For anyone less familiar with Fairmarkit, what’ s your specialism? We’ re the automated sourcing platform, essentially for all the types of spend you want competitive sourcing on, but where you don’ t want your team to spend a lot of time on it.

How does AI play into what you do at Fairmarkit? I think with AI and all new technology advancements, there comes new challenges in implementation and there’ s a bit of a learning curve there. But I also think it’ s an opportunity to make those implementations a little bit easier and go a little bit faster. That’ s something we try to do at Fairmarkit. Everyone has some battle scars from bad implementations or deliveries, so we try to do it in about a 12-week process and use AI to help get a quicker time to value.

Are you seeing real buzz around agentic AI on the ground? Absolutely. I think every software provider out there is talking about agentic AI, as they should be, which is really exciting not only for people like me in the provider space, but also for customers as well.

It opens up the door to a lot of new possibilities and functionalities that they’ ll be able to take advantage of.

How crucial is AI readiness before companies embark on AI implementation? I think it’ s important, but I also think it’ s important not to have analysis paralysis as well – you have to start somewhere. What I’ ve seen work successfully is starting small, identifying a use case, seeing what works and what doesn’ t work and then building off of that – versus‘ we know we want AI, so let’ s have the whole thing solved before we jump in’. The key is finding something that works, seeing some results and expanding from there.

How valuable are events like SAP Now AI London? I think it’ s fantastic. You have a lot of conversations that you normally wouldn’ t have in your day-to-day work. Hearing from different thought leaders, attending the breakout sessions and with the foot traffic at the booth, you can learn a lot even from a one-day event like this. You get a picture of the different challenges organisations are working through and the areas where Fairmarkit or SAP could possibly help.

94 December 2025