Tanzil Uddin, SVP of Content & Partnerships at Manifest reveals how the industry’s most influential ecosystem event is evolving ahead of its 2026 edition, and why procurement and supply chain leaders can’t afford to miss it…
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When you speak with Tanzil Uddin, it becomes clear that Manifest is no longer just a conference; it’s a living, breathing snapshot of the global supply chain. The event’s scale, ambition and influence have grown sharply since its relaunch in 2022, with the 2026 edition primed to be its most consequential yet.
Manifest began life as the Future of Logistics Tech Summit, a small, investor-centric meet-up in Florida. But in 2022, the newly rebranded Manifest launched its first physical event during the Omicron wave: “a full ecosystem gathering,” says Uddin, “bringing together startups, investors, supply chain leadership, operators and every stakeholder across the value chain”.
Now under the Hive Corporation umbrella, Manifest is preparing for its fifth edition at The Venetian, Las Vegas, drawing a projected 7,200+ attendees and an increasingly senior global audience.
Programming with purpose
Uddin’s remit spans both the event’s content strategy and its partnerships with global supply chain executives. “My day-to-day is really about understanding what’s top of mind for supply chain and procurement leaders,” he explains. “Those conversations – whether with a CPO, CSCO or COO – shape the entire event agenda. And those priorities are shifting fast.
Technology, especially AI, sits at the centre of almost every strategic conversation. But Uddin is quick to point out that Manifest isn’t chasing hype. Instead, it focuses on real, tangible use cases.
“AI is the talk of the town,” he admits, “but leaders want to know where the actual value lies; where they’re seeing ROI today, not hypothetically.” This pragmatic lens extends across the agenda, which is built around the dual pressures shaping the industry: short-term efficiency and long-term transformation.
“Executives are automating workflows, renegotiating contracts and simplifying networks right now,” he notes, “but they’re also protecting budgets for strategic bets: AI, nearshoring, sustainability. It’s a balancing act.”
New for 2026: Procurement takes centre stage
While Manifest has always been deeply relevant to procurement, 2026 marks a decisive expansion. One of the major new additions is the dedicated Procurement Stage, launching on 9th February. “This is a big one,” says Uddin. “We have a huge number of CPOs and senior procurement leaders contributing. We’re covering everything from de-globalisation versus globalisation, to risk mitigation, supplier visibility, geopolitical strategy and the evolving role of procurement.” For a function that has moved into the strategic spotlight post-pandemic, this focus feels timely and overdue.
Manifest 2026 will also introduce a Cold Chain Pavilion, an evolution of the popular Cold Chain Stage. The pavilion brings emerging temperature-controlled innovations directly onto the expo floor in live, real-time demonstrations. “It’s one of the fastest-growing investment areas in supply chain,” enthuses Uddin. “We’re excited to shine a brighter spotlight on it.”
A curated, global ecosystem
Uddin attributes Manifest’s growth to a very intentional, data-driven curation of the event’s ecosystem. “We ask ourselves a simple question throughout the cycle: Did we bring all parts of the supply chain into the room and is the view global enough?” he says. “My favourite compliment,” Uddin smiles, “is when people say Manifest feels like their LinkedIn connections have come to life.” There’s an energy to the event that can’t be manufactured: organic, open and highly networked.
One of the most powerful insights Uddin brings comes from his year-round discussions with supply chain executives. The skillsets required of tomorrow’s leaders are evolving faster than many organisations realise. “You need data fluency, AI literacy, and the ability to orchestrate cross-functional ecosystems,” he says. “Scenario modelling, risk intelligence and rapid decision-making are becoming core competencies.” But soft skills matter just as much.
“Change management keeps coming up. Leaders must be able to communicate tech-driven value to the C-suite and cross-functional teams. That’s become essential.”
Tech discovery is still the heart of manifest
The show is renowned for its ability to surface the most exciting early-stage technology in supply chain. “Our job is to find the companies that people don’t yet know about, but should,” he says. “And then we bring them to Vegas.” The result is an expo floor that blends the practical and the awe-inspiring: workflow automation platforms, AI orchestration and integration tools, visibility and risk-intelligence solutions, autonomous trucks, robotics and humanoids, electric fleets, drones and warehouse automation systems. “It’s a healthy mix,” he says. “The software that drives decisions, plus and the hardware pushing physical operations forward.”
Manifest isn’t just about showcasing innovation; it’s about enabling co-development between corporates and startups. “Leaders come to Manifest to explore, discover and collaborate,” Uddin emphasises. “They want to identify which emerging technologies can create value today, and which partners can help future-proof their supply chains.”
The human + machine future
Ask Uddin where supply chain strategy is heading and he sees a powerful convergence of human expertise and machine intelligence. “It’s not human versus machine,” he argues. “It’s humans empowered by the machine.” AI is automating more of the forecasting and planning stack, surfacing risks, generating recommendations and processing complexity at speed. That frees people to focus on what they do best: judgement, context, relationship-building and strategy. “Humans are moving up the stack,” he says. “AI helps them make smarter, faster, more consistent decisions at scale.”
How to get the most value out of Manifest
The release of Manifest’s full 2026 agenda – coming in early December – is a key moment for prospective attendees. “Planning ahead is essential,” Uddin advises. “We encourage people to come in with their own curated agenda. Think of it as building your agenda within our agenda.”
The Manifest app, launching one month before the event, is another game-changer. “It’s the holy grail,” he says. “Attendees start networking immediately; sending messages, setting up meetings, exploring who else is in the room.” His top tip? “Have your calendar of sessions and meetings set before you land in Vegas.”
The most exclusive room in supply chain
Of all the elements Uddin is excited about for 2026, one stands out: the second edition of Leadership Suite, a private, off-the-record forum for CPOs and CSCOs. “We had about 60 leaders last year,” he says. “We’re already close to 100 confirmed for 2026.” It has quickly become one of the most sought-after invitations in supply chain events. An intimate setting where top executives can benchmark, speak candidly and share strategic priorities under Chatham House rules. “It’s extremely valuable,” says Uddin. “You get a real-time pulse on how your peers are thinking.”
Why Manifest matters now more than ever
With global disruption now a constant, Uddin believes Manifest’s role as a convening platform is more important than ever. “Uncertainty is the norm,” he says. “That’s exactly why bringing the full supply chain ecosystem together under one roof is so critical. Leaders need to benchmark, discover new technologies, and have honest conversations.”
For procurement and supply chain executives navigating complexity and opportunity in equal measure, the 2026 edition of Manifest promises not just insight and innovation, but a genuine direction.
At the most recent Exiger Executive Forum, we had the opportunity to listen to the experts discuss how supply chains can shore up in chaotic times
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Most often than not, the control you have over your value chain is an illusion.
That’s the bold statement November’s Exiger Executive Forum picked to examine and dissect. The event, entitled False Security: The Illusion of Control in Modern Day Value Chains, was chosen carefully to reflect what procurement and supply and value chain leaders are concerned about today.
On the 18th of November, we joined Exiger and its distinguished guests at the beautiful Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London to dig into this topic and hear directly from the best of the best in an expert panel. The guest list reached from defence leadership, supply chain experts, world-leading analysts and senior politicians.
The aim? To challenge that illusion of control, and frame the conversation as a tough love wake-up call. Without open dialogue like this, risks can quietly accumulate in the background, leading to systemic failures.
That’s why the Exiger Executive Forum is so important. By giving the most pressing matters – especially the uncomfortable ones – a platform, issues are demystified and disempowered and real solutions to be put into place – both with deep values and credible pragmatism. This allows leaders in procurement and supply chain to resolve modern day challenges with confidence, regain lost control and determine their future and not merely react.
Tim Fowler, Client Engagement Director at Exiger, acted as moderator for the evening’s discussions. He opened the discussion with a sobering reality: that organisations all over the world are facing systemic risks. “Global supply chains are more data-driven, more regulated, more digitised than ever,” he explained. “But, paradoxically, they’ve never been more fragile with the convergence of geopolitical fragmentation, resource scarcity, technology threats, and regulatory volatility.”
The risk caused, Fowler said, is one that “hides in plain sight”. Many enterprises operate under the assumption that they have full visibility of their suppliers, and that as a result, they’re in control. However, dig a little deeper and there are many unseen dependencies, regional concentrations, and of course, human risk. With a more hopeful lilt, Fowler then reminded attendees that the goal of the Executive Forum is to explore what real control and resilience means in a chaotic and ever-changing world, with the help of the expert panel:
• Koray Köse, CEO & Chief Analyst, Köse Advisory; Senior Fellow, GlobSEC GeoTech Centre; and Board Member, Slave-Free Alliance
• Scott LaFoy, Vice President, Nuclear and Technology Security Programs, Exiger • Sven Markert, Head of Supply Chain & Logistics, Siemens Smart Infrastructure • Angela Qu, Advisor, Strategist, and former Chief Supply Chain Officer • Faysal Rahman, Director, Corporate Coverage – Global Defence Coordinator, Deutsche Bank
The illusion of control
In the first segment of the evening’s strategic expert exchange, Fowler dug into the concept of this illusion of control with the panel. For Köse, the illusion of control is one of the greatest blind spots in modern business. But why? “It’s all based on our systemic understanding or how we actually created value in the past,” he explained. “Not 50 years ago, but even just 10 or 15 years ago, the world looked very different from what we are facing today. Changing the rules of the game is something many companies still do not examine seriously. It requires a deep review of how their value chains are designed, the governance and compliance structures that guide them, and the intelligence embedded into their processes. Ultimately, it is about building resolve and the capability and capacity to not only survive the challenges of today, but to shape and compete in the markets of tomorrow.”
Following this, Qu was asked whether she has also witnessed a false sense of security within governance models in organisations she’s worked with. She pointed out that many companies now have risk mapping, risk monitoring, and risk mitigation as a top agenda since COVID-19, but shortages and disruptions continue. What’s key, for Qu, is “awareness, visibility, and overview. I think we’ve made big steps in the last 2-3 years,” she explained. “There are a lot of conflicts in the classical KPIs, which are still siloed even after the COVID crisis. That’s why you need good visibility of the whole value chain setup – not only tier one.”
For Markert, maintaining agility when managing various political, technological, and economic challenges has been a major undertaking. “The truth is, I don’t know if we really maintain the agility or just manage the chaos,” he admitted. “We’re focusing on adaptability over perfection, so we accept that full control is impossible. Then, we’re coming back to basics. This starts with processes, then technology. Lastly, people are the most important and most valuable assets you have. You have to build up cross-functional teams. We don’t want to predict the future; we want to be prepared for the future.”
From a financial standpoint, Rahman stated he believes it’s important to take a step back and contextualise the challenge we’re living in. The last few years have seen a pandemic, wars, and geopolitical tensions the likes of which have never been seen, impacting supply chains. With this in mind, Rahman believes that there “couldn’t be more of an emphasis” on supply chain resilience. “How do you make sure your operational resilience is robust so you can withstand black swan events that are becoming more and more common?” he asks. “Diversification of risk is really important.”
Sometimes, failure is simply not an option. For LaFoy, who works with national security-grade supply chains, having all of the information in front of you is great, but it means nothing if you don’t use it to take action. “Often people think they can see everything, and that’s only step one of the problem – it doesn’t fully address it,” he said. “You have to be willing to take action within the organisation, to mitigate the problem, fix it, and try to rebuild. People like to say that they’re going to fix their supply chain, but the supply chain is likely supporting a programme that has existed for so long it’s entrenched within the organisation. So it’s almost always too late.”
Vulnerabilities and systemic risk
Fowler: “Where do you see the biggest unseen vulnerabilities accumulating today?”
Köse: “It’s in the KPIs. Companies are measuring themselves against metrics that no longer drive sustainable or resilient value creation in today’s world. They still prioritise short term shareholder returns that evaporate with every risk event. KPIs shift from quarter to quarter, yet value chains take decades to build and mature, just as supplier partnerships and political relationships take decades to cultivate. Both can erode rapidly when interdependent opportunistic and negative actions and disruptions occur.”
Fowler: “How do you encourage best practice and good behaviour with your clients?”
Rahman: “The number one ingredient is confidence. Having transparency across the value chain, the supply chain, the governance procedures, is super important too. It can take 50 years to build trust and one second to lose it, so it’s important to take a very risk-averse approach while being very commercial and pragmatic.”
Fowler: “What have you seen work in terms of breaking down siloes to drive agility?”
Qu: “I usually go with strategy, organisation, technology. Technology encompasses risk mitigation, as well as ESG and compliance. We need dedicated projects, working with suppliers and engineers to reduce waste and create internal excellence. Personal resilience is also very important.”
Fowler: “How do you balance all the elements of regional concentration and supplier dependency?”
Markert: “Efficiency is still key if you want to stay competitive. We cannot optimise purely on costs anymore – that’s gone. We have to take into consideration, as Angela said, the transparency insights beyond tier one. For me, it’s all about continuity and compliance.”
Fowler: “What lessons can the private sector draw from defense-grade risk management?”
LaFoy: “The defence-grade supply chain has this draconian adherence to certain processes, and that inflexibility doesn’t always translate in a positive way. But in this case, it’s necessary to examine what key things you’re prioritising as a company.
Technology, intelligence, and the myth of visibility
It’s clear, in spite of the warnings about vulnerabilities and control, that the overall feelings for supply chain professionals are hope and determination. Fowler introduced the next segment of the conversation by mentioning that investors and PE companies are now focusing on supply chain risk and resilience as key measures. This bodes well for those in supply chain when they inevitably come to justifying proposed improvements. The fact that supply chain risk ties directly into financial risk proves once again that supply chain is a business-wide concern, if there was any remaining doubt.
For Rahman, from a financial perspective, there are a couple of areas clients are focusing on when it comes to their investments. “One is financial risk,” he told Fowler. “What we mean by that is leverage – how much debt and cash they’ve got on the balance sheet. The other is business risk, which is quite broad. It’s about how much the product is needed in the market, whether it’s a diversified product, and so on.”
When it comes to questions of compliance and ESG in supply chain, balancing those areas of focus with what investors want can be a challenge. Those investors may have a clear idea of their areas of interest when thinking about risk and resilience, and Qu’s solution for making sure those vital areas don’t get overlooked is to always see things from the customers’ perspective.
“That customer, if you want them to choose your product versus a product from competitors, they want to know you’re compliant to all regulations,” she explained. “That results in collaboration among different departments to focus on a common goal and how we achieve it. Also, you need an overview of potential risks and have solutions in place for those focus areas, supported by technology. Things can go wrong, but if that happens when you’re prepared, it’s not the end of the world. There are still activities where humans can take over.”
The conversation again turned to leadership, and how that affects organisations in a way that incentivises them to focus on protection and resilience, while not stifling innovation and agility. The key, for Köse, lies in communication and constant messaging, so vital areas don’t get forgotten. “The important factor is drawing the journey very clearly to everyone who is a stakeholder in this process, and make sure that every part of their contribution will become part of the overall value creation process. When we talk about resilience, you always need to think about the next step. We’re not necessarily predicting anything, but we’re preparing for everything.”
The conversation shifted to summarising comments, where the panellists highlighted resilience across all functions, with a heavy emphasis on supply chain, utilising AI to help navigate decisions, and simply showing up as being some of the most important aspects to getting the modern supply chain right. “We need to be able to understand, from A to Z, geopolitical interdependencies, financial impact, innovation impact, industrial history, and the most valuable assets – your people and your culture,” Köse concluded. “Showing up in that context, and driving that as leaders, is ultimately really critical.”
During the course of the evening, the expert panelists exposed the glaring issues and shattered illusions across the modern value chain, while leaving attendees hopeful that they can achieve operational resilience through a proactive commitment to preparedness. Thank you to Exiger for inviting us to join in this vital conversation; we look forward to the next one.
On the back of DPW Amsterdam’s biggest ever conference, founder Matthias Gutzmann, reflects on how the event has grown into a procurement powerhouse hub and explores what the next chapter for DPW could look like.
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Innovation lives in DPW’s DNA.
Never satisfied to settle, Matthias Gutzmann, Herman Knevel, and their team, are constantly pushing the possible in procurement. And with good reason – DPW’s growth journey over the past six years has been remarkable since its launch event in 2019.
This year was its biggest conference yet. More than 1,700 people from 65 different countries and 37 industries made their way through the Beurs van Berlage doors for DPW Amsterdam 2025. With 129 sponsors involved in the event, over 100 speakers across 70+ sessions filled 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. Procurement wants DPW.
And it is a key reason why organisers have made the decision to swap their much-loved Amsterdam home in favour of a bigger venue – RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre – next year at the slightly earlier date of 30th September to 1st October, 2026. “Moving into the RAI shows just how much we’re growing as a conference,” founder Gutzmann exclusively tells CPOstrategy after this year’s DPW Amsterdam. “It will allow us to get more creative, build more things from scratch and be even more immersive. It’s an opportunity to reimagine DPW.”
2025 marked DPW’s second year juggling both its New York City and Amsterdam conferences, with its US event certainly growing larger and now closely resembling its flagship Amsterdam event. For Gutzmann, he was impressed with the work his team put in to ensure both events thrived and had a great response. “We had to coordinate and work across both events at the same time so although we have more staff it was still a stretch,” explains Gutzmann. “But it shows us how we’re becoming a global player. The idea of DPW was born and bred in New York so being able to bring some of the sponsors over from Amsterdam was great. Procurement is a global function and I think having both events allows us to better serve our customers worldwide.”
In Amsterdam, there was no doubt what the buzz was about this year. AI is quickly transforming procurement and reshaping company strategies at scale. It is forcing procurement leaders to rethink what they thought they knew and pivot quickly amidst an AI boom. This was underpinned by the 2025 conference theme ‘Put AI to Work’, which builds off the back of 2023’s ‘Make Tech Work’ and last year’s ‘10X’ focus. Agents were by far the most popular topic of discussion, with the key difference being an emphasis on showcasing real use cases instead of simply hype. Leveraging and scaling it is not optional, as Gutzmann tells us.
“People have to get moving,” he says. “It was a call to action to say, stop talking and start doing. For the first time, we bundled that theme across both our New York City and Amsterdam events. The thinking was that we could compare how both audiences thought about the theme, and we know we got it right because there’s nothing bigger or more important than AI in procurement today.”
Despite the excitement of what new technologies can offer procurement, one thing that always shines through at DPW is the foundation of human connection. For many, DPW Amsterdam is like coming home. Some attendees only meet one another at this event every year so it acts not only as a hub for business but for friendship and connection. This is amplified and encouraged through the many side events offered by DPW from canal cruises to opening parties, padel tournaments and a morning 5k run. Even as AI develops and grows in maturity, people hold the key to making technology work properly.
Another highlight of a DPW conference is always the level of speakers it attracts. On stage this year were the likes of former CEO of Unilever Paul Polman, Bertrand Conqueret, Chief Procurement Officer at Henkel and Jennifer Moceri, Chief Procurement Officer at Google, among dozens of other big names from global organisations. Attendees were treated to vital insights and discussion across the biggest topics in procurement today including the likes of agentic AI, how to make better use of data and developing more robust sustainability strategies via advanced technologies, among many other essential themes.
The future of DPW and the wider procurement industry is incredibly bright. Moving forward, DPW is keen to meet more regularly with its network and has recently introduced the DPW Connect series which is bringing tech leaders and practitioners together in cities globally. Having started in October 2025, there are gatherings scheduled in San Francisco, New York City and London over the coming months, opening up spaces for the community to come together to connect, exchange and grow.
“We run two events per year across three days which means our product is live for just six days a year,” Gutzmann explains. “We felt we needed to offer something else for the rest of the year. The future of events is all around driving meaningful human to human connection and we want to connect our community and engage with them all year round. It’s not necessarily about scaling, but more around intimacy and driving these connections. That’s what’s most important to us.”
Procurement’s transformation journey is well underway. No longer are procurement innovators hidden away, they are at the heart of an organisation’s strategy and are now equipped with unprecedented levels of technology at their disposal to make life easier for them and their teams. And events like DPW Amsterdam help showcase the journey the function is on while shining a light on what is coming down the track. “People always say that it’s the most exciting time to be in procurement but I truly believe it,” enthuses Gutzmann. “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.”
Check out the article in the DPW Amsterdam Takeover Edition here.
CPOstrategy attends ORO Imagine 2025 in Amsterdam to uncover how humans hold the key to harnessing procurement transformation amidst an acceleration of advanced technology tools.
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“We’re accelerating into an era where AI isn’t a distant promise for procurement, but a catalyst for change happening right now. In the next two years, leaders who embrace agentic technology and learn collectively will define the competitive edge,” declared Sudhir Bhojwani, CEO of ORO Labs, as ORO Imagine kicked off with a surge of energy and momentum.
The future of procurement is not waiting on the sidelines. That much was clear as industry trailblazers took the stage at the annual ORO Imagine, hosted inside Amsterdam’s iconic Heineken Experience on the eve of DPW Amsterdam.
A recurring message threaded throughout this year’s event was that procurement is being reimagined at speed. Today’s challenge is not simply adopting technology, but dynamically connecting people, technology, and process, to drive breakthrough results. As the perfect prelude to DPW Amsterdam, ORO Imagine proved one thing beyond a doubt: AI is no longer theoretical. It’s already reshaping how procurement teams deliver impact.
Despite technology’s obvious presence, ORO Imagine began the sell-out event with a human touch. Lance Younger, EVP, EMEA GM and Global Partnerships at ORO Labs, urged everyone in attendance to stand up and introduce themselves to the people next to them. The thinking was that every idea in the room was people-driven, and ORO is renowned for ‘humanising the procurement experience.’
ORO’s founders, Sudhir Bhojwani and Lalitha Rajagopalan, anchored the event by challenging the audience to connect what organisations typically keep separate – systems, processes, and data – and explored how true transformation means making these elements work together seamlessly for everyone. Bhojwani emphasised that “agentic AI alone is not a differentiator, because soon everyone will have agents. ORO’s evolution into ORO AI V2 aims to become the universal front door for users – meeting every need, every time.”
