of the organisation. Procurement leaders should focus on configuring platforms to reflect business priorities, user workflows, and compliance requirements. This ensures that technology adoption is not just functional, but transformational.

Human Oversight: Underpinning Responsible Innovation

While AI can accelerate processes and surface insights, human judgement remains essential, particularly in areas involving ethics, compliance, and strategic decision-making. Procurement leaders must design systems that keep humans in control, using AI to augment rather than replace expertise. This is especially important in high-stake scenarios such as supplier selection, contract negotiation, and risk management. AI can provide recommendations, flag anomalies, and streamline analysis, but the final decisions must rest with experienced professionals who understand the broader context – for example, an AI tool might suggest awarding a contract to the lowest-cost supplier, but a procurement professional may override that recommendation due to ESG concerns or geopolitical risk.

Tailored Solutions: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Procurement challenges vary widely across industries and organisations. The most impactful solutions are those tailored to specific needs, whether that’s guided buying, contract clause comparison, or supplier risk analysis. For instance, a manufacturing company might prioritise AI tools that predict raw material price fluctuations, while a financial services firm may focus on AI-driven compliance checks for third-party vendors. Deep implementation expertise ensures that platforms are configured to deliver measurable outcomes, not just technical capabilities. This requires a consultative approach to technology deployment. Procurement teams should work closely with solution providers to define success metrics, customise workflows, and ensure that tools are embedded into day-to-day operations. The goal is not just to implement software, but to enable smarter, faster, and more strategic procurement.

Balancing Innovation with Accountability

As procurement embraces AI and new technologies, it must also strengthen its governance frameworks. This includes clear policies on data usage, ethical AI deployment, and supplier transparency. Procurement leaders must ensure that innovation does not come at the expense of accountability, fairness, or compliance. This is particularly relevant in areas such as ESG reporting, supplier diversity, and responsible sourcing. AI can help identify gaps, monitor performance, and generate insights, but organisations must remain vigilant in how these tools are used and interpreted.

Conclusion: A Human-Centred Future

The future of procurement is not just digital, it’s human-centred. AI and technology will play a critical role in shaping how procurement operates, but their success depends on how well they are integrated into the organisation’s culture, strategy, and values. The key is to ensure that AI is not just a novelty, but a trusted partner in the procurement process. This means training users, refining prompts, and continuously improving the underlying models based on feedback and performance. Procurement leaders must embrace this transformation with clarity and purpose. By investing in data, tailoring solutions, empowering users, and maintaining oversight, they can unlock the full potential of AI, while ensuring that procurement remains a strategic, ethical, and value-driven function.

The author is Mark Boswell, a Partner at independent management and technology consulting firm, BearingPoint.