2026: The year of the AI platform If 2024 was the year of AI hype and 2025 the year of the pilot, Rujul believes 2026 will be the year of the AI platform This is the point where enterprises will realise that AI cannot simply be bolted on to legacy systems of record. Instead, a new layer is required – a middle layer that provides governance, context and auditability.
For the procurement audience, this is a critical distinction. Procurement orchestration is not about making a user interface look better or connecting two pieces of software. It is becoming the foundation for the enterprise.
“ To make AI valuable and safe at scale, you need a governance and control layer,” Rujul insists.
“ One that ensures AI decisions are regulated by fixed workflows, where everything happens consistently and compliantly every time. You need full context into not just what decisions were made, but how and why they were made – feeding clean, accurate, auditable data back into your systems of record while giving AI the context it needs to operate safely and intelligently.”
The internet of agents With the fear that a company’ s tech stack will become more fragmented, CPOs are increasingly looking for ways to blend best-of-breed tools without creating data silos. Zip’ s vision for this is the internet of agents. procurementmag. com
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