Agents were certainly top of mind. It was the overriding theme of the keynote delivered by futurist Dr. Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, who explored the history of procurement technology and outlined four transformational generations, starting with the dot-com boom, to the procurement suites, which she explained were “built for a different time and place, to the SaaS explosion, to the AI-native procurement platforms of today.”
According to Epstein, agents will soon take over, moving the needle from human to machine to machine to machine. Source-to-pay processes will soon be fully automated, with humans remaining in the loop for oversight and governance. Epstein was insistent that this transformation will be great for procurement, allowing leaders within the function to focus on more strategic work that drives real value to the business while developing supplier relationships and embracing innovation.
Epstein told the audience: “No one wants to do this work. As procurement, we can start to do our real jobs that everyone has tried to do for the past 20 years.”
Following Epstein came the afternoon’s first panel, which explored orchestrating agentic procurement and focused on strategy versus execution. Contributing to the panel were Paula Glickenhaus, Chief Procurement Officer at Bristol Myers Squibb, Damien Robillon, Director of Procurement Enablement at Heineken, Martin Ward, Digital Procurement Lead at Roche, and Marc Ofiara, Lighthouse Lead, Category Management at Bayer. They explored whether they believed strategy or execution was more important and how AI would shape key decision-making in the future.
Ward helps lead the Roche team that implements apps and solutions under an agreed strategy to deliver better business outcomes. “Getting solutions and medicines to patients quicker is our primary business goal,” he said. “We’ve translated that down by departmental goals to work out what procurement can do to achieve those goals and support the overall mission of the business. What do we want to do on the digital side? What is the methodology we want to apply? At Roche, we want to try and make sure every department is aligned on the strategy.” On the other side of the debate, Glickenhaus was unequivocal about what she believes is most critical. “Execution eats strategy for breakfast,” she told the room. “You can have the best strategy, but if you don’t execute properly, then you’ll get lost. I believe execution is most important, especially with the amount of change management as a result of AI transformation.”
Later came another panel, which this time included Alan Rice, Managing Director at Cache Procurement, Julio Peironcely, Global Director, Data Analytics and Digital at Danone, Stu Rogers, VP, Development at Liberty Blume, and Scott Whelan, Senior Director at Pfizer. When asked about the best way to manage data-driven insights when automating unstructured data through agentic AI, Peironcely suggested involving category managers from the beginning of the model design process. “This means the model will do what it should do and doesn’t hallucinate while ensuring people are kept engaged because they are an important part of the process,” he told the room. “We see a greater excitement in our procurement people if they are working with the technology instead of just having the technology land on them.”
Then came Chris Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader from The Hackett Group. In his keynote, Sawchuk highlighted the impact of procurement orchestration and disclosed findings from an ongoing study. According to the survey, orchestration is already having a major impact despite it being relatively early days. Most organisations are beginning with three main areas – sourcing, supplier onboarding and intake management – and are observing faster cycle times and happier users. For example, supplier onboarding dropped to an average of 20 days for orchestrated processes, in comparison to 26 days elsewhere. “Last year, I was at DPW, and there was only a handful that were talking about agentic AI,” declared Sawchuk. “Is there anyone out there who’s not talking about agentic AI today? We don’t know what we don’t know. The question is what we’re going to be thinking about in the future.”
The final presentation was delivered by former Johnson & Johnson Chief Procurement Officer Shashi Mandapaty, who explored the art of the possible in AI-driven procurement transformation. Mandapaty urged attendees to accept AI as a new way of working and to expand the possible, not simply use it for technology’s sake. He shared that procurement expertise will be decentralised and procurement will sit within the business, not a siloed function out on its own. Mandapaty explained how generative AI investments will only pay off when yesterday’s best practices are reimagined, while he also urged leaders to possess a greater understanding of how their organisations actually work. “We are no longer the process experts; we have to be outcome experts.”
ORO Imagine 2025 was ultimately a celebration of people powering radical change. Technology alone isn’t enough; real innovation happens when procurement leaders reimagine the possible, adopting agentic AI to free teams for deeper supplier partnering and true value creation.
The tools are here – the future depends on how bold procurement leaders reimagine what’s possible.
Sudhir Bhojwani, CEO and Co-Founder, ORO Labs
“We’re at a tipping point. Our teams and partners are not just willing, but eager for change. Combine this momentum with hands-on experiences like our earlier hackathon, and the story is clear: the procurement community is ready to shape the future together.”
Lalitha Rajagopalan, Co-Founder, ORO Labs
“One of the biggest changes that we did this year was to introduce a hackathon because people needed to experience something hands-on, and it really opens up the imagination. The second change we made was that when customers are sharing their journeys, we want them to see it in action and get provocative people to poke, prod, and stretch the art of the possible.”
Lance Younger, EVP, EMEA GM and Global Partnerships, ORO Labs
“The hackathon was sold out, and we had hundreds of people on the live stream, so we’ve been incredibly pleased. Change is going to come big and fast. I don’t think people realise how quickly everything will transform. This is not a 10-year change – this is a two to three-year change.”
Check out the article in the DPW Amsterdam Takeover Edition here.
Guests at Zip’s AI Summit – The Future Of Agentic Orchestration, CPOstrategy hears from Zip co-founder Lu Cheng, Director, Enterprise…
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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!
What does this year’s DPW 2025 theme – ‘Put AI to work’ – mean to you, and how does that…
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What does this year’s DPW 2025 theme – ‘Put AI to work’ – mean to you, and how does that resonate within your organisation?
Tatjana Ozgoren, PepsiCo
I’m leading digital transformation in procurement, so clearly AI resonates very much. We’ve seen a tremendous evolution of artificial intelligence over the years, starting from traditional to generative. Now agentic AI is the talk of the town. I was just reading a research paper recently that was suggesting that up to 50% of what procurement professionals will do over the next five to seven years will change due to agentic AI. And I think we can argue different ways whether that would truly materialise or not. But the fact is, artificial intelligence is here in different forms, shapes and agents, and as a matter of fact, it’s very popular.
Marloes Strik, Zeiss
Oh, it’s the future, definitely and the future is happening now. And that’s also why I did my MBA thesis on this. The research concerned how mid-size companies can adopt AI? And I see a lot of companies still struggling with it, yet it brings so much value and not just for procurement. It brings value to the whole organisation. And that’s exactly the narrative we should have. It brings more reliability towards your customers. It gives brand protection and a faster time to market for your product.
Ashish Tiwari, Aptiv
AI is happening and the technology is evolving very fast. I think we (Aptiv) will give a little more ability and flexibility to AI when exploring new areas where the rule-based method is not needed, meaning AI will define its own rules and be able to deliver the outcome. I think it’s a simple scenario. When you start riding a bicycle, you don’t start straight away with a big bike, you start with a smaller bike and you have sliders. Then you get confident so you remove the sliders and you eventually get to the bigger bike. I think that’s the way it’s going to be. You will need an army of agentic AIs in your organisation. And over a period of time, when someone lays out their organisational structure, and they mention the name of the people, their role and their location, you will see agentic AI written out there with their location and the role they’re performing.
Ilona Piekoszewska, Givaudan
AI speaks a lot to me. We’ve been discussing AI for many months or years now to say how do we really implement it? We have a successful story to tell because over the last 12 months we were able to deploy five different tools to help us resolve some of our major problems. The category strategies needed to be more dynamic, and so, this is where we deployed another tool. AI and digital are all about the good data. Data for me, is a crucial thing. We can’t imagine our team members in the future working seven or 10 tools. I think they are great separately, but how do we orchestrate that in the future? And this is what we are looking at together as a team to find a solution: one source of interaction for our teams and our internal customers.
Tom Kniveton, Rolls Royce
As a company we have some restrictions around how we can use AI and where we can put our data and how our data is used. But fundamentally, we’ve started to use some of the capabilities around agentic AI that we see here at DPW. It’s allowed us to do a lot more. We know that procurement is growing all the time. We’re asking the same teams to do more and more and more. The scope’s growing. So, it’s just allowing us to pick up some of the work that perhaps people don’t feel like they can get to. We’re trying to see how it can work alongside people. That’s part of the challenge. But we’re making that step.
Lars Bettermann, Bridgestone
The opportunities with AI are enormous, but success depends on how we apply it. Technology is only as good as the people behind it. As leaders, it’s our job to hire the right talent, build skills, and empower teams to use these tools effectively. There’s no way around AI; our stakeholders, management and suppliers all expect it. The question isn’t if we’ll use it, but how – and that’s exactly the challenge and opportunity facing procurement today.
At the forefront of procurement transformation, Zip is pioneering a new era of orchestration and AI-driven efficiency. Co-founder and CEO…
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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!
Unite’s enterprise sales manager, Bob Van de Laar, on transforming indirect procurement through transparency, efficiency and trust… As European procurement…
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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!
We take a coffee with Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, to see how they’re helping enterprises redefine back-office…
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We take a coffee with Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, to see how they’re helping enterprises redefine back-office operations through agentic orchestration…
When Tonkean was founded a decade ago, the term orchestration was hardly part of the enterprise lexicon. Automation was the word of the day, and the focus was on data. But for Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and Co-Founder of Tonkean, something fundamental was missing from the enterprise software landscape.
“I had this aha moment that business processes are about people, not about data,” he reveals. “But 100% of enterprise software is about data. And while processes almost always span teams and functions, enterprise software remains siloed. Something was missing – not another tool or feature, but an entire layer. A layer that connects people, systems and workflows seamlessly. That’s what orchestration is.”
From that insight came Tonkean: an orchestration platform designed to help large enterprises bridge the gap between systems, functions and the humans who drive every process. Ten years on, orchestration is no longer a mysterious concept. It’s fast becoming the connective tissue that allows organisations to unify their operations, improve compliance, and leverage AI more effectively. At DPW Amsterdam, you couldn’t escape conversations about orchestration, which were taking place all around us.
Procurement’s orchestration moment
Founded in 2015 by Sagi Eliyahu and Offir Talmor, Tonkean is an enterprise-grade orchestration platform that enables large organisations to streamline complex business processes across teams and systems. Its no-code builder allows back office enterprise teams like procurement, legal and finance to build their own automated workflows and intelligent, personalised user experiences.
Without accurate supplier data, even the most ambitious digital transformations are doomed to fail. At DPW Amsterdam, Boston Consulting Group’s…
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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.”
With their latest venture, Levelpath, Scout RFP founders Alex Yakubovich and Stan Garber are rebuilding procurement from the ground up….
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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!
When BT Sourced’s procurement team took a closer look at tail spend, they found an ideal partner in Candex, aligned…
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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!
askLio CEO and co-founder Vladimir Keil explains how his company is leading the transformation toward agent-operated procurement and empowering teams…
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askLio CEO and co-founder Vladimir Keil explains how his company is leading the transformation toward agent-operated procurement and empowering teams to focus on strategic impact over operational grind…
The world of procurement is in the midst of a profound transformation; one that moves beyond automation and analytics into a new frontier of collaboration between humans and intelligent agents. Few companies are pushing that frontier further or faster than askLio, the San Francisco-based start-up redefining how enterprises think about operational efficiency, scalability and value.
Founded by a team of AI engineers with backgrounds in Silicon Valley and SAP, askLio has created what it calls the ‘agent operating system’ for procurement; a platform that allows organisations to deploy a digital workforce capable of handling the heavy operational lifting, freeing procurement professionals to focus on strategy, collaboration and innovation.
For Vladimir Keil, askLio’s CEO and Co-Founder, the mission is simple yet radical. “Procurement teams are drowning in repetitive, transactional tasks, leaving no room for strategic work,” he tells us, in our media suite above the bustling crowd of DPW Amsterdam. “Even with all the amazing tools available, many employees still find procurement frustrating. We asked ourselves: is this really the best impact procurement can make? That’s where askLio comes in.”
Born in the age of agentic AI
askLio isn’t an older platform retrofitted with AI features; it is AI-native, built from the ground up at the same moment that large language models and agentic systems began reshaping enterprise technology. “askLio was born in the era of agentic AI,” says Keil. “We didn’t have to ‘make it AI-ready’ – it was designed that way from day one. Procurement is an incredibly text-heavy and unstructured space. For us, generative and agentic AI were the missing puzzle pieces to finally unlock automation that actually works.”
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy at ProcureTEX, Roque Versace, Managing Director, EMEA at Zip, discusses the changing role of procurement amidst significant transformation.
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Agentic AI has the potential to transform the entire procurement ecosystem, and Zip has been among the early adopters.
At Zip’s inaugural AI Summit in New York earlier this year, the company announced agentic procurement orchestration and a fleet of over 50 purpose-built AI agents designed to automate specific, manual tasks across procurement, finance, legal, IT and security.
And since its founding in 2020, Zip has pushed the envelope in orchestration and the way in which businesses spend. It is something that isn’t lost on Roque Versace, Managing Director, EMEA, at Zip who believes that AI is simply technology that ‘accelerates processes and reduces risk’.
“AI will continue to get smarter, continue to get more agentic and continue to improve so I find that really exciting,” he tells us. “At the core, it’s just how we use automation to speed up things, but beyond that, it’s about what we will continue to learn in the future. The agents that we’ve released will handle complex things such as tariff assessments, contract reviews and compliance checks. It’s going to eliminate a lot of time.”
Indeed, the scale of this transformation is well underway. Last year, Zip approved more than 14 million requests and it is expected based on Zip’s growth that the number will shoot up to 58 million approved requests by 2026, with 30% of those handled autonomously by agents. While over the next five years, that number could reach over a billion approvals yearly with 90% of them completed entirely by agentic AI.
“When you look at the procurement process and you see with us launching 50 agents, it didn’t take long to find 50 different areas of very manual, time consuming and error prone tasks that need to be automated,” explains Versace. “If you’re a company that’s not automating your procurement process, then you are essentially killing the careers of your people because they’re going to be doing a lot of the manual stuff that AI will take over doing. It will be problematic if they haven’t had the chance to flex their more strategic muscle because they’ve been mired in 50, 60 or 70% of their time being tasked with doing these things that are very low value. I think AI is central because there are just so many very manual tasks that don’t require a lot of thought that can be solved easily.
“AI is everywhere, and the use cases for procurement are pretty straightforward. I think you’re going to find that a lot of the agents that are rolled out in procurement are so valuable. I believe one of the reasons for that is that with orchestration, you’re laying down a workflow that can be followed very cleanly where you can intersperse AI into that overall workflow really well. By doing that, you are using the workflow of the orchestration that we have as a frame from which to put AI in. The idea down the road is that the orchestration and the workflow is replaced by agentic processes, but we’re not there yet. The combination of a Zip orchestration platform powered by AI is going to help us get there quickly, safely, and effectively.”
Zip’s 2030 roadmap is clear, the future is clearly agentic.
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy at ProcureTEX, Vel Dhinagaravel, CEO at Beroe, discusses how to navigate a new era of procurement amid an AI transformation.
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“I think procurement’s being asked to do a lot.”
Vel Dhinagaravel, CEO and Founder at Beroe, is well aware about the challenges facing the procurement industry today.
With almost two decades of experience running operations at Beroe, it is fair to say that Dhinagaravel has seen it all since the company’s founding in 2006.
“There’s a lot of volatility and unpredictability in the market, but I think the key common denominator with the asks of procurement are to prove that there’s a competitive cost structure that they are providing,” he explains. “I think the old notion of measuring procurement performance in the form of savings is changing and evolving into a competitive advantage. This could come through cost, flexibility, innovation, speed, etc. I see best-in-class procurement organisations focusing on measuring their competitive differentiation on all of these different parameters.”
Today, Beroe has become a global powerhouse in procurement and stands as one of the world’s leading procurement intelligence platforms. The organisation empowers procurement leaders to make better, more informed decisions via real-time data and AI-driven insights. For years, Beroe has been actively enabling procurement’s shift from calendar-based optimisation where contracts are looked at shortly before renewal to continuous optimisation, where spend areas are optimised on an ongoing basis.
“The role of the category manager is to make sure that they understand what’s changing in the market, what are the emerging opportunities and risks while ensuring that they’re addressing each of those in real time,” explains Dhinagaravel. “As that shift is happening, we’ve had to change our operating model from something that was tailored to supporting discreet one-off events, to supporting the category manager throughout the lifecycle.”
With this in mind, Beroe is solving the need for proactive intelligence via its AI agent Abi. Built on a foundation of Beroe’s in-depth, curated market intelligence datasets, consisting of the likes of category developments, supplier alerts and in-depth benchmarks, Abi leverages cutting-edge LLM technology to distill critical insights and deliver them directly in a digestible and actionable format. For more challenging complex contextualisation, Abi can utilise human-in-the-loop capabilities to ensure accurate, nuanced responses tailored to the users needs.
As far as Dhinagaravel is concerned, AI is considered a ‘force multiplier’ that can significantly scale the capacity of sourcing organisations. “If today, the capacity of the sourcing organisation is constrained from a resource perspective, that makes them have to choose where they put their resources, and as a result, they may put some form of spend threshold below which procurement doesn’t play an active role,” discusses Dhinagaravel. “Now with AI, I believe that it’s almost like adding an exoskeleton to the category manager, which should dramatically increase their capacity and decrease those thresholds. This means there’s much greater spend under active management and more continuous management. For me, those are the things that AI should be enabling.”
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy at ProcureTEX, Alan Holland, CEO and Founder at Keelvar, discusses his company’s AI mission amid a global digital transformation.
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For the past 13 years, Keelvar has grown to become a market leader in advanced sourcing optimisation and autonomous sourcing for procurement. Led by CEO and Founder Alan Holland since the company’s creation in 2012, Holland has witnessed first-hand how the procurement function has mobilised and embraced AI amid industry-wide digital transformation journeys.
And that past isn’t lost on Holland.
Alan Holland
“As a company that came from an AI research lab, it’s fascinating to remember that in our early days when we were talking about AI to prospects and customers, they weren’t really listening,” he recalls. “In some ways they thought we were techies, maybe a little too far away from the problems that they had at that time. I guess, in some ways, they were right because they weren’t yet ready to adopt AI. But I still have no regrets that we needed to start building then because the frameworks for successful AI adoption require deep foundations. In the realm of sourcing, in order to do the process in the best way possible, you’ve got to have a sourcing optimiser that can reason about expressive bid information from suppliers, expressive constraints and preferences from your stakeholders. That’s the key to having efficiency and speed.”
Keelvar is committed to delivering ‘AI-first’ instead of ‘AI-enhanced’ sourcing solutions, demonstrating a firm mission is to scale sourcing excellence. For Holland, he believes that sourcing excellence revolves around approaching suppliers with transparency. “You must be clear about what you need from them, what your expectations are, what excellence looks like for you, and how you will measure their performance,” explains Holland. “At its core, sourcing excellence is about rich communication. But it can often be multifaceted so there’s always trade-offs to be had. If you look behind the curtain of any supplier, you don’t know just how much complexity there is. But if you can allow them to condition their offers based on the right structure of the package of items that would suit them, then that’s a good way of supporting excellence.”
One of the most important pieces of the puzzle to Keelvar is the power of interoperability and connectivity. According to Holland, interoperability in particular holds the key to success for enterprise procurement teams who want to lean into AI. “To successfully adopt AI, you’ve got to get your hands around your data and you’ve got to be able to pass that data between systems seamlessly,” Holland tells us. “The age of trying to copy and paste data from one system to another is not acceptable anymore. You’ll be left behind if you haven’t got neat and user-friendly integrations that are a single click in effect. You can pass the results of one process in a system as an input into the process in another system.”
In September 2025, CPOstrategy travelled to London to attend the first ever ProcureTEX for an interactive conference filled with important discussion and valuable insights.
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Introducing ProcureTEX.
A new kind of event has arrived – one built by the best-of-breed community, for procurement leaders driving real change.
Held for its inaugural event in Kings Place, London, on 17th September, and hosted by Keelvar, Beroe and Zip, ProcureTEX brought together the procurement community with proven best-of-breed technologies, so forward-thinking practitioners can build their own bespoke, integrated best-of-breed ecosystem to solve their biggest challenges. Designed for procurement leaders and digitalisation teams at large enterprises, the event was created for those seeking scalable, modern alternatives to legacy systems.
The idea of ProcureTEX was born following a casual conversation between Alan Holland, CEO and founder at Keelvar, and Vel Dhinagaravel, CEO and founder at Beroe, who both felt there was a gap in the market for an event that could combine the best of innovation with providers and vendors of a certain scale that can be interoperable. They mused that while some events focus on innovation, primarily attracting startups, and other conferences centre more on larger, more established players with a huge amount of pedigree – there was nothing quite like ProcureTEX out there.
Having been described by Dhinagaravel as an “unconference” in his opening address, ProcureTEX wanted to put practitioners at the forefront and create a place for transparent discussion about the direction of travel for procurement amid significant digital transformation.
One of the biggest successes of the event was the spotlight on peer-to-peer learning. In addition to speaker sessions and panel discussions, ProcureTEX provided practitioner-only sessions and workshops offering candid conversation, as well as a series of hackathons showcasing a deep-dive into real-world challenges. The result was an enthusiastic floor filled with a shared buzz and hunger for collaboration to achieve better outcomes for individuals and their procurement teams.
The first session was an engaging and educational keynote from Professor Mike Woolridge from the University of Oxford who stressed how “you can’t have an AI strategy without a data strategy.” Woolridge’s message set the tone for the day with speakers and attendees alike reinforcing the notion that clean, contextual data is procurement’s most valuable asset while also being its greatest challenge. No data, no AI.
Another notable theme from the day’s proceedings was that discussions about AI are now grounded in practice rather than hype. Real use cases were showcased, including a presentation on Roche’s AI orchestration journey delivered by Digital Procurement Solutions Lead, Martin Ward, and a discussion of how Siemens Energy is leveraging AI to tackle inflationary pressures. ProcureTEX highlighted that leading organisations are already “walking the talk”, when it comes to AI implementation.
