THE PROCUREMENT INTERVIEW

This addresses two concerns procurement professionals consistently raise. The first: will AI agents damage supplier relationships? The evidence suggests the opposite – for the segment of suppliers who previously received no attention at all, structured and timely engagement is unambiguously better. The second: will AI agents replace procurement professionals? The answer is no. Agents handle the volume that humans cannot reach. They do not compete with buyers on strategic accounts; they extend the team’ s reach into territory that would otherwise go entirely unmanaged.

The safety of the process is built into the architecture. Pactum’ s agents operate within rigorous guardrails, following defined negotiation parameters aligned to each client’ s strategy and supplier constraints. The system will not commit outside its authority, will not communicate outside its approved scope, and produces a full audit trail of every interaction.

of Walmart’ s suppliers confirmed they preferred negotiating with Pactum’ s AI agents and considered the outcome fair

“ Different people build trust differently. We focus mostly on getting the technology right, that it actually adds value autonomously, and building these agentic systems, says Kaspar.

“ We are super transparent, what works, what doesn’ t work, and this is a journey where we try to grow together with our customers, because whatever you have today as technology matters much less than what you have in the next two years, because every year the technology evolves so much.”

As the world evolves in a constant, transformative manner, businesses need to be transparent in order to develop client trust. Amid global pressures and geopolitical tensions, a reliable partner is vital. Pactum demonstrates how this reliability operates alongside changing technologies.

From assistive to agentic The implementation of AI has a range of benefits in procurement, leading to more efficient and streamlined workflow operations, as well as the ability to move through a much shorter timeline without sacrificing quality.

Kaspar explains:“ AI helps to automate many processes, it helps to prepare for meetings and negotiation arguments, but the AI has very clear boundaries and goals and can act independently, within those boundaries to achieve those goals. So it has authority and autonomy to act, and execute decisions on its own, and it can reach out to you as human if needed.”

There are two fundamentally different approaches to AI in procurement – and they lead to very different futures.

30 June 2026