PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE WHITEPAPER
Executive summary
Procurement functions are pivotal for organisations looking to improve margins, increase resilience and drive growth. Historically, many teams have spent a disproportionate amount of time on the basic foundations of the function – specifically manual compliance and control. While these elements are essential for risk management, becoming bogged down in tactical execution prevents procurement from advancing in maturity and delivering a more significant strategic impact. To break this cycle, CPOs and CFOs are now placing AI at the top of their agendas, viewing it as the critical lever to automate these foundations and bridge the gap between tactical necessity and enterprise-wide growth.
McKinsey’ s global AI survey shows that while AI adoption has expanded – particularly agentic AI systems – many organisations struggle to move beyond pilot projects to achieve meaningful, large-scale results.
Additional research from McKinsey, through its procurement benchmarking survey, uncovered a clear link between greater procurement maturity and higher business profitability. Even amid recent disruptions, its benchmark data demonstrates that organisations in the top quartile for procurement maturity maintain EBITDA margins that exceed those of less mature counterparts by at least five percentage points.
AI functions as an operational capability embedded across spend decisions before, during and after capital commitment. Its impact increases as data, process and governance mature together, enabling procurement and finance teams to shift from periodic review to continuous optimisation. While the appetite for this technology is clear – with McKinsey finding that leading organisations allocate over 20 % of their digital budgets to AI – a distinct impact gap has emerged. Although three-quarters of high performers have successfully scaled AI across their operations, many other organisations remain in a cautious, evaluative state. According to Coupa’ s Clarity AI Impact Report, 72 % of AI initiatives are currently stalled in pilot mode, primarily due to executive skills gaps, misaligned expectations and underlying deficiencies in data, systems and governance.
The study shows that only 5 % of executive decision-makers use AI daily, compared to 57 % of technical teams and just 29 % of companies have a clear, company-wide AI strategy. This demonstrates that enterprise ambition often outpaces execution, creating a strategic vacuum between those funding AI projects and the teams tasked with implementing them.
74 March 2026