Given the rapid development of AI-powered procurement technologies, it can be challenging for people and organisations to always keep pace with the latest innovations. ProcureTEX showcased the skills gap in data literacy and comfort with AI tools as an important focus area for the industry. Satvinder Panesar, Data and Analytics Director at AstraZeneca, said it best: “If you’re not competent from a digital perspective, you’ll struggle. Many large enterprises are like big slow ships, while AI is moving so quickly.”
Further, ProcureTEX demonstrated how the best-of-breed model is a viable alternative to purely traditional suites. The future is one of digital ecosystems with orchestration holding the keys to link it together. According to one attendee, orchestration is not simply workflow efficiency, but in fact, the data engine that powers AI and captures structured, high-fidelity data at every step.
Attendees praised the vendor-alliance format with one declaring ProcureTEX as a “breath of fresh air” and “refreshingly human.” Posting on LinkedIn after the event, Channing Brazier, Partner and Alliances Manager EMEA at SpendHQ, said: “I’ve been to more procurement conferences than most people have hot dinners – and usually, they’re all about chasing leads like seagulls after chips. So I was genuinely curious to see how this new vendor-alliance format would play out compared to the usual big-platform and organiser-led marathons and honestly, it was a breath of fresh air. Instead of the usual sales pitch parade, the vibe was open, collaborative, and refreshingly human.”
Sourav Das, Senior Product Manager at Maersk, who also joined Head of Operational Excellence at Maersk, Dilip Nair, on stage for a practical look at real world transformation, shared how the event felt more like a “working session than a conference.” He said: “Great job done by Keelvar, Beroe and Zip – this feels like the start of something lasting!”
Following the success of its first event, ProcureTEX is keen to build momentum. Given the overwhelmingly positive response from attendees, event organisers are already planning how to launch future ProcureTEX conferences elsewhere in Europe or in the United States, amidst a drive to create an ongoing community that meets regularly.
“We felt there was a real gap in the market for us,” Jenny Rushforth, Vice President, Communications and Content at Beroe, told us towards the end of the event. “We wanted to put practitioners front and centre to make our event incredibly practical with lots of key takeaways. There are hackathons which show how best-of-breed providers can be interoperable and can come together to make more than the sum of their parts. We are hearing from customers that this is what they need right now. They don’t want massive enterprise systems or to feel overwhelmed with too many point solutions so we are showing that companies can come together and create a better solution.”
Procurement’s future is transformative and ever-changing. It is set to involve a blend of robust data foundations, creative usage of AI and collaborative problem solving which is transitioning away from theory into producing scalable solutions with real-world impact.
The tools exist, the use cases are real – and ProcureTEX aims to facilitate the discussions and collaboration needed to bring more organisations along on the journey.
What brought you to ProcureTEX and what are your thoughts about the event?
Clare Cassano, Head of Procurement, Strategy and Execution, Invesco
“It was an opportunity to meet with other practitioners. We are in this world of new digital solutions and are at different points of the journey. It’s a great opportunity to learn from each other.”
Kim Harris, Global Procurement, Senior Director of Digital Transformation, The Coca-Cola Company
“I was really excited to hear about ProcureTEX a few months ago. It’s a brand new event on the London circuit so I’m always looking to take in new procuretech events and experiences. I’ve loved what I found this morning and there’s been great engagement with other customers and suppliers. It’s been really interesting to hear what the speakers have had to say today.”
Kasia van Rijnberk, Procurement Team Lead, Source to Contract, Global Categories, FreislandCampina
“Curiosity brought me. I’m really interested in what the hype is, what other companies are doing and how digital transformation is evolving the industry.”
Harry Saurai, Global Procurement Technology Lead, Astellas Pharma
“I think it’s very important that we as an organisation and a wider community evolve with what is happening in procurement technology. For me personally, it’s about understanding what our peers are doing and listening to any lessons that they can share.”
Darshil Khimasiya, EU Demand Services Procurement Logistics Manager, Colgate-Palmolive
“We wanted to understand how the industry is changing. It’s a great place to come and see what other companies are doing in procurement and how they are leveraging AI.”
Jemima Ahmed, Digital Garage Advisor, bp
“Keelvar invited us here today and I was keen to see what it was all about and see what others are doing. I’m enjoying it, it’s a great event.”
Martin Ward, Digital Procurement Solutions Lead, Roche
“The primary reason for being here today was that I gave a presentation about our journey in orchestration and explained our learnings on what has been a long running initiative for us. It’s also been great to come and see how scale ups are working together and collaborating to show how the procuretech ecosystem can be vibrant and efficient. There’s huge value here.”
Why are events like ProcureTEX important for the industry?
Clare Cassano, Head of Procurement, Strategy and Execution, Invesco
“They are super important because the world is changing so quickly in procurement, particularly in the digital solution space. It can be really hard to keep up with the latest trends and what good looks like so coming to events like this can provide a view over what other people are utilising and doing day-to-day.”
Kim Harris, Global Procurement, Senior Director of Digital Transformation, The Coca-Cola Company
“This is the best opportunity to share knowledge, best practice and experiences with each other as large corporations so that we can come together and exchange ideas to help us all mature digitally in this fast paced environment.”
Kasia van Rijnberk, Procurement Team Lead, Source to Contract, Global Categories, FreislandCampina
“It’s about bringing people together. We all speak the same language. We have the same issues and challenges to face so we can work together to do better.”
Harry Saurai, Global Procurement Technology Lead, Astellas Pharma
“It’s the future. It’s a huge, emerging market. Events like this will equip us with the knowledge we need to succeed. AI is the magic word and we need to grasp that because that’s the future. Events like this are very important in order for us to adapt going forward.”
Darshil Khimasiya, EU Demand Services Procurement Logistics Manager, Colgate-Palmolive
“It’s about networking. I love finding similar challenges that everyone is facing, so coming to events like ProcureTEX gives us the ability to learn and take things on board to improve.”
Jemima Ahmed, Digital Garage Advisor, bp
“I’m quite new in the space, so listening to what other people have challenges in is really interesting. This is especially true in some of the more intimate sessions, where people ask questions so you can connect and relate with them. In the garage, we like to look at what others are doing to see if we can help them while also seeing if what they say can instil something in us too.”
Martin Ward, Digital Procurement Solutions Lead, Roche
“It shows an evolution and an increase in maturity. You’ve got scale ups who are getting together not only to showcase their own capability but also about how they can work with others. It gives more choice, increases confidence while also displaying resilience which is what we’re after. We need to be able to minimise our risk when we make investments when we look to deploy technology.”
For most of their careers, procurement and supply chain leaders have operated in what might be termed “peacetime conditions” –…
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For most of their careers, procurement and supply chain leaders have operated in what might be termed “peacetime conditions” – globalised markets, relatively stable politics and just-in-time models optimised for efficiency. Well, that era is well and truly over. To that end, we were honoured to be invited to September’s Exiger Executive Forum in London, a gathering of procurement leaders, financiers and politicians to see how procurement leaders can navigate a new phase of supply chain revolution: ‘war-time readiness’…
18/9/2025. The scheduling of the Exiger Executive Forum couldn’t have been more timely. Just a week ago, NATO planes downed Russian drones over Poland. Saturday will see three Russian fighter aircraft enter Estonia’s airspace without permission. Sunday will see fighter jets from Germany and Sweden scrambling over the Baltic Sea to intercept and track an unidentified Russian surveillance plane. These are perilous times.
The Re-Arm Europe programme, backed by more than €800bn in funding and EU initiatives such as EDIP and ASAP, is addressing these concerns by placing the EU onto a wartime footing. However, this is not simply about tanks, jets and missiles – its impact will ripple far beyond defence primes. From chemicals to chips, logistics to software, sectors once peripheral are now central to Europe’s security as their supply chains edge towards the frontline.
From efficiency to fragility
September’s Exiger Executive Forum is made up of three exceptional leaders: Tobias Ellwood, former MP, soldier and Chair of the Defence Select Committee from 2020 to 2023, who brings a defence and policymaker’s view of Europe’s readiness; Faysal Rahman, Head of Defence at Deutsche Bank AG, who is strategically placed regarding the unprecedented EU defence spend and Koray Köse, Chief Analyst and Founder of KOSE Advisory, senior fellow with GLOBSEC, futurist, technology and AI evangelist and former Gartner Analyst and Supply Chain Executive, who connects geopolitics, AI and supply chain resilience at the sharpest edge of disruption with his massive global audience. Their host is Exiger’s Tim Fowler.
At the latest Exiger Executive Forum, the group tackles how wartime economics redraws supply networks, creates new critical suppliers and redefines what resilience and readiness mean for global supply chains already under significant pressure, where the impact of the Re-Arm Europe programme is but another stress test. After all, if your suppliers are suddenly required as part of the war effort, or are considered security risks due to their location, how will you replace them?
Be prepared
“You should definitely prepare,” Ellwood reveals. “What would happen, if say London didn’t have water or electricity for 72 hours? Who would you turn to? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. And once you get your mindset around those sorts of things, you can start preparing yourselves more widely for being able to procure in these difficult environments. Where are your supply chains leading? If they all go to China, then where’s your plan B?” he posits. “That might take you to Canada who are ready with a lot of the minerals, say, but the processing capabilities there are woefully behind. So there needs to be some direction, some vision, certainly some strategy to say we need to think of these things were the proverbial to happen. These are very difficult, but important questions and I think it’s really very wise for us to now consider them, however dark.”
War-time readiness is going to massively impact supply chains across all sectors, but are procurement leaders ready to respond when wartime economics collide with fragile, globalised supply chains? Köse, expert supply chain and technology strategist, pulls no punches. “No, they’re not, and it’s not only their fault, it’s the fault of the economy. We work in a way where you look at quarterly reports and three-year plans because the worst thing for a CFO is for uncertainty to be built into the budget. They hate that. So, what they minimise is that uncertainty in the budget that then reflects into stiff procurement and supply chain targets, which reflects into savings targets. However, targets should always be focused on value maximisation and if you don’t get that, you should get out of procurement and supply chain.”
Procurement’s historic back-office status, Köse argues, has left organisations exposed. Risk has been a KPI, but not fragility or resilience. “We’ve always measured cost, quantity, quality,” he details. “Never fragility or resilience. That must change.”
The numbers he cites are sobering. In Germany, it would take until 2121 to rebuild stockpiles of ammunition back to 2004 levels. “Nothing works without security,” he tells the room. “And nothing works without supply chains. Procurement is no longer about buying things at the lowest cost. It’s about national resilience.”
“Most organisations only invest in resilience after the last shock,” offers one audience member. “The problem is that resilience looks like an insurance policy. Nobody wants to pay for it until it’s too late,” he continues. “Resilience also means securing skills, not just materials,” declares another. Both perspectives reinforcing a central theme: procurement must expand its definition of resilience, from materials to people, from efficiency to adaptability.
No one will escape
The forum is clear that wartime economics will not stay within the defence silo. Energy, pharmaceuticals, FMCG and tech will all feel the squeeze. Köse cites the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets ambitious targets for mining, processing and recycling within Europe. “If you’re a CPO in pharma or FMCG, don’t think this won’t touch you,” he cautions. “Aluminium, cobalt, lithium – these are not just defence issues. Inflationary pressures, resource competition and talent shortages will hit everyone.”
According to Köse you first need to establish security and the visibility into supply tiers, to be able to control your supply chain. “Because supply chains define your economic success, which then bolsters the social fabric and so on. The ripple effect. “And when we’re thinking about supply chain, we have always underestimated the role that we played in this because we have always been pushed in the back office. But now it’s the flip side. Why? Because of those unprecedented events such as COVID. ‘Supply chain, can you please help us? We need PPE, we need availability of vials for the vaccine.’ And then Ukraine happened, and then inflation happened, and then AI. Suddenly, the CPO and the CSCO are both under pressure and the focal points. This is the time to act and not to sit and wait.”
Procurement’s new KPIs: fragility, resilience and agility
So, what does resilience look like in practice? Köse suggests that the three converging levers: people, process, and technology are now complemented with integrating politics and economics – without the amplification resilience remains an illusion. He also warns against procurement’s obsession with cost. “It’s not cost management anymore. It’s revenue protection and maximisation,” he argues. “That means funding hidden champions, backing innovative startups and leveraging the financial sector and banks to unlock capital.”
The technological revolution is creating both the problems and the possible solutions when reshaping procurement and increasing resilience. “We are still coming to terms with unmanned warfare,” Ellwood explains. “Simple drones costing a few hundred pounds are neutralising tanks worth millions. That changes procurement priorities overnight. It’s about volume, adaptability and speed. The lesson for corporate procurement? Traditional innovation cycles are collapsing. From 3D printers producing drone parts on the Ukrainian frontline, to Boston Dynamics’ robotic “dogs” potentially repurposed as weapons, procurement leaders must think beyond cost and consider adaptability as a strategic metric.”
Even with capital and innovation, Europe also faces a coordination problem. Faysal Rahman, Head of Defence at Deutsche Bank notes that “27 countries, 27 defence ministers, 27 bespoke tanks are creating inefficiencies. Soft EU guidance on joint procurement has yet to deliver real standardisation”. Ellwood illustrates the absurdity with examples: British artillery pieces unable to fire Lithuanian shells; aircraft unable to use interchangeable refuelling systems. “There is no commonality in NATO beyond small-calibre bullets,” he warns. “That is madness in this day and age.” For procurement leaders in every sector, the takeaway is simple: fragmentation kills resilience. Standardisation, interoperability and collaboration must be procurement priorities.
Mind the gap
So, how do we bridge the gap between the governments involved in these programmes and the commercial organisations? What advice can we give commercial organisations when they’re talking to government and vice versa? How can government help? “I think collectively you need to work out yourselves what you’d like to see happen rather than waiting for it,” Ellwood explains. “I’ve spent 20 years in parliament and in government and there’s an awful lot of reaction and ‘working the day’, not looking at the bigger picture, not looking at long term.
“Half the problems we’ve got now, including recognising where our rare minerals should come from is because China is very good at looking ahead 34 years. It’s always a lot easier if you are the dictator and you’re going to still be in power in 34 years, but for a parliamentarian, for a government and for a minister, you’re actually looking at the electoral cycle. My advice would be collectively work out your recommendations and then seek good advice from the people that can influence the decision-making. The ones that when all the meetings are finished, stay up late around the fire with the prime minister and work out what we should actually do. When you want thoughts to be shared it’s more powerful and has more clout, if collectively you work out what your recommendations are, slightly ‘across the table’.”
Financing resilience: banks stepping in
If fragility is a major problem for war-time supply chains, finance is certainly part of the solution. For procurement leaders, the implication is clear: access to finance is becoming a core enabler of supply chain resilience, hence the €800bn Re-Arm Europe fund. But agility is also essential. Unlike slow governmental RFP processes, banks are innovating with guarantees and bespoke lending models to get cash where it’s most urgently needed.
Rahman explains how capital is now being redirected to strengthen the supply chain itself – not just the primes at the top. “It’s not only large corporates that need capital,” he reveals. “It’s the smaller suppliers who are critical to the ecosystem. If one of Lockheed Martin’s 1,050 suppliers fails to deliver, the entire F-35 programme is affected. That’s why we struck a €500mn deal with the European Investment Bank specifically to fund SMEs in defence supply chains. Demand has been overwhelming. We closed that deal just months ago,” he notes. “And already 70% of the capital is gone.”
Conclusion: preparing for the next shock
From finance to fragility, drones to data engineers, one theme echoed through the Exiger Executive Forum: resilience is now procurement’s ultimate KPI. Rahman illustrates: “We’re starting to factor in these black swan events that are unlikely to happen in theory, but are becoming more and more common in practice.
The one thing that is extremely challenging is the uncertainty. If you look at any deal-making, whether it’s acquiring a company or giving a loan, the number one ingredient for making a deal is confidence. If you don’t have confidence, you can’t make that deal. That’s what we’ve started grappling with because the last three to five years have seen a lot of unprecedented events. How you manage that is really important. We’re also looking at issues around cybersecurity becoming a lot more prominent in the defence industry. If a missile or a satellite gets hijacked, how do you manage that risk?”
For procurement leaders, the war-time readiness challenge needs us to prepare not just for yesterday’s disruptions but for tomorrow’s ‘unthinkable’. As we’ve discussed, that means rethinking metrics, partnering with finance, investing in innovation, and engaging with government. Because in an era where geopolitics and economics collide, procurement isn’t just about sourcing. It’s about securing the future.
SupplyChain Strategy attended July’s Exiger Executive Forum to hear from the best and the brightest in the industry.
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Supply chain resilience is one of the most pressing concerns of modern business, whether executives are aware of it or not. That was the central theme of the Exiger Executive Forum held on July 23rd 2025. Titled Supply Chain Sovereignty in a Fractured World: Winning the AI and Geopolitical Race for Resilience, the event brought together business analysts, CEOs, supply chain and procurement executives, academics, and politicians for an open discussion around supply chain sovereignty and the urgent need to secure supply chains across myriad industries and territories.
As geopolitical events, trade wars, and threats to globalised networks threaten to destabilise global and local supply chains, the case for supply chain sovereignty, which is an organisation’s ability to control its supply chain and minimise dependence on external suppliers, becomes increasingly stark. However, a myriad of stakeholders must come together to enable organisations and nations to gain independent control of supply chains, and collaboration between industry, government, and academia is essential.
Three guest speakers joined Maria Villablanca, CEO and Co-Founder of Future Insights Network, each representing voices from within politics, business, and academia: Tobias Ellwood, former UK Minister and Chair of the Defence Select Committee; Koray Köse, CEO and Chief Analyst of Köse Advisory, Senior Fellow at GlobSEC Geotech Centre, and Board Member of Slave-Free Alliance; and Karsten Machholz, Professor for Supply Chain Management and Strategic Procurement at University of Applied Sciences, Wuerzburg-Schweinfurt.
The discussion exemplified the discordancy of priorities and perspectives among senior voices from all angles regarding security, economics, policies all impacting value chains, albeit with a shared willingness to engage in secure, competitive, ethical and innovative supply chains, fuelling businesses and economies through heightened volatility in a fractured world that is recalibrating through the era of reglobalisation.
Supply chain sovereignty: Bridging political understanding, and urgency
“It is a dangerous world that we’re entering,” Ellwood warned. “If I ask you ‘Do you think the world will be safer or more dangerous in five years from now?’, I think we’d all agree in which direction it’s going. We have to then ask ourselves how we prepare for that.” To that end, Ellwood believes an increased focus on supply chain sovereignty is both an economic and military imperative.
For Ellwood, the central issue is limited understanding, both public and private, around the urgency presented by the current risk and threat environments. Through the combination of limited knowledge around supply chain complexity and an election cycle-focused impetus to enact vote-winning policies, he believes the political class lacks both the nous and urgency to prioritise supply chain sovereignty.
“After 20 years in politics, I can safely say that many politicians are simply unaware of what’s coming over the hill,” said Ellwood. “The tide took me out to the last general election, and so I went from helping to craft and nudge policy and encourage Britain to move forward to then scrutinising what we were doing, not just at home but internationally. Now that I’m outside of politics, I continue doing those same things.”
The necessity for political engagement is not lost on Köse, who through his own experiences of researching, advising and leading supply chain organisations, has been advocating for supply chain resilience as a top line driver for economies and companies, has equally encountered the depth of that disconnect.
“At an early point I realised that geopolitics is the key denominator for all value chains and all of us in this context,” he said, adding that work is overdue but starting to be underway to bridge this gap. “The London Defence Conference, as one critical congregation, is key for you all folks to be aware of. Not only because of what they do in terms of bringing the politicians into one room to debate some of the most fierce topics of the day, but it’s all about convergence. Bringing in supply chain leaders, policy makers and technology folks with a direct approach to debate.”
Villablanca noted that Ellwood’s presence was indicative of a gradually shifting tide, however. “It’s not lost on me that here we are in this panel, talking about supply chain, and we have a former politician with us,” she said. “That is very different to some of my earliest supply chain conferences where we didn’t see that, so it’s a sign of the times. Set the scene for us around why you’re here and why it’s important to discuss the geopolitical situation vis-a-vis supply chain today.”
“I spent most of my time in politics trying to strategise, trying to go four or five chess moves ahead, and I found I was on my own,” Ellwood replied. “Politicians operate for the day, for the here and now, the election cycle; the news cycle is what keeps them busy. They’re not thinking about these things and yet the world we’re now seeing in everything… everything is being weaponised because that is the change in the character of conflict.
“But today, from my perspective, I see the world splintering into two spheres of hugely competing influences. If you look at the number of countries that have signed up to China’s One Belt One Road initiative, you’ll see that many of them are either opting or hedging their bets as to where things go.
“To make matters worse, our exemplifiers of what democracy looks like aren’t in a good place. We see what’s going on in America, British politics and so on, and Europe and America are not on the same page. We aren’t promoting global law in the sense that we had a sense of determination that we had when organisations were set up in 1945. Other nations are getting together and realising that there’s an opportunity to exploit the wobbliness of our world order and do things their own way.
“That’s where the mechanisation of just about anything comes in to cause us economic harm, to sow political discord from afar. It’s very easy to do and becoming easier simply because of the openness of our society. It means, from a rudimentary perspective, anything you do can be weaponised against you.”
“It’s very easy, from afar, to then limit your supply chains and thereby limit your capabilities. There are countries that specialise in sowing economic discord from afar. They understand and learn and know supply chains better than we do, and they can work out which missing pieces will cause our assembly lines to grind to a halt.”
That lack of preparedness, he says, is an impediment to putting the nation on a footing that could support a war effort on the scale of the World Wars.
