PROCUREMENT STRATEGY
“ Those tasks really hold people back from doing the more strategic work, driving real value”
Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder & CEO, ZIP
Lu Cheng, Co-Founder and CTO at Zip, explains the scope of the problem: " They don ' t know where to start, what the process actually is, which leads to a lot of questions like, how do I start the process? What is the status of my request? I have 5,000 GL codes. Which one do I actually pick or can I pay for this vendor with my credit card?"
This confusion isn ' t isolated to a handful of organisations. After speaking with numerous enterprise customers, Lu and the team at Zip discovered a common thread. The uncertainty surrounding intake processes creates bottlenecks that ripple through procurement departments, consuming valuable time that could be spent on strategic initiatives.
The real promise of AI in procurement isn ' t about replacing human expertise – it ' s about liberating procurement professionals from the repetitive, manual tasks that have held them back for years. According to Rujul, this shift represents a fundamental change in how procurement teams can allocate their time and energy.
" Procurement for so many years has been bogged down in many ways by working through all of the repeatable,
high throughput manual tasks that everyone in procurement needs to do," Rujul notes.
" Those tasks really hold people back from doing the more strategic work, driving real value."
The deployment of AI agents into procurement workflows is already showing measurable results. Organisations using these technologies are finding their teams freed up to focus on higher-value activities, whilst AI handles routine tasks such as validating intake data and comparing contracts with order forms.
The trajectory for AI in procurement is steep and clearly defined. Last year,
70 November 2025