where visibility, integration and intelligence help customers manage spend, suppliers and talent with greater agility and confidence.
With procurement now actively supporting workforce transformation, teams can leverage AI to unify data and insights, gaining the visibility and predictability to treat talent and spend as strategic assets that drive growth and resilience.
Quantifying the opportunity Looking ahead to 2026, SAP’ s AI innovations target outcomes that extend well beyond cost reduction. Early estimates suggest the potential for substantial productivity gains across multiple functions: up to 60 % efficiency gains in category management, 70 % reduction in time to create RFPs, 85 % faster job description creation and up to 50 % faster execution of search and transactional tasks.
Additional benefits include a 40 % reduction in invoice reprocessing effort, 50 % reduction in content creation costs with AI-assisted intelligent listings and 50 % improved sales productivity for answering supplier discovery postings.
These figures represent more than operational efficiency. In times of uncertainty, spend remains one of the few levers companies can actively control.
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