He continued: “There’s also the prospect of preparing for war, which means that we are suddenly spending more money on defence. Our ability to switch on the supply chain levers to support military capability is not there. This is why companies that have no connection with the defence world need to think about the services they provide that might have a military bearing. In five years time, you may be called upon to do exactly that.
“That is the mindset we now need to get into. Security and economy are one and the same now, and that’s what we need to learn.”
AI, foresight, and risk strategy
The conversation then shifted to the business side, where securing critical supply chains powering key technologies such as AI, defence and security, biotech, energy and quantum computing has become a more pressing concern in the wake of a range of global disruptions through the early 2020s.
Along with broad supply chain breakdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, the geopolitical environment has become more fraught. Escalating trade wars, the imposition of sweeping import tariffs in the US and heightening tensions between America and China have thrown globalised networks into question. Alongside those challenges, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) directives have placed an increased onus on supply chain leaders to sanitise their supply networks against modern slavery, conflict minerals, and indirectly sourcing materials from rogue nations. The case for establishing redundancies in supply, as well as heightening visibility on an end-to-end supply basis, was thus clear amongst the panel.
“Koray, you work with a lot of different companies,” began Villablanca. “Do you think there’s a mindset issue where politics and commerciality need to come together to realise the common goal and create resilient supply chains?”
“Directly, there probably is a mindset issue,” Köse replied. “I think there is a lack of clarity about the importance of geopolitics’ impact upon supply chains, and there is certainly the capability issue of understanding the context of geopolitics.” He then elaborated on the challenge by highlighting shortfalls in companies’ predictive capabilities.
“Companies operate with risk dashboards,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s just red, yellow, green, and that’s all you have. They have a few key risk indicators like financial compliance issues, quality issues, performance issues, but you never see strategic foresight. It’s retroactive, based on historical numbers. If you look at a production line it might say, ‘We didn’t have an incident for 80 days’. What if somebody were to say, ‘We won’t have an incident in the next 100 or 80 days’? You don’t see that in production; it always looks backwards because it is built on the past.
“A big problem in a lot of the military complex, and in politics, is thinking that the next war will be like the last one. They cannot necessarily understand that asymmetric, hybrid and proxy warfare is really where things are going, and the same goes for technology. Supply chains are often built on yesterday’s technology.”
To then end, he believes supply chain leaders should be more forthright in leveraging their profound influence upon business operations: “In supply chain, we see the conversation about having a ‘seat at the table’ for decades now and I always say, ‘Just bring your own freaking table’, and invite everybody to it. Everything, every cent in an organisation, goes through you. Own that leverage and don’t run after them, invite them to come to you. Your table is where value is generated, secured and innovation and competitiveness are established. You hold the fate of the future.”
As to politics’ place within meeting this challenge, Villablanca asked Ellwood whether the political sphere could be doing more to shape the corporate agenda.
“Yes, and that last point you said is the most critical; recognising that there is a massive risk, that this is a very different world that we’re now facing, and I expect the point that’s really being made is the absence of politicians,” he said. “The politicians themselves need to be told what we need because their expertise in understanding this arena is poor.
“China now owns the periodic table. If you are into silicon wafers, where’s your serum going to come from? If you’re into magnets, where’s your Europium going to come from? You need to know this sort of detail, and it’s not just you yourself. It’s your suppliers and the suppliers of your suppliers, too.”
While supply chain transparency has undoubtedly increased in recent years, he stressed that considerable work remains to realise total visibility.
“At a recent procurement event I was astonished at how many household names were unaware of what their second and third-tier partners were doing during the procurement cycle,” Ellwood continued. “They didn’t understand the vulnerabilities, down to the SMEs, of what’s going on. If the assembly line stops then that’s quite serious, but what’s going to happen because of that stress?
“There are people who don’t understand it over here, not recognising that our competitors are deliberately looking at our supply chains and working out where that vulnerability lies. It is so that Ford stops making trucks, so that pharmaceuticals stop making medicines. Ministers are ignorant about this and we need to become better at it. This is the frontline of the next war that we’ll fight, and that war is coming.”
“I would add that some can’t fathom the complexity of certain supply chains and the vulnerability and risk associated with multiple tiers within them,” Villablanca posited. “There’s probably a translation issue with regards to business and politics around supply chain.”
To this, Ellwood stressed that international government groups hold the keys to unlocking a broader understanding within members’ respective political spheres.
“The G7, the Five Eyes Alliance, this is where these conversations need to go,” said Ellwood. “To recognise this must be a priority within the western world, we now need to have an alternative source to make sure that we can build our aircraft, we can build our factories, we can build our products. It isn’t so much the rare earth minerals themselves, but it’s the processing. Setting up a processing factory for rare earth minerals takes almost a decade.”
Here, a guest interjected with a point that hearkened back to Ellwood’s own admission that politicians have an innate directive to focus on local, vote-winning issues: “Politicians recognise there are no votes in this. The average MP will say their inbox is full of ‘fix the NHS’, ‘get the roads fixed’.”
Resolving political challenges such as those, Ellwood replied, is predicated upon strengthening economies to open fiscal headroom for public investment.
“If our economy is affected by problems with our supply chains, there’ll be no money in the treasury,” he explained. “Not for health, transport, potholes, policing, defence. It’s imperative that if you want to fill the coffers, then we need to protect ourselves. You can only do that with supply chain resilience. As a politician, you’ve got to take the people with you if you want to make the case.”
Villablanca then repositioned the conversation with regards to pressing issues around sustainability.
“There’s a lot of risk associated with our supply chains that goes beyond geopolitics,” she said. “We also have climate issues, economic issues. How do we maintain sovereignty in our supply chains while still trying to pursue goals around sustainability?”
“Supply chain transparency is something that I advocated for when I was a young consultant in the early 2000s when my hair was not so grey,” said Machholz, highlighting the gradual shift in supply chain priorities around identifying the finer details across those networks. “It isn’t a new topic and in the EU we now have the Critical Raw Materials Act.
Machholz drew the conversation towards sustainability in the context of integrity and continuity. “I’m German, and what we have is engineering power. We are good at car and machine manufacturing, but we have no natural resources. We have a little bit of coal, but all other things need to be imported. There have to be some sources to get those things.
“There’s Trump and tariffs going up and down, and we have some other geopolitical tensions affecting supply. You might say, ‘Where do I source this particular thing from? We don’t really have a second source of supply, because both of these sources are located in the same geographical spot.’ Maybe both of them are coming out of China.”
For Machholz, lessons to be gleaned around forecasting with technology’s latest predictive capabilities were presented en masse by the pandemic. “If we look at COVID, almost all supply chains were disrupted and you were running out of materials,” he continued. “You needed to be much more risk alert, and this is the problem we have already touched on: not looking in the back mirror, but using your data and turning insights into foresights to see what could happen, and then being agile and adapting.
“Sustainability could be one thing, having several sources, having alternatives, but of course, especially if we’re talking about critical raw materials, critical parts or maybe patent-protected or monopolistic suppliers, we are in an ambitious situation, put it that way, to find some alternatives.”
Machholz stressed: “This is something that each supply chain manager, CPO, and CFO, needs to understand to set boards’ scenarios. I’m pretty sure with the help of artificial intelligence we can elaborate much more on our data and predict different scenarios so we can be more prepared rather than just reactive.”
Shifting from cost-cutting to resilience
Of course, supply chain executives are under siege from an enormous breadth of challenges, whether it’s geopolitics, technological evolution as both a benefit and a threat, and shifts in consumer behaviours precipitated by those same factors. Rising to meet those challenges on all fronts, especially in a business landscape that often adheres to cost optimisation and efficiency over investing in resilience, can give rise to decision paralysis or financially-stymied strategies.
Turning to Köse, Villablanca asked: “There’s a mountain of black swan events lurking around us, ready to attack at any minute. What are the things that a supply chain leader should be focusing on today to try to build resilience?”
“To be honest, I don’t think they’re looking at building resilience,” said Köse. “What they’re doing right now is cost optimisation, looking at inflation and making sure that the profit margins are going to be protected through the bottom line, not considering top line revenue maximisation.
“I think agility and economics always need to come back to top line, which basically means in the context of normal business 101 you are producing something, that there is a want and a need and a willingness to pay, and not necessarily hyper-focusing on the cost line or saying, ‘I’m not going to produce a bunch of bullshit that nobody’s going to pay for, just because I got to claim savings to my CFO’.”
“I’m going to challenge you there,” Villablanca interjected. “I think, theoretically, that’s great, but everybody in this room is running a business. We have our own boards, people above us, board directors and so on saying, at the end of the day, you are remunerated and we are all remunerated for our quotas. How do you deal with the day-to-day management of your business as well as building that kind of resilience, agility and visibility?”
To this, Köse stressed that the difference can be made by reframing how businesses examine and counteract risk. “We’re thinking about turning the tide by really embedding foresight in risk indicators. Those risk indicators need to incorporate geotechnical, geostrategic issues with foresight,” he continued before highlighting what he implied to be a tendency for organisations to bury their heads in the sand when faced with developing geopolitical challenges.
“I published an article before Russia invaded Ukraine, about Russia getting ready to invade Ukraine, that went through loads of red tape and debate internally that calling Russia an aggressor was cancelled out from the research note,” said Köse. “They said, ‘You can’t say that’ while it was pretty obvious that Russia were clearly the aggressors.
“The supply chain-focused function needs to spread out and have these geopolitical indicators, geotech-related risk indicators, and not just the last financial report from your supplier A to Z or tier one or tier two.
“We must then tie it back to the value and revenue you’re generating. Get away from this hyper focus and obsession with savings. In that context, make your analytics smarter with a bold analysis of things that you feel uncomfortable about. Think about ‘what now?’ and think about politics. I know we eradicated politics out of business as much as we eradicated many other beliefs from the conversation, but it has to come back.”
With this in mind, he proposed that cost optimisation is to an organisation’s detriment where resilience is concerned, not to its security. “Your indicators for success are not just on the cost line item or bottom line. Your priority must be on the top line. If I sell more, I can grow. With cost optimisation you can shrink yourself to death. That’s what some countries have done with political reviews where you shrink this, you shrink that, let’s shrink here, let’s shrink there. Potholes, collapsing bridges and rail systems, come because of the shrinkage of your investment budget for public infrastructure, for example. What I have found in the last decade of the sustainability high is that it actually impeded resilience, while the narrative said it was supposed to increase resilience.”
To this, Machholz highlighted the data behind Köse’s comments that resilience offers heightened growth potential than cost-cutting measures.
“There were some studies from McKinsey which showed that companies who are investing in risk management are 4.7 times more profitable than those who don’t,” Machholz shared, stressing that businesses engaged in this mindset are missing growth opportunities.
“People just fall back and say, ‘Okay, now the risk is over, COVID is over, whatever event is over,” he continued. “‘We can just go back to business as usual’. Resilience is just extra cost, extra inventory, maybe a second supply chain that needs attention, money, and people to take care of it, and they just simply don’t do it. This is, I think, one of the big threats that we are all facing.”
Exiger Executive Forum: A closer look
The Exiger Executive Forum (EEF) in London is a global think tank that brings together elite independent voices from strategy, policy, technology and business to equip leaders with the frameworks and foresight needed to navigate the multipolar era. The EEF is exclusively curated for industry experts, analysts, policy makers, and senior procurement and supply chain decision-makers through Exiger, a market-leading supply chain AI company. The next Exiger Executive Forum ‘War-time Economics: How Europe’s €800BN Defence Spend Will Reshape Supply Chains’ will take place in London on Thursday, September 18th, 2025.
Ellwood concurred that this lack of foresight and willingness to invest in protective supply chain measures leaves businesses undefended against interruptions both foreseen and not. “We need to prepare ourselves for unexpected events to happen as the norm,” he said. “What would happen to any business if it didn’t have power for 72 hours? How would you look after your personnel? How do you make sure you salvage the business so that, after 72 hours, you can get back up and running. These aren’t questions that we naturally posed at the moment because again, we tend to park these things.
“The mentality may be, ‘The world certainly feels like it’s getting dangerous, but my life actually looks okay.’ That isn’t the right attitude. If you go to Sweden or Finland, who are much closer to the war with Russia, they are preparing in a way that we are not for a major event or incident. It may well be that when something happens and it’s the moment where governments wake up, but you shouldn’t be waiting for that moment.”
Villablanca then highlighted the recent, universal example of poor supply chain resilience bringing business, both domestic and international, to a grinding halt. “Did we learn nothing from COVID?” she asked. “Did we not take the opportunity to stress test our supply chains and look for the vulnerabilities within multiple layers?”
In response, Ellwood invited guests to consider whether the muscle developed in response to COVID’s interruptions had been allowed to atrophy. “I think that’s a question for everybody; how much of that was retained?” he asked before blending the conversation of supply chain agility with the potential for organisations to support national security should their respective nations go to war.
“During COVID, supply opportunities came about,” he said. “Everyone here today represents diverse businesses. What services do you provide that you could tweak or add value to where something else has fallen short?
“That’s where life really becomes interesting because that’s what happened in the First and Second World Wars. We called on organisations that previously had no interest in helping out with the war effort to add support and value to the wider machine and protect ourselves from a resilience perspective.”
Challenges faced by supply chains, he explained, have analogues to business that clearly marry the political and business spheres: “When we say ‘war effort’ today, it isn’t just Army, Air Force, Navy, air, land and sea. It’s now cyber, it’s space, it’s coastguard, it’s AI. This greater warfare is where a lot of the real pain will happen. As happened in COVID, it’s going to be the clever people in the industry that step forward to say, ‘I’ve already thought about this’. They’re in the patent-esque mode, they’ve done the work to say, with a few tweaks here and there, give us some extra money, and I can alter what I’m producing to provide a solution.”
The roles of government and industry
While there are clear precedents for, and incoming needs to, prioritise supply chain resilience in both the political and business spheres, the conversation made it clear that a unified front stands to offer the most impact.
The challenge, particularly in a political environment preoccupied with economic stabilisation, increased productivity, and soothed international relations, is identifying a shared north star or galvanising body to lead the shared project.
Striking at the heart of the conversation, one guest posited: “If we want to align supply chain and geopolitics moving forward with a mutually-reinforcing relationship and shared goals, joint risk assessment, a focus on resilience over efficiency, and heightened cross-disciplinary talent and data, what are the forward steps?
“What can we within industry do in partnership with governments to move this forward?”
Representing the political voice, Ellwood replied: “There are certainly supply chain improvements that you can do on a national, sovereign basis. But from where I sit, there is a wide political threat that we face and are losing right now. One of them is to do with the energy supply, and another is the threat of AI. The quantum race will be won or lost in the next five years’ time, and that will be game-changing. It simply means that if the winner can harness the power of computing on that scale, everything’s over.”
Ellwood then invoked the technological advancements made in modern wartime, stressing that political figures must wield the mindset of those times to accelerate progress.
“I would like to see some two or three Manhattan Project equivalents, if you like, to ask, ‘How do we harness modular nuclear power?’,” he said. “That’s a very easy way to keep our lights on locally. Then, how do you harness AI? Let’s make sure it is this side of the world that wins that.
“Again, there isn’t that coordination, that sense of urgency, because it’s too far down the road,” he concluded, then highlighting that opposing forces on the world stage already have the unified capabilities that many Western nations lack. “State, industry, and academia in China, for example, are all morphed into one and that gives them huge benefits in the race for these key arenas.”
Köse elaborated on this point by highlighting Turkey’s effective coalescence of business and government.
“If you think about the private-public national defence sector in Turkey, it came from being totally dependent on the US armoury to a leading innovator of drone wars,” Köse explained. “When you think about asymmetric warfare, innovative, impactful and economic weaponry, from drones to secure soldier transportation and all of that, think about what Turkey is producing right now in technology compared to others. The headway Turkey experienced in the last decade in the defence sector is unprecedented.
“That private-public sector coalition and symbiosis has covered such a need for them in a decade that many are surprised. I think that is something that Europe has to relearn, because Europe thinks a lot about public sector dominance in an area where the private sector should actually take charge. In the US, it’s the opposite. They say, ‘keep the public sector out’. The solution lies in collaboration and bringing each sectors strength to the table while leaving out their weaknesses and flaws.
While of course not advocating for adopting the political model, he agreed with Ellwood that nations like China have an innate advantage in this race. “When you think about the way that the autocratic countries are going about it, it’s the public sector dominating the private sector environment,” he said. “That’s why they’re so hyperfocused on things and they can scale but not necessarily innovate in this sector.
“I love the government when it’s in the right place to actually do something positive and impactful. But when I’m exposed to it, I usually get anxiety issues due to the lack of pragmatism, innovation and agility. But hopefully there’s this convergence of politics, business and academia driving intelligence into critical sectors and industry, and we’re trying to drive it through this think tank here.”
The unified case for supply chain sovereignty
Exiger’s Supply Chain Sovereignty in a Fractured World event was an enlightening review of the supply chain landscape and the myriad challenges and stakeholders it encompasses.
While the panellists’ conversation in many ways highlighted the disconnect between government, business, and academia, the resonating message was one of shared pressures and goals. Where governments have pulled back on the reins of public spending, many organisations have in kind adopted a cost-optimisation mindset that may protect the bottom line but opens the door to heightened vulnerability.
Where governments must consider challenges around energy sovereignty and insulating populations against the breakdown of globalised networks – as was demonstrated upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – supply chain executives must create redundancies to cover lapses and minimise potential disruptions to production and wider organisational integrity.
The guests’ final comment, that states which can marry both the public and private spheres towards shared interests, neatly encapsulates the urgency with which those worlds must reunite. While much work remains to enmesh those spheres, it is clear that the conversation is progressing at pace.
CPOstrategy attended Zip’s exclusive AI Summit in New York this year, to learn more about the future of agentic orchestration, and what that means for Zip and its guests.
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On the 10th of June, preceding DPW New York 2025, Zip hosted its own invite-only AI summit in Brooklyn, NYC. Taking place at the Ace Hotel, Zip gathered over 100 procurement professionals to discuss agentic orchestration and run workshops and roundtables, enabling guests to learn, share, and network.
That very morning, Zip announced major news: the release of a suite of 50+ AI agents to automate high-impact tasks, from tariff analysis to GDPR compliance, and everything in between. This announcement created an even bigger buzz at the AI summit, which kicked off with an introduction from Lu Cheng, Co-Founder and CTO of Zip.
Cheng stated that the Zip team has been looking forward to the summit all year, and – vitally – to this monumental product launch. He discussed the fact that the entire point of Zip, since its creation in 2020, has been to make technology and processes less painful, and since then the business has changed the industry. Now, Zip is trusted by hundreds of enterprise customers, delivering an average of 3.6% in savings, and 55% faster purchasing cycles.
“Today marks the most important milestone in Zip history, and the biggest leap forward procurement has ever seen,” said Cheng from the stage. These 50+ agents will be embedded into workflowers to complete specific tasks. Customers can choose from any of the templates, or build their own custom agent. These agents save millions of hours, and completely redefine what procurement can be.
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Lu Cheng, Co-Founder and CTO of Zip
Tell us about the launch of these AI agents.
“It’s something that we’ve been working on for the past year, and a lot of it has been grounded from where we were at the very beginning, five years ago. We started by creating the intake and procurement orchestration category, which is truly revolutionary as a standalone salon product. But it’s been really exciting in the last five years. With intake and procurement orchestration, we’ve been able to not only help orchestrate the workflow, but deliver real ROI along the way. We’ve been able to deliver 3.6% in savings, double the number of compliant purchases, and significantly improve cycle times along the way by 55%.
“We truly believe the next evolution is agentic procurement orchestration, and it’s embedding AI agents into every single part of the workflow. We’re really excited for this launch, and part of that is taking the actual intake request information itself and determining, hey, is it categorised properly? Are the payment terms within company compliance and policy? We’re really excited about these agents, because it’ll truly change how we think about running and operating the function.”
This technology represents a huge shift away from AI assisted workplace, to becoming fully autonomous. From your perspective, what does that shift look like?
“It’s really a multi-phase journey that every company will need to work on. With AI, the evolution is so fast. Every week, every month, every couple of months, there have been fundamental step function changes in the foundation models, and the internal adoption of AI. And for us, this is where we focus on agents and what they can do for our customers. Over the next two to three years, we see a world where agents will be able to autonomously run a lot of review processes themselves. We’re at the very first stages of our journey today, and are starting to partner with our customers to embed agents into specific aspects of their workflow with our 50 agents. Over time, we really see a large transformation across the entire function.”
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A fundamental shift in procurement
Nikki Garcia, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Zip, also took to the stage during the introduction to the summit. She discussed the fact that procurement has fundamentally changed, and that it’s at the centre of a complex network. Making sense of it is difficult, and mistakes can be costly. As a result, the stakes are higher than ever. Procurement teams are buried in work that could, and should, be automated, weighed down and overwhelmed by repetitive tasks.
The answer is AI. Many core procurement tasks are a perfect match for AI to tackle, and AI agents are the best possible use of this technology. Garcia stated that these agents should be thought of as interns that need very specific direction and rules. What makes Zip’s agents different is their specificity.
Phil Pappone, Director of Solutions Engineering at Zip, went on to talk about the fact that agents can be baked into the workflow at any point, reviewing documents to pull key insights, and being used to research current relevant events – like tariffs – to help humans make business decisions. They can even investigate whether a supplier is subject to DORA, and can streamline compliance associated with that. Zip is the connective tissue of this orchestration process, while its agents can be dropped into the workflow and deployed seamlessly.
Cheng closed out the introduction to the day with a reminder that Zip is leading the next evolution of agentic procurement orchestration. “This is the agent-first future we all need to plan for,” he stated, “and this is only the beginning”. Cheng also predicted that by 2028, agents will be working independently.
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Laurie Hill, VP, Procurement Innovations, Systems & Analytics at Prudential
What are your thoughts on the Zip AI Summit so far?
“It’s been really great. There are a lot of networking opportunities, and we’ve heard a lot of very interesting things from the presenters and the panels.”
