Tell us about you and your role I’ m Andrew Daley, one of the founders of Edbury Daley. We’ re specialist recruiters in digital procurement and supply chain, and I’ m also the founder of a new business, Agentic Procurement, creating AI-ready procurement teams.

How big an issue is AI readiness as companies embark on large-scale AI implementation programmes? We’ ve launched an AI readiness survey on our new website, Agentic Procurement. From the early results, it’ s clear people are just getting started on this journey. There’ s a lot of hype around AI and it’ s difficult for the non-technical mind to understand how it can be deployed. There’ s a big education piece there for the leaders. But for the people on the ground, the overwhelming concern is: is my job going to change or get replaced? What does my future look like? There’ s a huge opportunity for procurement professionals to evolve their capabilities and deliver more for their organisations.

Where does that responsibility lie – with the individual, employer or solution provider? Throughout my career, you’ ve seen big organisations attract great people with the promise of great training and development and investment in MBAs. But that feels like it’ s gone out of fashion in recent years. Quite a few AI startups are offering to train people on the use of the tool, but I don’ t think that addresses the problem, because AI is really useful and easy to interact with – we can just talk to it normally. It’ s the other skills that need greater emphasis. For example, you free up time in your day job through the use of AI – what do you do with that time? All that strategic activity, critical thinking, all these other skills – that’ s where the investment needs to come.

Is there genuine fear among procurement professionals that AI will replace their jobs? It is something that concerns people. We’ re generally scared of things we don’ t understand – that’ s a human trait, and I definitely see some of that with AI. The elite functions that are forging ahead, I’ d characterise their people as intellectually curious, creative, with a strong desire for personal development. In the less progressive functions, there’ s fear and paralysis. The ones with the most fear are most vulnerable because they’ re not actually embracing the opportunity.

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