EDITOR’ S INSIGHT
Matt High, Editor-in-Chief, Procurem
“ There’ s a real spectrum of use cases here, but valid adoption concerns persist”
Our leaders overwhelmingly believe AI in all its forms will shape the future of the function. But how fast that future arrives, and how deeply procurement professionals embrace the technology, is still up for debate – there’ s a real spectrum of use cases here, but valid concerns around adoption persist.
That nearly half of those surveyed see AI as transformational signals a clear belief at the top level that its use extends beyond backoffice automation to enabling smarter, faster and more proactive decision-making.
A relatively high number of respondents anticipate incremental progress, but I don’ t see this as a reflection of AI’ s capacity to transform. Marry that figure up to concerns around adoption, such as data security and enterprise
integration, and it seems there’ s a genuine assumption that the road to transformation won’ t be without its barriers. Unsurprisingly, the biggest AI-driven gains are predicted in spend classification and analytics. AI excels at making sense of large, unstructured datasets— a core challenge in enterprise procurement – and so, automating spend analysis will unlock faster insights and better control over category strategies.
Supplier risk management is another key area. In an era of geopolitical tension and supply shocks, AI is crucial for monitoring supplier behaviour and predicting risk signals before they materialise into disruptions.
Overall, when it comes to use cases, the message is clear: investment will be broad, but for now AI is the tool of choice for where procurement is struggling the most.
42 The Procurement Survey 2025