Zip announced its 50+ specialised AI agents today. What do you think about this move?
I’m super excited about this. We had been looking for help in our organisation a lot when we implemented Zip in January, and I think this will be a tremendous addition. We’re already starting to have conversations within my team about how this might overlap with some of the things that we’re doing. I love the fact that it is very specific to steps in the process, and not super broad.”
From your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges that procurement is facing right now?
“I think we have a huge amount of volume that we haven’t necessarily had before. Our businesses are looking to move a lot faster than they had been in the past, and they’re expecting us to be able to do that, so we have to meet that challenge.”
Tell me your thoughts on working with Zip.
“We’ve had a great relationship with them. The team that we’ve been working with has been fantastic. Our implementations so far have gone really well. We continue to try to leverage the team as much as we can, we’re looking forward to continuing to grow with them.”
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AI at the core of everything
Felix Meng, Co-Founder and VP of Zip, later led a panel of procurement leaders in a session entitled ‘Preparing for procurement’s agent-first future’. In the wake of Zip’s agent announcement, it was a timely deep-dive into what it means to make AI the core of procurement operations. Each panelist talked about what they’re excited about regarding AI within their companies, and what they’re sceptical about, e.g. being distrustful of AI, or a fear of being replaced.
The discussion then revolved around what having agents living within the orchestration layer can do, and how they drive AI. The key is getting people on board who can see the potential, but driving adoption of the vision is a challenge. The panel also touched on an important point: that not everything should involve AI, because some tasks require the human touch. However, the use of agents represents thousands of saved hours, and enables businesses to use that recovered time for things like strategy development, continuous improvement, and upskilling.
AI’s current wave
Then Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, took to the stage with Jay Simons, General Partner at Bond. This AI luminary session shone a spotlight on Simons as an AI visionary, as he discussed his view on AI with Zaparde. Simons began in enterprise software, and wanted to give back to and invest in a smaller business that shared the same vision as him.
When asked whether this current wave of AI is meaningfully different, Simons said yes. “AI is advantaged because of all that’s come before it, but it’s also profoundly different,” he explained. “We’re finally able to create thinking machines, and introduce capabilities that can think on our behalf. AI is an amplifier for fast-moving category leaders.”
Simons also acknowledged that some are still stubbornly resistant to change, but that’s shifting and being unlearned. It will only get better.
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William Yan, Senior Product Manager, Zip
What does the shift towards agentic AI look like?
“We want to do a crawl, walk, run. Not only from a technological standpoint – and obviously things are still developing and getting better – but even from a change management standpoint, people aren’t comfortable leaping straight into it. It’s about getting people used to using AI. Initially, it’s really about augmenting. It’s about supporting the person that makes the decision. So now, as we start shifting to more agentic, more autonomy, we have this internal framework around levels of autonomy. We definitely feel like we’re in the early stages of that, both from a confidence in our own technology and comfort level of our customers for adopting. Over time, as our customers build confidence, and as we build confidence, we can see that shift in terms of taking more complexity, more autonomy with these agents.”
When you were planning this summit today, what were some of the elements that you were determined to make sure that you could bring for your customers?
“We obviously wanted to share our vision and the products that we are launching with. We wanted the voice of the customer to come and see, because it feels like a lot of the time, we hear that everyone’s thinking about AI, but people aren’t necessarily talking to each other. And so a forum to hear from peers is really helpful. We also had the workshop, which for us, was really about demystifying the agents. I think people can be intimidated.”
Let’s talk about the workshop. How did it go? Do you think that people left with a better idea of what agents are and what they mean?
“I hope so. We had some good discussions afterwards, as people were thinking about the different problems. I feel like it helped people understand and part of the challenge is when you think about where to apply AI without boundaries, you think, ‘I have so many problems, where do I start?’ And it’s hard to build that intuition. I think the framing that we built helped guide that discussion. We’re encouraging people to think a little bit more simply about high value, but repetitive tasks; things that can be clearly defined.”
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Inspiring conversation
Following William Yan’s ‘design your own agent’ workshop, Anthropic’s Katie Streu, Head of Procurement, and Adam Dix, Head of Finance Operations, then led a session about the business’s AI maturity framework. The talk centred around Claude, a family of LLMs, and its position as a consultant, teammate, agent, and analyst. The pair discussed their vision for AI in procurement, including adoption, automation, and assurance.
They stated that, in the future, everything to do with these elements will be dealt with by AI agents – and we’re close to realising that future. It’s about building trust through verification, which involves a human being in the loop. AI isn’t going to replace everyone, but everyone needs to be on board with how AI can assist them.
Before the summit wound down, attendees broke into groups for discussion roundtables. The groups talked about procurement’s AI maturity curve, setting AI expectations, assessing AI maturity, and looking ahead at the next few years and what they might hold. The buzz didn’t abate, the chatter continuing long after the event finished and guests began leaving for the DPW New York opening party.
The Zip AI Summit proved the perfect precursor to DPW New York 2025, setting the scene and getting people excited to talk more about agentic AI. Congratulations to Zip for a successful event, which the CPOstrategy team was thrilled and honoured to attend.
What began as an intimate summit in 2024 has already grown into a much more sizable conference – and CPOstrategy was there, at DPW New York 2025, to capture the action from the front line.
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The unstoppable evolution of DPW truly knows no bounds. The story of its inception is well-known by this point. Six years ago, in 2019, Founder Matthias Gutzmann developed the concept for DPW in response to a lack of high-quality, startup-centric procurement conferences. The very first conference, held that year in Amsterdam, attracted over 400 attendees from 33 countries, proving just how starved the industry was for exactly this type of event.
DPW has since gone from strength to strength. Thousands of people gather in the prestigious Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam every October, and its North American counterpart is quickly gaining traction, too.
Last year, DPW dipped its toe in the water with an intimate summit in New York City. 128 people attended – exceeding the planned 100 people – filling an ultra-cool penthouse venue in NeueHouse Madison Square. We talked to both the attendees and the DPW team about the demand for a North America event, and how the success of the summit meant that this conference would only get bigger and better.
And it did. On the 11th and 12th of June, DPW New York 2025 took Brooklyn by storm. Hosted at ZeroSpace, a creative design studio where television and film companies generate art, the event attracted over 700 attendees from across the world. There were close to 80 sessions held over the course of the two days across two stages, a meetup lounge, and a podcast studio kitted out like a New York subway carriage.
The theme of the event was ‘Put AI to work’. This shaped the entirety of the conference’s content. Speaking to attendees, we got the impression that this theme represents a real shift. Previous events have focused on the way technology is evolving and the possibilities ahead, but this one felt like it was much more about the truly practical applications of agentic AI today.
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Amit Mahajan, Partner, Alixpartners
“These events bring everybody together to really discuss different ideas and share their challenges and their pain points. I think that sharing and collective thinking helps everybody to move forward. Additionally, with all the different technology providers and innovations that some of these vendors are bringing on, DPW helps people to understand what’s possible, what’s out there, what you can do, and how you can leverage what’s been tested already.”
Prerna Dhawan, Chief Product Officer, Beroe
“I attended DPW the first year it launched in Amsterdam. When I went there for the first time, I thought it was amazing because it brings together, in one platform, people who are practitioners and are looking for technology that can help solve problems, as well as vendors. Not just the big established vendors, but startups, which is where a lot of innovation is happening. So I think DPW provides that forum and creates an ecosystem where you can make sense of AI. Most of the solutions you see here, you can put to work tomorrow morning if you want to. DPW gives us that forum as the community.”
Jeremy Lappin, CEO, Candex
“Especially when we were starting up, DPW did a good job of helping us get in the game. Having a place to go to meet the clients was incredibly valuable for startups. And now we’re a bit bigger, we can pay it back a little. We can afford to do more with DPW now, but in the beginning, we were especially appreciative of that opportunity to be welcomed in and meet the people that are coming here. It’s also nice to be able to walk around and see what other companies in the space are doing all in one place, and to meet some of the leadership of those companies and figure out ways of partnering with them to make both of our tools more effective.”
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DPW New York 2025 didn’t disappoint with its speaker lineup. Some of the many highlights included Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow discussion what it means to put AI to work, and what it means for procurement’s future; Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, demystified the fundamentals of agentic AI; Maria Jesús Saénz, Director Digital Supply Chain Transformation Lab at MIT, dug into why AI needs human collaboration to work at its best; Brandon Card, Founder and CEO of Terzo, discussed why CLMs are dead and why AI tools are superior; Lauren Hymen, VP Strategy and Transformation at PepsiCo, explored why transformation is a catalyst for strategic value far beyond just cost savings; and DPW’s own Chairman, Mark Perera, examined SaaS models, why traditional ones are giving way to self-learning platforms, and how that impacts procurement.
The conference was also filled with panel discussions, roundtables, podcasts that could be listened to live – including one that CPOstrategy hosted for ORO Labs – pitches, and peer meetups. The venue never stopped buzzing with inspiring conversations and talks with packed audiences.
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Michelle Vita, Head of Procurement and Strategic Sourcing, Datadog
“The show has been great so far. There have been so many amazing panels where I feel like the topics actually resonate with me, and it’s great because I was on the board this year for DPW, so I got to help put it together. I’ve had a great time.”
Rinus Strydom, Chief Revenue Officer, Pactum AI
“Pactum is very happy with the partnership we’ve shared with DPW over the last few years. We were a startup around four years ago, and we won a pitch contest at DPW in Amsterdam when we were a tiny company. That really catapulted us, and got us a lot of visibility. We got to meet our latest investor Insight Partners at one of the DPW shows. So it really is a great place for visibility with practitioners, investors, and partners.”
Ann Fleishell, VP of Procurement, OpenAI
“This year’s DPW feels like an inflection point for AI. The conversations have shifted from excitement on concepts and ideas about AI, to real examples of execution. I appreciated the honesty from leaders wrestling with both the potential and responsibility of AI transformation. For those of us building in high-speed environments, it is energising to see others embracing the challenge of working smarter, not just harder.”
Alexander Pilsl, Advisor and CPO, Teamviewer
“DPW New York is pretty damn amazing. I did not expect that they would be able to transfer the energy from Amsterdam over to here, but in some places it feels even better. It’s so energetic; it’s such a hype. There are so many great conversations happening, so many exhibitors; it’s an amazing experience. I really love being here.”
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The DPW team – which has grown larger than ever out of necessity – was rushed off its feet for the full two days. However, we managed to grab a few minutes with CEO Herman Knevel at the end of day two. “It’s been two crazy days, and I’m excited because there were so many more people in the room than we expected,” he said.
When we asked how DPW is continuing to help procurement professionals make sense of the landscape, Knevel replied: “It’s become more complex, so what we’ll do is continue to get as many people in the same room so they can learn and understand what is being built, what the solutions are, and what they can learn. We’ll also continue bringing the relevant content to the stage, and help peers learn from each other. There’s an ongoing need for people to communicate with each other, and that’s where we can step in and help.”
Plans are already underway for DPW New York 2026 next June, and before then, the huge Amsterdam event in October. The CPOstrategy team can’t wait to join in the endlessly inspiring atmosphere again, and discover how the industry is continuing to put AI to work.
Just after Zip announced its exciting news about its new fleet of AI agents, CPOstrategy sat down with Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, at DPW New York 2025 to discuss what this technology means for procurement.
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For Zip, this year’s DPW New York event has been a particularly exciting one. The business hosted a side event the day before – the Zip AI Summit – and that morning revealed major news: that Zip has launched 50+ AI agents. These agents have been purpose-built for the next phase of procurement, and Zip believes the shift to agentic procurement orchestration is what will take the sector from 10X – the main topic of DPW Amsterdam just last October – to 100X improvement.
“I think this is the beginning of the most exciting chapter for procurement,” says Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip. “The next two-to-five years are going to be really defining for the world around us. I’m so excited that this launch is the first real application of tangible AI in the procurement space.”
Taking agentic orchestration to the next level
Agentic procurement orchestration is an entirely new category for procurement, and Zip is enormously proud to have created something so groundbreaking. “If you take the entire procurement orchestration process – the workflow, the teams, all the reviews that occur – agentic procurement orchestration really just applies specific AI agents to components of procurement orchestration to automate the process,” Zaparde explains.
For example, one AI agent Zip has launched is the contract renewal comparison agent. What that agent does is look at a new contract, look at the original contract, and compare the data and the difference between every single component, from price to liabilities. “It does that one thing, but it does it really, really well,” says Zaparde. “And if you think about how that process would work without an agent, you’ve got a human spending hours looking at two different contracts side-by-side on a screen. So this is real ROI; real time saved for people.”
Tariff agent
Another agent Zip has released is the tariff agent. Tariffs are a tricky subject in the US right now, and they’re causing concern and confusion. However, the tariff agent can be deployed into the Zip workflow, and it will look at the most recent live regulations and the situation around tariffs. It will examine the requests of what it is that’s being purchased, determine whether that request is subject to tariffs today or in the future, and automatically report back on the risks. “It’s all pretty much instant,” Zaparde says, making it one of the most currently relevant agents that exists.
These types of agents are proof that AI is now central to procurement strategies as we move forward, and that will only intensify. “When there are innovation cycles like AI, they typically start with the front of house,” says Zaparde. “Customer support is a pretty obvious application for AI, because a lot of money gets spent on thousands of support employees who are doing pretty redundant work. So it makes sense for innovation to start there, and eventually make its way to back of house. Procurement is at the very core of how any company operates, so I absolutely believe that with Zip’s AI agent launch, AI has truly arrived for procurement.”
Eyes on the future
Zaparde foresees Zip’s new AI agents driving speed, growth, and value for modern procurement teams across the board. Zaparde and his team have spent a lot of time testing and configuring Zip’s agents to do specific things, and as a result, he feels that for the first time, he’s got a front-row view of the future.
“While testing, I can pretend to be a requester and submit a request in Zip, and actually watch the steps of that request, see them automatically approve themselves in real time as I’m simply staring at the screen,” he says. “All because the agent for a specific kind of review is computing the results and making a determination. And it may choose to escalate and pull a human into the loop, or it might have enough information to take action and make the approval itself. It’s incredible to watch it happen live.”
To see something he’s created come to life in front of him is a revelation for Zaparde. There’s so much noise in the AI space, and Zaparde is the first to encourage anyone considering the application of AI and AI agents to get the product live in order to really see it. Stirring up hype and having good marketing is one thing, but seeing the real product actually work is a game-changer.
Maintaining a sense of humanity
For all AI and AI agents can do, the human connection is still vitally important. “AI will never be able to replace judgement,” says Zaparde. “A lot of the strategic thinking we do today is still absolutely vital when it comes to what we should procure and when. Someone told me that back when the wheel was invented, a lot of people who were carrying things from point A to point B were afraid they’d lose their jobs because you could put so many things in carts. Of course, those people were still needed – there was just a higher order of work required. The same analogy applies here today.”
Getting the layers right
For Zaparde, it’s critical that AI agents live in the procurement orchestration layer. The role data integrations and orchestration play when it comes to enabling AI to work effectively across procurement workflows is a crucial one. “If you have a risk system and an agent in that system providing an insight, that agent only has access to risk data,” Zaparde explains. “It doesn’t know whether they’re out of good standing with you in their contract, because it’s not in the risk system.
“The orchestration layer has access to the risk level data, the contract and legal level data, the payment and ERP invoice-level data. And so, an orchestration system like Zip is best positioned to drive the best, most comprehensive insight that any AI agent can deliver. For that, you have to have integrations. We’re fortunate that we built our AI agents on Zip’s native integration platform, so you can actually connect and pull data out of other systems Zip is connected to, and deliver a comprehensive insight at the end of the process.”
Feeding the appetite for next-gen procurement
Zip was a vocal presence at DPW New York 2025. As well as the side event before DPW kicked off, Zip was a leading sponsor with a dominant booth, and was involved with two onstage discussions with customers Prudential and OpenAI. Both of these sessions proved inspiring stories of forward-thinking companies utilising Zip to truly push the envelope, and to be able to sit onstage at such a prestigious event, and openly dive into the true benefits that Zip and its agents are bringing to customers, is invaluable for all involved.
That’s just one reason why DPW is so special to procurement professionals. “It’s incredible to see the energy,” says Zaparde. “Innovation requires adoption, and to get adoption, you have to get people excited, benchmarketing, and learning from each other. Ultimately, that’s the real value of DPW.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” are Matthias Gutzmann’s first words when asked about DPW Amsterdam 2024. At the end of the bustling two-day…
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“I’m overwhelmed,” are Matthias Gutzmann’s first words when asked about DPW Amsterdam 2024. At the end of the bustling two-day event, we sat down with Gutzmann, the company’s founder, and Herman Knevel, DPW’s CEO, for a debrief. Gutzmann also quite rightly pointed out that the final word on summarising those 48 hours is in the hands of the sponsors and attendees, but if the countless conversations we had with said sponsors and attendees are anything to go by, it was the best DPW event yet. And Gutzmann and Knevel agree.
“I really think that’s the case,” says Gutzmann. “We almost doubled the number of exhibiting startups, we had over 120 sponsors, more startup pitches than ever, and all the feedback I’ve heard so far has been amazing. There are always things you can do better, but I’m absolutely happy.”
Across the 9th and 10th of October, DPW Amsterdam welcomed over 1,300 attendees through its doors at Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam. Those attendees arrived from 44 countries across 32 industries, and the event itself featured 72 sessions with 140 speakers across five stages. It’s abundantly clear that people are deeply passionate about DPW.
“On day one, it was already packed at 8:30 in the morning,” Knevel states. “The energy in the room was contagious, and the numbers speak for themselves. The startups, the innovators, the corporates, the mid-market – everybody who’s here has a genuine interest in what these guys are bringing to the procurement space.”
Reconnecting with the vision
Gutzmann describes that intangible energy as “bringing a little bit of joy back to procurement”. For many years, procurement was a very ill-defined concept – almost as ill-defined as the role of CPO. The shift has been a quick one, accelerated further by the COVID-19 pandemic, and events like DPW Amsterdam are part of the reason why. CPOs having somewhere to go, to meet, to learn about the procurement landscape is vital, hence that inspiring energy that permeates every DPW event.
“A lot of people are missing that vibe,” Gutzmann continues. “It’s why I founded DPW. I was inspired by Mark Perera [Chairman of DPW], who I worked with at Vizibl, and had great technology while also being so inspiring. I realised we needed to connect founders with CPOs. I think every CPO should talk to one startup founder per week, at least. It’s important that we listen to their vision.”
Striving for 10X
The core of those visions for the 2024 event revolves around the concept of 10X, the idea being that you set targets for your business that are 10 times greater than what you think you can realistically achieve. It keeps people ambitious, always striving for greatness, and it’s especially prevalent in startup culture – hence Gutzmann’s belief that CPOs should be connecting with them more.
“Deciding on 10X for this year’s theme was serendipity,” says Knevel. “The term came along and Matthias said, ‘this is it – this is what we need in procurement’. This is what the industry needs, and we’re exploring it, diving deeper.”
“Last year’s theme was ‘Make Tech Work’, which was all about getting the basics right in order to scale,” Gutzmann continues. “This year we said, ‘how can we take it further?’ We are entering the biggest wave of AI yet. That technology is giving us the opportunity and the possibility to scale outcomes. The world around us is changing so fast, so we need to be more agile, scalable, and faster in procurement. It’s a very ambitious, maybe lofty theme, but it’s a mindset more than anything else.”
“It’s the mindset that drives innovation and speed,” Knevel adds. “That’s really important in this age of procuretech and supply chain tech.”
When it comes to honing that 10X mindset, it’s all about having a purpose in mind. A lot of the procurement professionals we spoke to at DPW Amsterdam called this a ‘north star’, which is the phase Gutzmann uses too. “That’s where it starts. There’s so much procurement can do. There are so many problems in the world, and I believe procurement can be the solution to many of those. So I think it starts with the CPO and their leadership, their vision. You also have to embrace startup innovation, be more experimental in the way you work, instigate new ways of working, and be bold in your thinking. You also have to remember it’s okay to fail.”
Growing DPW
Something that’s particularly impressive about DPW Amsterdam 2024 is that it’s actually the second of the year. Back in June, DPW ventured into the North American market with an intimate summit held in New York City, which CPOstrategy was fortunate enough to be invited to. Planning one wildly popular event a year is one thing, but venturing into a whole new part of the world with an additional one is incredibly dedicated.
“I’m a bit more conservative when planning ahead, so there probably wouldn’t be a New York event without Herman encouraging me,” says Gutzmann. “I’m glad he said ‘let’s go for it’. It was a short-term plan, but it was ultimately very successful and the right decision.”
Knevel adds: “The feedback we got from sponsors and delegates was quite impressive. They were asking for more. And it’s not just Matthias and myself – we have a great team here. This is a massive production, but we made the jump and it’s paid off.”
Inspiration for 2025
When it comes to the lessons Gutzmann and Knevel have learned in response to this event, it’s more about narrowing down the influx of ideas DPW gives them. By the time we spoke with them at the end of the Amsterdam 2024 event, their heads were spinning with inspiration.
“I have so many ideas,” says Gutzmann. “Every year we reinvent the show, so we never rest. We’re always asking what we can do better. How can we improve? I think this year we maxed out the number of sponsor stands that are possible to have. We doubled the number of under-30 attendees. There’s the potential to go a little deeper on the talent side, connecting students with the corporates and building a proper program around that.”
There was also the Tech Safari this year. The idea was to make the expo hall easier to navigate, since it was more crowded than ever this year. Members of the DPW team acted as ‘super connectors’ to help attendees find the right solutions and help startups find new customers. The aim was to simply make it easier for everyone involved to find what they’re looking for in small groups,enabling them to find who they wanted, talk to them, and ask questions. It turned out to be an amazing interactive experience for people, making sure they felt thoroughly looked after and valued.
“Plus there’s an opportunity to cater more to the corporates coming in,” Gutzmann continues. “Perhaps we will build a custom program for them around the event. Some of them are already coming in with teams and doing annual leadership meetings outside of the venue, but I think there’s scope to show them solutions and do some workshops within the event. We can also do more with day zero, where we have site events. There’s much more we can do.”
Giving CPOs what they want
As for the broader future of the event, DPW’s heart lies in Amsterdam and will continue to do so. The organisation is building its team even further and putting strategies in place for future events, allowing it to move forward. “We follow the demand of what our customers want,” Knevel says. That’s what really drives DPW and how the event is themed and set up. The organisation listens to CPOs so it can give them exactly what they need, and what will help the industry level up further and further.
“There are things we’re still developing,” says Gutzmann. “For example, the podcast studio [something introduced in its current form for 2024] is something Herman is very passionate about, so it was great to test it out here. There’s more we can do with that. We have so many ideas and it’s important to engage our amazing team on these ideas and see what they think along the way.”
“We’re ideating a lot,” Knevel adds. “And we’re asking our ecosystem what we should do more of.”
“Ultimately, we’re bringing in the voice of the customer to make sure we’re giving them what they want and need,” Gutzmann concludes. “That’s the whole purpose of DPW.”
CPOstrategy returns to HICX Supplier Experience Live in Amsterdam to take in their second annual event as organisations seek to remove supplier friction.
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“We want people to understand that suppliers are very important in their ecosystems.”
Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO of HICX, is passionate about the value supplier experience brings to procurement and supply chain.
And he’s not the only one. Indeed, there has been a boom in popularity in recent years following decades of supplier experience being seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a necessity. Today, companies know they cannot go alone, particularly against the backdrop of a wave of global disruptions and geopolitical challenges.
Following the success of last year’s inaugural event, HICX Supplier Experience Live returned to the Tobacco Theatre in Amsterdam to take the conversation one step further. Once again recognised as an official DPW Amsterdam side event, HICX Supplier Experience Live’s mission is to help organisations use supplier experience to remove friction and become a customer-of-choice.
Xyloyiannis believes as the global procurement landscape evolves, the antiquated way of dealing with suppliers as a transactional deal is shifting to more of a key, strategic relationship. “This shift has happened because the objectives of procurement have moved,” he explains. “Of course, savings is still a big component of it. That doesn’t go away, but it’s not the only component anymore. You have risk, sustainability, and a lot of other requirements which are now also being considered. In order to do these things successfully, the focus shifts to working with suppliers more closely. Supplier collaboration is key.”
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy, Chief Marketing Officer Anthony Payne aligns with Xyloyiannis’s view and believes supplier experience now sits as an important item on the CPO agenda. “I’d like to think the boost in popularity is because the core message of supplier experience is resonating and people are recognising that the old ways of treating suppliers as an asset to be milked or a value extraction point don’t work anymore,” he tells us. “Companies are realising that it’s about the strength of their entire ecosystem in order to deliver to their own internal customers. If I’m a manufacturer, how do I work closely with my suppliers to collectively deliver value to the end customer? What supplier experience is to me is the vehicle to remove friction and figure out how companies and their suppliers can work better together.”
The half-day event began with a welcome from Payne who gave an introduction into the world of supplier experience, the market developments that have happened so far and given rise to the strong community of evangelists who have placed the topic back on the agenda.
Payne handed over to futurist Dr Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, who delivered a keynote on how leaders can leverage the importance of supplier experience in a disrupted world. As supply chains can no longer count on legacy technology and processes, she explained the importance of embracing digital innovation to build resilient systems for the future. Epstein also revealed how automation is taking over last-mile delivery and related her own personal experiences with self-driving taxis while injecting her trademark humour into the session.
After Epstein was a panel session with Oliver Hurrey, Founder at Galvanised, Marc Munier, CEO and Founder at DitchCarbon and Alexandra Tarmo, VP Procurement Centre of Excellence at Kenvue. While the theme was around delivering climate-conscious decision-making in ESG management, Hurrey opened the floor and asked the audience for themes to engage with the panel. One of the topics discussed was the importance of managing the challenge between regulation and reporting while still also driving change.
Later, Xyloyiannis sat down with Payne for a conversation around supplier data. Important questions were answered regarding how the tech stack should be able to address supplier data challenges and how companies can begin a supplier data project. Following this session, Duncan Clark, Director of Product Marketing at HICX, explored the topic of supplier marketing and how it can help improve supplier adoption and engagement.
Finally, Payne hosted a panel discussion with Laurens Van Den Bovenkamp, Senior Director Supply Chain and Marc Bengio, Senior Director – Head of Technology Enterprise Procurement at Johnson & Johnson. The duo focused on J&J’s revolutionary supplier digital collaboration project and uncovered how supplier interactions are boosting internal and external experiences.
Speaking to CPOstrategy following their sessions, Munier, Hurrey and Tarmo are all in agreement about how positive the future of supplier experience is within procurement and supply chain. “Whenever you talk about any procurement issue, it’s always about trying to engage with suppliers correctly in order to get them to do something but actually people don’t often think enough about what the supplier might need from a relationship,” explains Munier. “I think HICX really enables you to do that.”
Hurrey adds that the key, particularly when dealing with SaaS software, is down to adoption. “Unless you focus on the supplier experience, procurement is not going to get what it needs from the supplier and you’re not going to get that customer of choice,” discusses Hurrey. “This is because the suppliers, particularly of carbon, don’t know what you’re asking for. This is why I think it’s incredibly refreshing to hear HICX talk about supplier experience because the users of the platform that will give you the data that will enable you to make decisions are the suppliers and the buyers. It’s really important to hear that.”
Tarmo believes one of the biggest challenges in procurement is navigating how best to engage with suppliers. “Supplier engagement and collaboration is critical for everything we do in procurement,” explains Tarmo. “Everyone in procurement wants to understand how to reach out to suppliers and how to engage with them correctly. I think we also have an increasing number of requests from our suppliers so the task is about making sure we continue to engage and answer our requests because without suppliers we cannot move the needle.”
Supplier experience is certainly on an upward trajectory. Watch this space.
CPOstrategy’s reflects on the world’s leading technology event in procurement and supply chain – DPW Amsterdam 2024.
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“We believe.”
That was the message from DPW Amsterdam’s powerful opening show. The song, performed by Elvis-E and the ZA-EL Gospel Choir, was created exclusively for the event and kicked off the highly anticipated meet in the Dutch capital.
And it is safe to say the world’s biggest and most influential tech event in procurement and supply chain lived up to its billing. With 1,300 attendees from 44 countries across 32 industries and 72 sessions featuring 140 speakers across five stages alongside 120 sponsors, 84 startup pitches over 14 tech domains, the numbers speak for themselves. Procurement gets excited about DPW.
DPW’s journey
Indeed, the story of how DPW was born is truly inspiring. Founder Matthias Gutzmann had grown frustrated at the lack of procurement conferences to showcase his previous employer Vizibl and decided to create the solution himself. He left his job in New York City, moved into his parents’ house and invested all his savings to launch DPW. Months later, DPW’s launch conference in September 2019 welcomed 400 industry leaders while being praised from across procurement. Fast forward five years and DPW Amsterdam has grown from strength to strength and even launched its first event in North America last summer back where it began for Gutzmann in New York.
DPW Amsterdam strives to deliver a great experience and its competitive advantage is it doesn’t solely revolve around procurement. DPW Amsterdam blends talks, technology, networking, performances, culinary and wellness into one immersive experience that inspires attendees and keeps them coming back.
Every year, DPW selects a different theme to set the tone for the conference’s conversation. This year, 10X was chosen which is the idea that organisations should aim for a moonshot mindset instead of seeking incremental growth. In procurement and supply chain, 10X thinking essentially means fostering a progressive diverse culture where calculated risks are embraced, reimagining and rewiring traditional processes, moving from legacy tech to disruptive technologies, and leveraging AI and automations that deliver tenfold improvements in efficiency, cost savings, and supplier relationships.
DPW Amsterdam 2024
Held once more at the historic former stock exchange building, the Beurs van Berlage, Gutzmann and CEO Herman Knevel had a few special tricks up their sleeve. New this year were tech safaris which were guided group tours operating throughout the expo halls. Due to the 25,000ft² of exhibition space within the building, it can often be challenging to find your way around. However, the introduction of these tech safaris, which were tailored to specific themes, allowed attendees to gain real insight into the areas they cared the most about. Also new this year was a podcast studio which covered topics from AI and procurement orchestration to women in procurement and sustainability.
As is customary for DPW Amsterdam, the conference did not disappoint once again with its speaker line-up. The headliner was Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, who delivered a spectacular keynote on how purpose-driven leadership can drive both profitability and positive impact. Polman, who is a globally recognised thought leader in sustainability, also took to the stage to challenge business leaders to embrace Sustainable Development Goals with urgency and courage in a separate session on exponential climate action.
Driving Procurement
One of the biggest draws of DPW Amsterdam is there is something for everyone. Sessions covered a range of topics including how to leverage data analytics and AI for guided decision-making, how to build and rethink procurement organisations with a tech mindset and how to scale 10X efficiency and impact, among others. Across the two days, there were more than 70 learning sessions spanning keynotes, workshops and pitches across seven stages. The stages were Centre Stage, Sponsors We Love Stage, 10X Stage, Masterclass Stage, CPO Summit, Expo Pitch Arena and Startup Academy. Some of the speakers across the event included the likes of Jennifer Moceri, Chief Procurement Officer at Google, Marc Engel, CEO at Unilabs and Rujul Zaparde, CEO at Zip. And for those unable to attend, DPW live-streamed the action via social media to allow thousands more people to watch the important keynote sessions along at home.
As many attendees travel to Amsterdam from other countries, there are official DPW Amsterdam side events the day before the conference begins. A padel tournament was arranged for the first time which proved a hit, alongside ORO IMAGINE, while HICX Supplier Experience Live also returned for its second year. Add in the Opening party, the Zip Canal Cruise, After Drinks and the Grand Finale Closing party, DPW Amsterdam 2024 ensured no attendee was left without plans.
Fotograaf: MichielTon.com
Digital Procurement Boom
The conference has grown significantly over the years. Last year’s theme of ‘Make Tech Work’ laid the groundwork for technology transformation and focused on how to turn digital aspirations into a reality. As procurement’s current favourite word, generative AI, continues to create conversation and make waves within the function and beyond, collaborating to find the best strategies to leverage large language models and advanced technologies is the key to success in the modern world.
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy following the event, Gutzmann was in no doubt about DPW Amsterdam’s direction of travel. “I’m overwhelmed. The final word is always with our sponsors and attendees and the feedback I’ve heard across the board is amazing. I really think this was our best one yet.”
Knevel was in full agreement with Gutzmann and revealed that he felt the momentum upon entering the building. “The energy in the room across the two days was contagious. There was a genuine interest in what these solutions are bringing to the procurement space.”
Future
And the duo of Gutzmann and Knevel have no plans to slow down yet. With a final year planned with the Beurs van Berlage as the venue, they are in the early stages of locating a new home for DPW Amsterdam from 2026 onwards as the conference continues to scale exponentially.
DPW Amsterdam is a hub of collaboration. It is an event that truly brings real-world challenges to the front of the agenda and offers real, actionable guidance on how to overcome obstacles. While today’s world is ever-changing, procurement has the keys to unlock the door. Let’s go 10X.
CPOstrategy sits down with procurement leaders at DPW Amsterdam 2024, to uncover the direction of travel amid a digital-driven and transformational era for the function.
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Why come to DPW Amsterdam? What, in your mind, makes this event so special and such a popular meet in the procurement calendar?
Edzard Janssen, RBI
Edzard Janssen, RBI: “For me, it’s a very good overview of procurement technology trends. It asks, ‘What are the business problems and the solutions to business problems?’ It’s two days where I invest in getting a good overview, talking to people, and networking.”
Jurriaan Lombaers
Jurriaan Lombaers: “From the beginning, it’s been authentic. It’s great to see all the startups and it triggers your innovation and entrepreneurial mindset to think ‘What else can we do?’ Instead of just doing more of the same. And likewise, it creates a super exciting platform for the startup to show what they can do and what they can deliver. DPW grows every year and it’s a great networking event to meet lots of old friends and make some new ones. It’s super special.”
Kristina Andric, Tetra Pak
Kristina Andric, Tetra Pak: “To me, what really describes this event is inclusiveness and collaboration because it brings startups and the corporate world together and shows what kind of amazing synergies that can yield. No one company has all the solutions in one place. However, together we can leverage the strengths and perspectives of each other and then amazing things can happen.”
Chris Platts, SSE
Chris Platts, SSE: “It’s an amazing event. It’s obviously full of energy. We think it’s the best event for procurement tech, and I get a lot from being here and reflecting on what’s next, what people are doing, what best practice is, and how we can leverage some of that. And then hopefully we can work with some of the vendors and help some startups. I love this event.”
Sopan Shah, IHG Hotels & Resorts
Sopan Shah, IHG Hotels & Resorts: “It’s been mind-blowing. It is so exciting to be in our industry, at a conference that is focused on procurement technology. We’re at the precipice of this dramatic change in digitalising everything we do and the way we run our supply chains, and the people that are building that future are here at DPW. And so it’s hugely exciting to see this kind of startup environment with new and established players that are engaging, showing use cases, building connections, building networks. It’s hugely empowering. My team is getting a long to-do list from me after this, but I know they’re excited.”
What are some of the strategies that leaders can adopt in order to achieve 10X thinking?
Iris van der Harst, Equans
Iris van der Harst, Equans: “My main focus is to reflect my operating model every year. Is my team of procurement specialists still adding value and are we doing the right thing for our business and stakeholders both internally and externally? Also, are we bringing in the right innovations to drive 10X? It’s always really easy to blame it on the other departments but I think it’s important to look at what you can do within your own team and operating model. As a CPO, I set the vision and the strategy, but I don’t forget my team and I need to constantly train and educate them about what’s going on. I might lose some people along the way, but it must be their decision, not that I didn’t give them enough attention or opportunity to grow.”
Christophe Villain, Nestle
Christophe Villain, Nestle: “You need to change the mindset of your people, and showcase the opportunities available to your colleagues. It’s also about your data maturity and foundations, because the next generation of procurement activity will be strongly data-based, and you’re relying on that data accuracy, availability, and accessibility. You’ll also need to challenge your processes and ways of working.”
Kristina Andric, Tetra Pak: “One of the key reasons is innovation. While it’s a huge competitive advantage, in terms of employee engagement striving for 10X gives teams a very strong sense of purpose as well as unity. I believe it is vital for companies to have a clear vision and ensure the right amount of emphasis on talent, a culture of innovation, and demonstrate adaptability to change.”
How would you describe the past few years in procurement as a result of advanced technology?
Edzard Janssen, RBI: “Software as a service (SaaS) was a big leap forward. We started rolling out our contract management service in 2017. Normally this would have been a multi-year exercise across the whole group, but we did it in 18 months. That would never have been possible with a traditional on-prem solution. Then there’s the cloud. One of our banks is located in Ukraine, and of course we had to think about what would happen if our data centres would be affected by the war. So we moved everything to the cloud in a couple of months. That would’ve been uns]thinkable in the past. The speed of how you can do things is completely different.”
Sebastien Bals, Merck
Sebastien Bals, Merck: “GenAI will enable us to move faster. The whole topic around chatbots and automating certain types of interactions with your stakeholders is definitely something that, through GenAI, will be able to go quicker. What I do see is that we’re not leveraging it yet.
“And the reason why is because data is so crucial to the entire picture when leveraging GenAI. So it starts with how we translate everything that is articulate – meaning everything that we can speak or we can write down – and transfer that into data so that then it can be commoditised as a streaming service so we can start streaming knowledge. These large language models that GenAI is based on will enable us to transfer the knowledge that is in our heads more freely but secondly, also take away some of the time that people are spending on activities that no longer need to be spent on.”
Chris Platts, SSE: “Things are progressing, advancing, and innovating all the time. Obviously the big theme is AI; that’s front and centre of everything. When I started procurement, we had SAP and we did sourcing via email. It wasn’t any more sophisticated than that. And now, I don’t know how many digital tools we’ve got at our disposal. I’m pretty sure we’re not yet making the best use out of them yet.”
In your view, what is the best way procurement professionals can overcome data quality challenges when implementing advanced technology, like GenAI?
Alexander Pilsl, TeamViewer
Alexander Pilsl, TeamViewer: “That’s the million dollar question. I think it’s always been a challenge. I’ve spent years in consulting and seen many, many different procurement departments, and I’ve never seen good data quality. It just doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion that we try to have. It’s something to aspire to. It’s about understanding the flaws, where your data lacks, and what you can improve in some select areas. Have a use case that you actually want to achieve with your data, and work your way back from there. What does the data have to provide you with so that you can actually solve that use case? Then you can start fixing those areas wherever you can.”
Christophe Villain, Nestle: “You need to rethink your data foundations, define which your key assets are, define how you govern and input your data, and make data as relevant as any other achievement on the people performance agenda. If there’s no component of data, you’re just a recipient and you are not owning the outcome. And that’s critical going forward.”
Sopan Shah, IHG Hotels & Resorts: “Data is complicated. I think first it starts with the industry you’re in and the types of data that you’re dealing with. Fundamentally, some of the new technologies are going to allow us to take either dirty, unstructured data, and very quickly leverage AI machine learning and other tools to help clean up that data. We are seeing that again already as we’ve moved into some of our new procurement technologies.
“We’ve historically had poor data and these systems have very quickly shown us how poor that data actually is. It really changed the concept of how we think about it, because it’s not necessarily people on our teams that need to be reviewing, understanding, and dissecting that data – it’s actually the systems and the tools that are analysing it and giving us recommendations that allow you to get the right information out of poor data. So I think data is a promise. Is it perfect? No. Is it going to take time to get there? Yes. But I think it’s a promising start.”
What are the biggest considerations that CPOs need to think about when seeking to implement tools like GenAI as a business strategy in procurement?
Alexander Pilsl, TeamViewer: “It’s really that element of procurement being an ecosystem function. A lot of the strings come together in procurement. For example, when I’m going out looking for a supplier, I check their client status. I want to know if they are customers of our company before I become a customer of their company. That’s two data bullets already that you need to check, and then you do all your external sources, your risk analysis, third party databases, check their risk status, check their financial information. There are millions of data points that come together in procurement when you make a decision. And I think getting all those right, but then also not getting distracted by the sheer numbers, is probably the single biggest challenge in business and data.”
Sebastien Bals, Merck: “I think the biggest obstacle is ourselves. Are we truly experimenting or adopting enough or are we being sceptical? GenAI hallucinates, but we’re also critical thinkers. We’re not robots. I believe that all of us who are currently working in procurement could see whether GenAI is hallucinating or not and could adjust.”
Michelle Baker, Virgin Money
Michelle Baker, Virgin Money: “They talk about humans in the loop, which is interrogating what comes out of the black box. The hallucinations are that it’ll confidently make up garbage and confidently tell you where it came from. So essentially source the garbage. However, I believe that I have enough experience to be able to write 85% of a supplier relationship management strategy in ChatGPT to say, ‘Well, that is garbage’.
“I have experienced enough to know that it is incorrect. I don’t think that we should sacrifice our critical thought. For any of us who’ve been to university, the requirement not to plagiarise the requirement and to reference our source of data is important. If you’re going to be leaning on a tool like Copilot or ChatGPT, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to leave your brain at home. You can actually use your brain to question whether something makes sense and then poke a little further. But it certainly will help you get going in a way that starting with a blank piece of paper wouldn’t have.”
Is this the most exciting time to be in procurement and supply chain?
Iris van der Harst, Equans: “I think so. But it also was five or 10 years ago. I’ve been in procurement for about 15 years, and before that, I was in more commercial roles because in my time there weren’t many further education courses in procurement that you could do. Everyone just grew into procurement from different backgrounds. 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.”
Jurriaan Lombaers: “It’s a great profession and I am a passionate procurement professional. I think coming out of COVID-19, we earned a lot of credibility as a procurement function, which should have enabled procurement organisations to have even more impact. I think it’s exciting because of all the technology enablement, but I think that’s just one part. The much bigger thing is all the change management. Scaling fast is all about adoption.
“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.”
Michelle Baker, Virgin Money: “Technology has always been an interesting thing and I’ve grown up with it. So when I started work, there were no PCs on desks. The only person who had a typewriter was the managing director and 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.”
Findings of a DPW survey point to AI adoption set to grow 187% in the next year, but just 20% of teams currently use AI at scale.
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DPW Amsterdam, one of the procurement and supply chain sector’s leading events, has released the findings of its new 10X Procurement study. The study is a collaboration between DPW and Professor Remko van Hoek from the University of Arkansas. Its research draws insights from over 200 global procurement leaders, and claims to have found a “staggering disconnect” between the appetite for digital transformation among procurement teams and their ability to actually execute those transformations.
As businesses grapple with rapid changes in the market, the findings underscore the urgent need for procurement to evolve and drive meaningful change.
“Technology is advancing at the speed of light – but procurement leaders are struggling to drive change at the same rate,” said Matthias Gutzmann, Founder of DPW. “There’s a disconnect between the ambition to transform and the readiness to make it happen.” Gutzmann adds that the 10X Procurement study demonstrates that “while procurement is on the brink of something groundbreaking, teams are ill-equipped to harness that potential.”
DPW: preparing procurement to capitalise on technological advancement
DPW aims to provide procurement teams with the insights, technology, and partnerships needed to “think and act ten times bigger than their current capacity.”
Key findings from the DPW 10X Procurement Study include:
1. Skills Gap Widens the Divide Between Vision and Execution
Procurement technology providers are sounding the alarm on a widening skills gap, citing a 30-35% shortfall in critical capabilities such as change management, openness to AI, and digital acumen, threatening the success of procurement’s digital transformation efforts.
2. Tech Adoption is Rising, But Underutilization Hampers Progress
Despite AI making waves across industries, just 20% of respondents are adopting or scaling AI within their procurement functions, and procurement processes remain only 50% automated on average. This lack of adoption represents a significant missed opportunity to streamline operations and drive innovation, putting procurement at risk of falling behind on the digital transformation movement.
3. 2025 Set to Drive a Digital Revolution in Procurement
Looking ahead, respondents predict a dramatic 187% increase in AI adoption and scaling in 2025 across procurement processes and tech stacks. This points to a shift from operational technologies to more strategic, relationship-driven solutions.
4. Culture Lag Holding Back Digital Transformation Despite Clear Roadmaps
While many procurement teams boast clear roadmaps for digital transformation, DPW’s report finds that the culture required to embrace and sustain this change remains underdeveloped. Respondents rated their organisations’ readiness to drive the kind of sweeping transformations required to stay competitive as low.
5. New Playbook Requires Agility and Innovation Over Cost Savings
A large number of respondents were found to put cost savings before other objectives. In contrast, organisations that emphasise agility and resilience consistently see better results than their peers. This underscores the urgent need for procurement to redefine success metrics and shift away from rigid cost-saving goals toward more innovative, relationship-driven strategies that drive more resilience.
The findings of the study will be highlighted at the DPW Amsterdam 2024 conference currently underway in the Netherlands, featuring sessions led by industry experts designed to empower procurement teams and technology innovators in navigating the path toward 10X Procurement.
Ahead of DPW Amsterdam 2024, CPOstrategy previews one of the world’s leading tech events in procurement and supply chain and explores what to expect this year.
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DPW Amsterdam is back. And it’s better than ever.
One of the world’s largest and most influential tech events in the procurement and supply chain space returns on October 9th and 10th, with expectations for its biggest conference yet.
As a first for this year, DPW Amsterdam will offer tech safaris which are guided group tours operating throughout the expo halls. Given the 25,000 ft² of exhibition space at the historic Beurs van Berlage, it can often be challenging to navigate in the buzz of the event. Tech safaris offer an immersive, curated tour through the expo hall for up to 15 people, spotlighting cutting-edge innovations and key industry trends. Tailored to specific themes, these guided experiences provide focused insights into the latest technologies. Attendees gain dual perspectives from solution providers and corporate customers, showing how these innovations solve real-world challenges.
According to CEO Herman Knevel, customers were the key driver in bringing this idea to life. “Right before I joined as CEO, Matthias and I went to San Francisco and the Valley and also visited New York,” he tells us. “Being able to listen to different customers and founders was key and meant we could listen, learn and then implement that innovation.”
10X thinking
Since founder Matthias Gutzmann launched DPW in 2019, the conference has grown from strength to strength. In its October 2023 edition, DPW welcomed 1,250 procurement professionals with more than 2,500 virtual attendees watching along at home. This year, DPW’s topic focus is 10X which emphasises the importance of organisations thinking and acting 10x bigger than their current capacity. It is a moonshot mindset that encourages transformative leaps instead of incremental advances. In procurement and supply chain, 10X thinking essentially means fostering a progressive diverse culture where calculated risks are embraced, reimagining and rewiring traditional processes, moving from legacy tech to disruptive technologies, and leveraging AI and automations that deliver tenfold improvements in efficiency, cost savings, and supplier relationships.
Fotograaf: MichielTon.com
Gutzmann founded DPW based on a gap he saw in the industry. The entire reason he launched the organisation was because he identified a need for events focused on digital transformation in procurement, particularly recognising startups at the forefront of innovation. DPW focuses on getting the best speakers to tackle procurement’s most critical issues and priorities. “A lot of what’s out there for procurement events, it’s the same old, same old,” explains Gutzmann. “It’s the same old speakers, the same old topics. We bring new topics into the community, focusing on technology first. It makes sense to prioritise innovation.”
DPW’s draw
One of the biggest draws of attending DPW is undoubtedly the high profile speakers it attracts. This year, the likes of Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, Jennifer Moceri, Chief Procurement Officer at Google and Sudhir Bhojwani, Co-Founder and CEO at ORO Labs, among a host of other visionaries and pioneers will take to the stage to deliver keynotes. However, DPW doesn’t just limit its speakers to procurement executives, it brings in experts from various fields. Last year, former Formula One team boss at Haas Guenther Steiner was interviewed on stage about how to overcome challenges and the importance of teamwork to reach ambitious goals. Knevel values the importance great speakers have to DPW but stresses that leaders such as Steiner are welcomed with open arms too.
“We want to bring in more CEOs for a different perspective with the right leadership experience,” he explains. “We had Guenther who provided an interesting perspective from a different industry. This year, we’re bringing in the former CEO at Unilever Paul Polman. We’re always seeking fresh speakers, and they don’t need to be CPOs.”
Founder Matthias Gutzmann
What does the future of DPW hold?
Every year, DPW provides a different theme. Knevel reveals the process of deciding a conference’s premise is relatively straightforward and draws parallels to last year’s offering ‘Make Tech Work’. “If you look at ‘Make Tech Work’, that was a really good theme last year and that resonated well with many who came to DPW, not only in Amsterdam but also online on our live stream,” he explains. “But also, what we learned from the market, and especially from the side of the startups and scale-ups, is that the technology is there and ready to solve the problem. Making tech work was an obvious thing last year, as the adoption rate is still fairly low and a pain point in the industry. The 10X mindset is something we think we should need in the industry to accelerate the base of innovation and to increase the speed of value for many.”
DPW Amsterdam 2024 follows the organisation’s first entry into North America after the success of its one-day event in New York City in June. The meet was on a smaller scale than its sister Amsterdam conferences, however, more than 130 procurement practitioners still attended for a day of learning, discussion groups and networking. “If you do well in Europe, the next big market is North America,” Gutzmann states. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Where do we go?’ As a launch event, you want to get access to the CPOs, the top leaders in procurement. New York has the highest density of CPOs in the US. It’s really low-hanging fruit to launch DPW here.”
DPW Amsterdam 2024
But with New York City’s inaugural event completed, all eyes are now firmly back on Amsterdam. For Gutzmann, Knevel and co, they have no interest in slowing down. And if the past few years are anything to go by, DPW Amsterdam 2024 is set to pack a punch 10X harder than usual.
CPOstrategy visited the first ever DPW NYC Summit and have compiled five of the most important lessons we learned during the event.
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On the 12th of June this year, we at CPOstrategy had the pleasure of attending DPW’s first ever New York event. 130+ procurement professionals came together for this intimate gathering at NeueHouse, New York City, to learn, mingle, and be engaged by the incredible things happening in digital procurement right now.
The fascinating sessions throughout the day highlighted the current trends and challenges within the procurement segment. Here are five of the most important lessons we learned at the DPW NYC Summit.
AI doesn’t stifle creativity – it promotes it
There can sometimes be a little fear around AI, especially when it comes to art and creativity. However, it’s worth remembering that AI is a tool and it can’t replace human expression – but it can help to enhance it.
Mark Perera, Chairman of DPW, and Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer & EVP Design & Emerging Products at Adobe, discussed this in their talk entitled ‘The radical impact of AI’. They pondered on what makes humans stand out; the answer, they decided, is ideas. As a result, human input will always be necessary. The deployment of AI-powered productivity pools will actually evolve people’s ability to change minds and influence, not stifle it.
In Belsky’s words: “Now we can express ourselves creatively and with confidence, thanks to the tools we have.”
A system should learn you, not the other way around
Orchestration was one of the themes of the day at the DPW NYC Summit. In their session, ‘AI-powered humanised experience: Procurement orchestration at play’, Shachi Gupta, VP Strategy at Oro Labs, and Digital Procurement Futurist Dr Elouise Epstein, delved into this.
They explored the ways in which AI enables us to innovate and improve what we do, and Dr. Epstein reflected on the early days of being a CPO – particularly noting that many fell into the role without knowing what it meant. Change accelerated in 2020 and the concept of a CPO has become solidified since then. However, with that, it has become clear that the way we use technology has changed, and needs to change further.
“The suite providers are over,” Dr Epstein boldly stated. “They’re the old paradigm. The system should learn you. Orchestration is the next generation of procurement.”
Procurement needs a deeper understanding of data
How we use data is constantly evolving, but we need to understand it far better in order to get the best out of it. This was touched on in another session – ‘Next-gen tech: Managing complexity and delivering user simplicity’ – hosted by Mathew Shulz, VP Procurement Strategy at Airbase, in conversation with Christina Howlett-Perez, AVP Head of Procurement at Definitive Healthcare, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer & MD or Spend Matters.
The trio explored the concept of procurement now having a seat at the table, and what that means. For example, it means understanding where your company is at, what the policies are, and knowing how to update procurement in a tactical way. It requires focus on gen AI, intake, and orchestration.
The challenge is understanding data better. There needs to be total transparency for end-users as well as the CEO and CFO, requiring easy, adaptable tools. As a result, procurement desperately needs more people with a deep understanding of data, otherwise advanced technological upgrades are just sticking a plaster on a gaping wound.
Digital transformation is not about technology
For obvious reasons, transformation was also a major theme of the DPW NYC Summit. David Rogers, author of ‘The Digital Transformation Roadmap’, led a talk entitled ‘Fueling AI adoption with a transformation mindset’, and highlighted the fact that digital transformation isn’t about the technology you choose.
As with Mark Perera and Scott Belsky’s talk, Rogers’s centred around why humans are still so important when making technological change. What digital transformation is actually about is a change in strategy in mindset; the technology is merely the tool. It’s used in the service of the business to solve what needs to be solved, but people and change management are at the core.
There are four big debts to overcome in procurement
Tony Philippone, Chief Research Officer at HFS Research, closed the DPW NYC Summit with some final remarks and additional words of wisdom. At the end of an inspirational event filled with practical, applicable advice, and discussions marked by ideas and challenges, Philippone reminded attendees that there are still roadblocks ahead.
“A lot of the technology we use today is dead,” Philippone stated, echoing the sentiments of Dr Epstein earlier in the day. He highlighted the fact that procurement is as people-driven as it’s always been – again, a theme felt throughout the day – but that there are still four big debts to overcome. Those are people, process, data, and technical,and they require plenty of attention in order to move forward.
DPW hosted its first NYC event which dug deep into AI and what it can do for procurement now and in the future.
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It’s fair to say that DPW Amsterdam has taken the procurement world by storm over the last five years. Founder Matthias Gutzmann developed the concept for Digital Procurement World in 2019, after discovering that existing procurement conferences lacked originality and investor interest. The kernel of an idea for something inspiring and innovative to fill the void formed then, while Gutzmann was working in New York.
Returning to his home country of Germany later that year, Gutzmann poured all his savings into launching DPW. The first conference, in September 2019, brought in over 400 industry leaders from across 33 countries – an incredible feat for a brand new concept. That response just goes to show that the industry was starved of a truly exceptional procurement conference.
DPW NYC: The inception
Since then, DPW has gone from strength to strength. Last year’s Amsterdam event attracted over 5,000 attendees and the event has won multiple awards. It seems apt, then, that this incredible growth journey should see DPW coming to its spiritual home of New York for 2024. On the 12th of June, 2024 DPW hosted its first NYC event which dug deep into AI and what it can do for procurement – something that was a natural step for the organisation.
“New York has the highest density of CPOs in the US,” explains Gutzmann. “If you do well in Europe – which DPW has – the next big market is North America. New York is low-hanging fruit with so many pharma and financial services companies.”
As such, it made sense for Gutzmann to launch DPW in New York, where demand for conferences focused on digital transformation and technology is high. “CPOs in the US are looking for something new,” he continues. “They’ve heard about DPW Amsterdam and they’re ready for it here.”
Held in an ultra-cool penthouse in NeueHouse Madison Square, New York City, this intimate event brought together 128 procurement professionals for a day of talks hosted by experts in the field. The goal was to have 100 people, and several others had to be turned away at the door, such was the popularity of the event. The term of the day was ‘artificial intelligence’, the talks focused primarily on what advanced technology and AI can do for procurement – and how the human touch can be maintained.
Thoughts on DPW NYC
“The event has been exceptional from a networking perspective, and really understanding all the challenges that other leaders in similar positions are facing. It’s really heartening to know we’re not the only ones dealing with some of these situations.” – Ajay Khosla, Director, Procurement Digital Experience, Google
“It’s great to hear about what is available in the marketplace from new technology and procurement perspectives, as well as how generative AI is changing procurement as a function.” – Al Williams, Global Chief Procurement Officer and Corporate Services, Invesco
“The intimacy of this event has generated so many amazing conversations between companies. I think this is the perfect sized audience when you’re talking about innovation.” – Danielle McQuiston, Chief Customer Officer, Candex
“It feels like DPW is really starting to build a community and a network. The more of those we have in this space, the more we’re going to get done.” – Gabe Perez, Chief Strategy Officer, RiseNow
Inspiring sessions
Gutzmann opened the day alongside Herman Knevel, CEO of DPW, the attendees buzzing with anticipation. Gutzmann explained DPW’s backstory and how the point of the concept was to nourish the future of the latest thinking in procurement and AI. Where the question was once ‘what is AI?’, it’s now ‘what can AI do for me?’. Gutzmann urged attendees to lean into AI and embrace it and how it can support procurement.
The first in-depth talk of the event was ‘The radical impact of AI’, led by DPW’s Chairman, Mark Perera, in conversation with Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer at Adobe. The two asked: what makes humans stand out? The answer is ideas. The key to positive change through AI lies within its ability to support humans, not replace them.
Belsky stated that the deployment of productivity tools will evolve people’s ability to change minds and influence, and people themselves will always be necessary. AI tools give us the confidence to express ourselves creatively and unlock better personalisation. Belsky explained how he has watched the AI landscape evolve from low-end automation to decision-making, and as a result, procurement is low-hanging fruit from an AI perspective.
Belsky’s hope is that AI becomes a layer of understanding and more accessible within procurement, raising the bar further for humans. It’s time for 10x thinking, rather than 10% thinking, in his words.
Orchestration at play
The marrying of AI and people power continued with the next session, hosted by Shachi Gupta, VP Strategy, Oro Labs, in conversation with the Digital Procurement Futurist, Dr. Elouise Epstein. The session – ‘AI-powered humanized experience: Procurement orchestration at play’ – delved into the ways in which we can invest in and evolve procurement.
The pair discussed how AI enables us to innovate and improve on what we already do. Dr. Epstein reflected on when procurement was nascent, with CPOs who didn’t know why they were in their roles or what they should focus on. Change only really accelerated during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and it solidified the CPO role at the same time. Which begs the question: how can procurement improve the topline as well as the bottom line?
Dr. Epstein and Gupta talked about lessons learned from the pandemic – including that procurement needed to speed up and become more efficient, since squeezing of costs is an ongoing issue. They stated that UX and data are the focus, while AI is the umbrella, and that procurement orchestration is now absolutely vital. Dr. Epstein boldly stated that the suite providers are over; they’re the old paradigm, and it should be the case that systems learn users, not the other way around. Orchestration is something procurement is only now wrapping its head around, she concluded, but it’s firmly the next generation of procurement.
Five steps to apply AI in your business
David Rogers, author of ‘The Digital Transformation Roadmap’, stated in his talk that five vital steps to apply AI in your business are:
Define a problem to solve
Find your customer
Validate a definition of success
Experiment to see what works
Share what you learn
Procurement has a seat at the table; so what’s next?
Then came ‘Next-gen tech: Managing complexity and delivering user simplicity’, hosted by Airbase’s VP Procurement Strategy, Mathew Schulz. The session focused on user experience, and saw Schulz deep in conversation with Christina Howlett-Perez, AVP Head of Procurement at Definitive Healthcare, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer and MD at Spend Matters.
They discussed the fact that, with procurement now having a seat at the table, you need to understand where your company’s at when it comes to updating the procurement side. The solution needs to be tactical and cost effective. The group’s solution was to focus on gen AI, intake, and – as Dr. Epstein and Gupta had mentioned already – orchestration.
The thing to remember, Schulz et al added, is the need for transparency for both the end-users and top leadership. This requires adaptable tools, meaning that procurement needs people who have a deep understanding of data.
The ongoing theme of people – and how they’re still at the core of procurement – was continued by David Rogers, author of ‘The Digital Transformation Roadmap’. His session – ‘Fuelling AI adoption with a transformation mindset’ – focused on the fact that digital transformation is less about technology and more about strategy and mindset.
The afternoon brought with it breakout sessions in smaller groups, with each group involved in lively, innovative discussions surrounding the main topics of the day and presenting their conclusions for everybody to muse upon. This was followed by Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip speaking to Katie Streu, Senior Director Strategic Sourcing at Coinbase, and Guru Mohan, VP Global Procurement at Toast.
The trio brought together the much-dissected topics of AI and orchestration and delved into the best strategies for making them work well together and achieve improvements across the board. They also talked more broadly about practical applications of AI within procurement processes, and the results thereof.
Thoughts on DPW NYC
“The size of the event is good, and despite how small the group is, the DPW team has managed to keep the vibe of the Amsterdam event. It’s really engaging and forward-looking, and you also get the chance to talk to everybody. I think that’s really great.” – Johan-Peter Teppala, Chief Customer Officer, Sievo
“It’s been phenomenal. The content, the fact that it’s an intimate group, and the quality of the people here. DPW is setting the standard for events.” – Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder & CEO, Zip
“It feels like home. I feel like everything we’re discussing about solving procurement problems in more innovative ways, and taking a digital lens to everything – these are things I’ve been a crusader for for the longest time. I’m so glad it’s gained momentum and power so that we have this great community now.” – Shachi Gupta, Vice President of Strategy, ORO Labs
AI: Close up
Excitingly, the final session of the day involved everybody wearing a VR headset and being taken on a tour of the metaverse by Clive Teal, CEO of LavinirAI. This involved showing the users around the metaverse, demonstrating its applications, and digging into the benefits from a procurement perspective via multiple fascinating use cases.
Then, Tony Philippone, Chief Research Officer at HFS Research, closed out the day with some brilliant insights and sobering reminders for the rapt attendees. In his words, a lot of the technology we used today is dead. We’ve spent the last 5,000 years advancing what we’ve always done in procurement, and it demands people-driven as it has advanced. And yet, four big debts remain: people, process, data, and technical.
Gen AI has changed the game and AI assistants will change things even further, Philippone explained. He also added that implementing gen AI is not a slam dunk. Success requires the right strategy, quality data, and prioritisation to help meet procurement goals.
With a rapt, engaged, and lively audience from start to finish, DPW NYC 2024 was a huge success. Many attendees went on to join the DPW team for the after party at the rooftop of Arlo NoMad where the stirring conversations continued and positive feedback flowed. The event felt like the start of something even bigger for DPW NYC, with Gutzmann, Knevel, Perera, and the whole team openly excited for what’s next. And we at CPOstrategy can’t wait to see how this event evolves, too.
At DPW Amsterdam 2023, we chat with procurement leaders to find out why the conference is regarded as one of the most influential tech events in procurement today…
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Koray Köse, Chief Industry Officer, Everstream Analytics
“When you go to events that are this disruptive that are actually giving you an environment like a concert where people have a very positive vibe, that’s when the best experiences are shared and people open up. If you listen, you now understand what the real challenges are. If you’re at a conference that is very formal, then you get a very different feeling. It is the casualness of DPW that helps the authenticity of every company and its challenges.
“It’s a unique environment where you get very authentic, bold, blunt, but truthful statements of perception of actuals, desires, future vision, and also conversations about how can we as a community do things differently? How can we as potential future partners do things differently? And how can tech concatenate value and how can we actually now do that in a partnership with companies that we don’t even consider clients at this point? They’re not clients, but they share exactly what they want and those are benefits.
“I think it’s almost like an incubator environment because a lot of ideas are formed here. Lots of connections are made and a lot of deals for vendors are done too. You look at the floor and there are about 120 vendors all here for the same reason, it’s amazing. To get that concentrated over 48 hours, a lot of people will walk away and need to process what happened and the conversations they had. Then we look forward to next year.”
Koray Köse, Chief Industry Officer, Everstream Analytics
Ashwin Kumar, Vice President, GEP
“DPW has given me some insight into what kind of options there are. Sometimes I go through the booths and I see two solutions and question how they’re different. At first, I think they’re doing the same thing. And then once they start explaining, you find out the nuance. Now I understand this may not be applicable for this client of mine that I’m working with maybe this is for a company that’s growing at 30%, not for someone who is already there and growing at 2% or 3%.
“I think that way DPW has helped me understand how do you stitch different things together and then take it to a client and say, ‘this is the ecosystem you need at this point in time. It could change in six months, or three months, we don’t know. Go with it for now and you don’t have to worry about being married to that solution for too long.’”
Ashwin Kumar, Vice President, GEP
Kathryn Thompson, Partner, Deloitte
“I think DPW shows us the art of the possible in digital procurement. It shows us if you were unconstrained and you could do anything, what would you choose and build? You don’t have that in some of the other tech conferences that are a bit tied into an infrastructure they need to build. I love this what if idea we have here. I think it’s fabulous we have this confluence of organisations that need these tools, all the different startups and solutions to bounce ideas off and work out the future. DPW has real energy and passion like no other. You must get your message across in three minutes or it’s gone, that passion is brilliant because there’s nothing similar.”
Kathryn Thompson, Partner, Deloitte
Scott Mars, Global Vice President of Sales, Pactum
“This to me, especially for Europe, is the premier procurement technology event. All the main vendors, our competition as well as our peers are here. There’s many CPOs in attendance alongside procurement and digital transformation leaders so for us as a vendor, it really is a great audience. We love having the ability to network with our peers or other vendors, potential partners and these procurement leaders and visionaries so it’s definitely a great opportunity to do that. It is certainly one of the best procurement events I’ve ever been to. They do a great job here at DPW.”
Scott Mars, Global Vice President of Sales, Pactum
Karin Hagen-Gierer, Chief Procurement Officer, Scoutbee
“Whenever I go to conferences, I get to see the latest technology exhibited. I can have conversations with many people in a very short period of time. Number two, for me as a CPO, I come here as well to meet my peers and have good conversations. Amsterdam is always a good place to come and maybe combine business with pleasure.”
Karin Hagen-Gierer, Chief Procurement Officer, Scoutbee
Gregor Stühler, CEO, Scoutbee
“Procurement people are incredibly busy and getting a hold of them is quite difficult. Having them all in one spot is super helpful. One key challenge for procurement software providers is that the buying centre is not the same. If you sell sales software or whatsoever, it’s usually the same buying centre. You approach the Chief Revenue Officer or something like that. In procurement, it’s not always the CPO that decides on the tech. But DPW is filtering out and attracting the talent that is making those tech decisions and it’s extremely valuable for the startups and for the tech companies as well.”
Gregor Stühler, CEO, Scoutbee
Alan Holland, CEO, Keelvar
“This event has actually been a catalyst for some of the transformation we’re seeing in procurement. Matthias and his team have grown together best-of-breed vendors and they realised early on that change is afoot and legacy systems are going to become part of the history of the space. He embraced these vendors which are coming up with exciting new developments and provided us with a venue to put our best foot forward and present ourselves to other large enterprises with an appetite for understanding what innovation was required. We’re very grateful to Matthias, we’ve worked with him from day one and we think he’s done fantastic work here.”
Alan Holland, CEO, Keelvar
Prerna Dhawan, Digital Lead, Procurement, The Smart Cube
“I think DPW raises the profile of procurement. DPW has elevated the function because procurement is no longer seen as the industry that thinks of digital at the end. It’s not a laggard anymore. I attended the first DPW event pre-Covid and thought it was brilliant then but it’s got bigger and better since. We talk about this in procurement, you get innovation from your suppliers but if you think about innovation when it comes to technology you have to be open to talk to vendors and that doesn’t happen in other conferences the way it does here. I think DPW has created that platform for learning from each other to happen.”
Prerna Dhawan, Digital Lead, Procurement, The Smart Cube
Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO at HICX, discusses why the time is now for supplier experience in supply chain and procurement and its rise to the top of conversations in the space.
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“I feel like the focus is shifting.”
Gone are the days of supplier experience being hidden away in the background. Today, it sits as an increasingly important target area within the procurement and supply chain space. But it hasn’t always been this way.
For Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO at HICX, he is pleased to see supplier experience’s conversation grow. “I’ve been in this space for 23 years and even if we go back three or four years ago, no one was talking about it,” he tells us. “It’s great to see a movement beginning to happen.”
Speaking with CPOstrategy at HICX Supplier Experience Live in Amsterdam, a day before DPW Amsterdam kicked off, he revealed how satisfying it was to see its evolution take place. And clearly there’s a market for it. Scores of people filled the Tobacco Theatre in Amsterdam all eager to listen to the many discussions and speakers attending the half-day event. “It is very satisfying because you see people’s minds changing in the same way that it did for the customer and employee experience,” he explains. “What you have to think about is that almost every company is also a supplier so it’s in your interest to focus on the supplier experience side. In another context, you’re also a supplier and people should understand that we’re all in it together. If you don’t think about solving it, then you’re going to have that pain yourself.”
Driving Supplier Experience
Indeed, it’s an issue that needs solving. Xyloyiannis explains that not understanding the necessity of supplier experience is a common misconception because it affects everyone in different ways. “Sales and marketing are the ones likely to understand what it means to be a supplier but they’re detached from the problem,” he says. “They are probably going into a portal and filling things in many times, it’s just not procurement doing it so that’s why they can’t make the connection. What we all need to realise is that focusing on supplier experience is in all of our interest. Ultimately, you have to think it’s just the right way of solving a problem because I create efficiency for myself and I’m also a supplier.”
HICX Supplier Experience Live in Amsterdam in October 2023
Xyloyiannis goes on to explain that if the focus is on supplier experience, an opportunity has been presented to create net efficiency – which is a massive win for all. “This benefits everyone because it’s not a zero-sum game,” he says. “If you think about business cases of other solutions, it’s we’re going to fire people and cut headcount. If I take the US government example of 150 million a year to DNB, this would’ve been a saving they would make without impacting any other functions internally. No heads would have to be cut; nothing would have to be outsourced. In a way, it’s free money for everyone when you can create net efficiency.”
Moving forward
Today’s Chief Procurement Officer has a lot on their plate. Amid navigating continuous innovation and transformation, ESG’s ever-increasing influence and battling inflation concerns all on the back of an already disruptive few years, procurement finds itself at an interesting moment. But looking ahead to 2024, supplier experience has its seat at the table and will only become a hotter topic in the years to come, according to Xyloyiannis.
“A lot of leading companies are putting huge amounts of focus on it,” he tells us. “Henkel posted on LinkedIn last year that they were driving their whole strategy around supplier experience. Then you’ve got Heineken and Unilever who are getting more involved in the space too. I think it is very much at the forefront, particularly in companies which produce goods and services. Supply chain has become very global and there’s a benefit to outsourcing and all these things, but it does make it very fragile. That’s why now it’s become important to focus on supplier experience because we have such a high dependency on one another.”
Last month, CPOstrategy travelled to DPW Amsterdam. Here are five takeaways from the biggest and most influential tech event in procurement.
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1. Digital transformation isn’t just about tech
David Rogers, author of The Digital Transformation Roadmap, delivered an important keynote that highlighted that digital transformation doesn’t just mean technology. He told the audience, “The hard part about transforming organisations isn’t about tech. It’s about making the technology work for your customers and for your business.”
He expressed the importance of delivering value in your organisation while also describing the art of rethinking business to define what growth opportunities there are by thinking differently about customers, competition, data, innovation and value. Rogers provided guidance to the audience and unveiled a five-step digital transformation roadmap. These are: define a shared vision, pick the problems that matter most, validate new ventures, manage growth at scale and grow tech, talent and culture. Rogers explained to the attendees gathered before him, “ChatGPT is not your strategy. Fall in love with the problem and not the solution.”
2. Building connections
DPW welcomed more than 1,250 procurement professionals over the two days while also hosting more than 120 procuretech solutions. New digital cards which were worn as lanyards around an attendees’ neck allowed for instant connections to be made and eradicated faffing about for contact details or losing important business cards. The buzz and hum of chatter in the air across the conference was audible. A walk around the two expo halls, both kitted out with dozens of tech solutions each offering something different to engage with ensured plenty of choice of destination. Many booths provided gifts which added a personal touch, such as Gatekeeper’s dragon or Omnea’s socks.
While the virtual only events in years gone by during the Covid period served a purpose, nothing could beat the sense of community and valuable face-to-face meetings that attendees were provided with.
3. Gen AI is a game-changer
If you were a fly on the wall in most conversations, a common theme would appear more often than not – generative AI. Indeed, the technology dominated thoughts at DPW Amsterdam 2023 which has only been accelerated given the ever-increasing influence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT which only launched a year ago. But gen AI isn’t only about chatbots, AI adoption was prevalent across the floor with each procuretech ecosystem showcasing its own spin on new technology as well as fresh and innovative ways of offering services.
Generative AI is firmly on the tips of people’s tongues. While its possibilities appear limitless, its rise to prominence has led and will continue to cause debate about how far its capabilities can reach in its current form. Expect that to continue.
4. People are still the secret sauce
As exciting as new technology is, without good people your operations are doomed to fail. While there have been concerns from some sections of the space that robots are here to replace humans, DPW Amsterdam’s conversation revolved around making tech work for us and about using technology as a tool to make day-to-day life easier.
Ultimately, even chatbots require a human at the other end to make the correct inputs otherwise all the end user receives is data without direction. While discussions were had as to whether AI can help plug talent gaps, all it means is that boring, outdated data-entry tasks will be taken over by machines and allow the next generation of the workforce to focus on greater value-add work that will lead to increased efficiency for themselves and the company they work for.
5. Now is the greatest time to be in procurement
In comedian and host of DPW Amsterdam Andrew Moskos’ opening speech he reflected on procurement’s evolution and transformation. “Procurement used to be boring but now we’re all rockstars. We run the company, we’re in the c-suite, we run ESG, sustainability, risk, and 80% of the spend of a company goes through us.” It was quite the welcome – and set the tone for the subsequent two days.
With an unprecedented amount of innovation at a practitioner’s fingertips in today’s ever-evolving and transformative world, the future is what procurement makes it. Gone are the days of procurement being some boring back-office function hidden out of sight, the industry has had a sudden injection of life via digitalisation.
Matthias Gutzmann, Founder of DPW, exclusively told us: “It’s the best time to be in procurement. It’s the most exciting era to be in procurement and supply chain so it’s an amazing time that we need to celebrate and get loud about it.”
Matthias Gutzmann, Founder of DPW Amsterdam, discusses the conference’s rise to prominence, reflects on challenges and reveals future plans.
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“Our challenge is always around asking ourselves how can we make DPW Amsterdam better every year?”
It’s fair to say Matthias Gutzmann, Founder and CEO of DPW Amsterdam, doesn’t believe in standing still and resting on his laurels.
Since launching DPW in 2019, the conference has grown from strength to strength and is now widely regarded as the biggest and most influential tech event in procurement and supply chain on the planet. And despite welcoming over 1,250 procurement professionals with more than 2,500 virtual attendees watching along at home in its 2023 edition in October, Gutzmann is eyeing continuous improvement.
In 2018, Gutzmann was researching procurement conferences to showcase his then-employer, Vizibl, a startup. He was frustrated by the options. The existing conferences were prohibitively expensive for a limited startup budget, lacked investors, and failed to attract an audience of startup businesses, which is critical for the development of digital capabilities and to drive innovation. Identifying this gap in the market, Gutzmann left his job in New York, moved into his parents’ house in Germany, and invested his entire personal savings to launch DPW Amsterdam.
“As soon as one conference finishes, we’re already thinking about the next one,” he explains. “We all sit down and think about how we can improve the experience and what new technologies we can bring in next time. It really is a 12-month process to bring it all together.”
Bringing DPW to life
Held at the former stock exchange building, the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, this year’s theme was “Make Tech Work” which focused on turning digital aspirations into a reality. There was a deep dive into discussions surrounding AI and machine learning in procurement, digital transformation strategies, sustainable procurement, supplier collaboration, risk management as well as innovation and disruption. The two-day event was centred on ensuring the vision of digital procurement happens now and how organisations can be challenged to deliver results instantly instead of only concepts and theories.
Despite significant success, Gutzmann maintains that there are some difficult aspects to get right in order to make the magic happen on the day. DPW Amsterdam builds client booths themselves instead of allowing sponsors to bring them themselves. “That’s a massive undertaking to get this done because we need all the design elements from the sponsors,” he says. “It’s that quality standard but we know it comes with more work instead of just allowing people to bring their own stuff. We have Simone Heeremans, Head of Production, who is amazing and oversees logistics such as catering to the suppliers.
“There is also the sales part of the conference which is selling the tickets and sponsorships. We have created this pull for the conference that we didn’t need to build a proper sales team around it. That said, there’s always a stress factor to get the numbers we want every year and grow it. So far, so good.”
The uniqueness of the conference, the problem it solves, and the timing of the launch in 2019 were the basis for today’s success and fast growth.
WHAT MAKES DPW AMSTERDAM SO UNIQUE?
Matthias Gutzmann:
1. THE AUDIENCE
Traditional procurement conferences only attract procurement professionals. But, DPW Amsterdam recognised the need for breaking this silo and for more collaboration in order to harness the potential of new digital technology, targeting an audience of procurement professionals, business leaders, suppliers, startups, data scientists, investors, and young talents No other procurement conference brings this variety of people together.
2. WORLD’S BIGGEST STAGE FOR PROCUREMENT STARTUPS
DPW Amsterdam is built to bring startups into the procurement ecosystem. In 2023, we displayed over 50 startups, giving delegates a unique insight into procurement innovation.
3. ATTENDEE EXPERIENCE I always thought procurement events felt boring – and I felt lost in a sea of guys wearing suits and ties. So, at DPW, our goal is to make procurement cool and sexy. Not an easy feat, I know. Our dress code at DPW Amsterdam is strictly “startup casual.” You’ll see t-shirts, hoodies, and sneakers from attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and speakers alike. This dress code embodies our entrepreneurial spirit. But it also breaks down barriers– and levels the playing field between big-shot enterprise CPOs and 20-something startup founders.
Better than ever
A large focus for Gutzmann and his team has been tweaking the formula of the virtual experience. Due to the impact of COVID-19, DPW was forced to cancel its 2020 conference before offering a virtual-only event in 2021. The experience, although different, was praised for its ‘TV feel’ and still created a buzz for those watching at home. However, with day-to-day life returning to a new normal, DPW Amsterdam reverted to an in-person conference in 2022 but offered a hybrid solution for those keen to watch the action from afar. “There wasn’t really anything special about it,” he discusses. “If you run an eight-hour live stream from only one stage, you aren’t likely to keep people watching. That’s why this year we asked ourselves: what can we do to increase the virtual experience? So we did just that.”
This year, Gutzmann and his team set about creating a pop-up broadcast studio to generate a television feel with live coverage from podcaster and host of Let’s Talk Supply Chain Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, as well as a reporter conducting interviews on the expo floor. “Now we’ve got cameras moving around which helps bring the whole conference to life,” explains Gutzmann. “We’ve really ramped it up this year and turned it into a large production.”
Up until this point, DPW has run solely in Amsterdam which Gutzmann believes has acted as his organisation’s competitive advantage. It is this approach that has enabled DPW to allow it to reach the level it is today. Hosted at the Beurs van Berlage, Gutzmann is full of admiration for the historic building which was built in 1896. According to Gutzmann, he believes it is what sets DPW Amsterdam apart from other conferences operating in the space.
“We love it here, it’s unique and I feel it’s a key part of the experience,” he says. “But we’re becoming bigger and we might need to build something completely from scratch. Every year, we think about how we can do things differently. I don’t know if bigger is necessarily better, it’s also about the quality of the solutions we bring in. My goal is to map out the entire end-to-end tech ecosystem and bring in that diversity of solutions.”
Bright future
Procurement, like many industries, is suffering from a talent shortage. The need to find ways to plug that gap, whether that’s through education, industry rebrand or AI, has never been so crucial. With an eye on the future, Gutzmann believes in procurement’s workforce of tomorrow and gave out around 100 free student passes this year. “When we talk to CPOs everyone’s talking about talent shortages so we understand the need to bring in that next generation and show them that procurement could be the way forward for them,” he says. “I think in the context of digital, who better to do digital than the next generation? They are more tech savvy so we need them and it’s a great opportunity for both sides because they can meet CPOs and it’s also becoming a place for recruitment too. We are doubling down on young talent 100% and it’s a win-win.”
Gutzmann is candid about the future of DPW Amsterdam and is always open to feedback while striving for continuous improvement. He believes in the value of innovation and shaking things up in order to best meet attendee’s needs. “I always think we can always bring in new speakers, but this year’s agenda was incredibly strong,” he discusses. “It’s really about listening to the people. Ultimately how can we be more relevant around the solutions as well here? How can we better matchmake people? I was wondering about how we can work pre-event with some of the corporate attendees that are coming to the conference around mapping out their challenges to then have more meaningful matchmaking at the event because it’s an innovation showcase here as well. There’s more value to be had but we know that also comes with more work. There’s always more we can think about.”
With an unprecedented amount of technology at procurement’s fingertips today, Gutzmann is in no uncertain terms about what the next chapter of the space holds. “It’s the best time to be in procurement,” he explains. “It’s the most exciting era to be in procurement and supply chain. We need to get loud about it and celebrate that fact.”
CPOstrategy visits HICX’s first Supplier Experience Live as organisations gear up to remove friction and become a customer of choice.
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Supplier experience has never been such a hot topic.
After decades in the darkness, the importance of supplier experience is finally on the agenda.
Truthfully, success can’t be achieved alone. Without happy, committed and strategic supplier relationships, a business will stagnate. And now, organisations are waking up to the potential a robust supplier base could unlock.
The rise of Supplier Experience
Earlier this month, HICX launched its first-ever Supplier Experience Live the day before DPW Amsterdam. Hosted at the Tobacco Theatre in Amsterdam, it was recognised as an official DPW Amsterdam side event. The event’s vision was to help organisations use supplier experience to remove friction and become a customer-of-choice.
The half-day event began with a welcome from Ragnar Lorentzen, Chief Commercial Officer at HICX, who opened the door to the world of supplier experience and the market developments that have led the way. Lorentzen handed over to the first keynote speech from Dr. Elouise Epstein who explained that the ERP system was dead. Epstein suggested that the solution could be how well you exchange data with third parties.
Following Epstein was a panel discussion that featured Ruth Bromley, Director of Procurement Enablement at Heineken, Adam Hubbard, Senior Manager of Supply Chain, Governance and Performance at EDF which was moderated by Tommy Benston, VP of Global Client Management at HICX. The conversation advised of ways to gain a competitive advantage in procurement and supply chain through supplier experience management. Bromley highlighted three key learnings: speed, standardisation and simplicity, believing in a “single source of truth”.
Dr. Elouise Epstein
Driving supplier adoption
Later, Anthony Payne, CMO at HICX, discussed how to drive supplier adoption and engagement through supplier marketing. Payne explained the value of segmentation which is the process of dividing the market into subsets of customers who share similar characteristics. Payne equipped the audience with six recommendations to take forward and advised them to use caution with the language they use with suppliers. Following the coffee break was Duncan Jones, former Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, who unpacked the reality of how to decide on the correct types of solutions in the new best-of-breed era amidst a transition away from the traditional database-centric approach.
The afternoon continued with a panel discussion involving Marc Bengio, Senior Director and Head of Technology Enterprise Procurement at Johnson & Johnson, Lance Younger, CEO at ProcureTech and Jacy Bassett, VP of Professional Services, to explore the topic “Demystifying the technology landscape: How do you architect for Supplier Experience?” Each speaker gave their viewpoint on how to arm the procurement function of tomorrow to meet the challenge of an ever-changing digital world. The conversation offered guidance and counsel amid an explosion of transformative solutions in the space.
Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO at HICX
Bright future
Finally, Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO at HICX, took to the stage to announce the launch of IUBN which he explained was a streamlined way to identify legal entities in a bid to create net efficiency within the supply chain. One system, one time, everywhere.
Speaking exclusively to CPOstrategy at the event, Xyloyiannis told us, “It’s pretty significant running an event like this. I’ve been in the space 23 years, and finally, I feel like the focus is shifting. Two or three years ago no one was talking about supplier experience so it’s great to see a movement starting to happen. It is very satisfying because you see people’s minds changing in the same way that it did for the customer and employee experience.
“What you have to think about is that almost every company is also a supplier so it’s in your interest to focus on the supplier experience side. In another context, you’re also a supplier and people should understand that we’re all in it together. If you don’t think about solving it, then you’re going to have that pain yourself.”
Supplier experience is just getting started. Reimagine the possible.
CPOstrategy travels to the Netherlands to soak in the atmosphere of one of the world’s biggest and most influential tech events in procurement and supply chain – DPW Amsterdam 2023
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“You are the reason why DPW exists.
“It’s been my mission from day one to break procurement out of its silo and create what I call the end-to-end ecosystem and that is you.”
Digital Procurement World (DPW) Founder Matthias Gutzmann’s first address to the crowd gathered before the main stage had a clear tone of appreciation.
The rise of DPW Amsterdam
Today, DPW Amsterdam is one of the world’s biggest and most influential tech events in procurement and supply chain. Its exponential rise in a relatively short space of time is undeniable. Its story began with a frustrated Gutzmann having discovered a lack of procurement conferences to showcase his previous employer. This led to Gutzmann finding a gap in the market and set about solving the issue himself. He left his job in New York, moved into his parent’s house and invested all his savings to launch DPW. Months later, DPW’s launch conference in September 2019 welcomed 400 industry leaders while being praised from across procurement. Under the watch of Gutzmann and co-CEO Herman Knevel, DPW’s influence and pull has only grown since.
This year’s event was located at the historic former stock exchange building, the Beurs van Berlage. Built in 1896, the building breathes character and history. Its architecture and rich past, alongside its central Amsterdam location, showcases its sense of place and being.
Innovation
DPW Amsterdam has quickly made its name as a hub of innovation and collaboration. This year, more than 1,250 procurement professionals gathered to connect, learn and innovate, while over 2,500 virtual attendees watched along at home. The buzz and hum of chatter was audible, the sense of excitement evident. And the attendees were certainly in for a treat. This year’s theme was “Make Tech Work” which focused on turning digital aspirations into a reality. There was a deep dive into discussions surrounding AI and machine learning in procurement, digital transformation strategies, sustainable procurement, supplier collaboration, risk management as well as innovation and disruption. It was all centred on ensuring the vision of digital procurement happens now and how organisations can be challenged to deliver results now instead of only concepts and theories.
Speakers across the two days included renowned experts and visionaries including the likes of Dr. Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, Yossi Sheffi, Director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author David Rogers, among dozens more. Sarah Barnes-Humphrey led superb virtual coverage of the event and allowed those unable to make it to still feel a part of such an important conference in the procurement calendar. There were book signings from Sheffi and Atif Rafiq, eye-catching tech innovations showcased on stage and even an appearance from F1 legend and Haas Formula One team principal Guenther Steiner.
Digital future
To sum up, in comedian and host of DPW Amsterdam Andrew Moskos’ opening speech he reflected on procurement’s evolution and transformation. “Procurement used to be boring but now we’re all rockstars. We run the company, we’re in the c-suite, we run ESG, sustainability, risk, and 80% of the spend of a company goes through us.”
Change is here and procurement holds the cards. Let’s Make Tech Work.
