Did you miss the recent webinar “From Pilot to Payoff: 5 Strategies to Turn AI into ROI,” featuring Andrew Bartolini, founder and chief research officer for Ardent Partners, and Rinus Strydom, chief revenue officer for Pactum AI?
The webinar highlighted how leading procurement organizations are breaking the pattern to build AI programs that actually pay off, including five proven strategies that separate the AI achievers from the AI wannabes.
Today marks the first of a three-part article series that brings forth the key points from the webcast, including a link to the event.
Artificial intelligence has quickly become the centerpiece of business transformation, and procurement is no exception. Yet despite the intensity of the conversation, the procurement function remains early in its AI journey. Recent polling of procurement practitioners, combined with broader research involving more than 340 global CPOs, underscores a striking reality: While enthusiasm for AI is high, maturity and adoption are still in the early innings. To extract real ROI from AI, procurement teams must understand both where the function stands today and what strategies will guide success in the years ahead.
Procurement Is Still an AI Novice — and That’s Normal
When procurement leaders were asked to describe where their organizations stand on their AI journey, most placed themselves firmly in the novice or rookie category. Only a small minority felt they had reached “all-star” maturity. This is entirely consistent with what solution providers observe across the market: everyone wants to pilot AI tools, explore new technologies, and “kick the tires,” but few have reached scaled adoption.
This should not be misinterpreted as a lack of progress. Rather, it reflects an inflection point that AI is on a fundamentally different trajectory compared to procurement technology waves of the past. When e-sourcing and procure-to-pay systems emerged decades ago, adoption played out slowly. In contrast, AI is being embedded into tools people already use, accelerating exposure even among late adopters. As a result, more than half of CPOs report that their teams are using AI in some capacity today, with expectations that usage will climb toward 80%.
Why CPOs are Prioritizing AI Investments
The rationale behind this rapid movement is clear: AI delivers tangible value in areas procurement has historically struggled with. More than 80% of CPOs cite productivity gains as their primary motivation for AI adoption. Routine work continues to dominate procurement’s workload—from triaging emails to processing documents to shepherding transactions. AI’s ability to automate these tasks does more than save time; it frees procurement to focus on deeper strategic contributions.
CPOs also see AI as a critical enabler of decision support. Procurement has long talked about becoming a “smart,” “intelligent,” or “data-driven” function. But despite these aspirations, most teams continue to operate with fractured data, manual workarounds, and limited visibility. AI, particularly through LLM-powered search, summarization, and pattern identification, is finally making it possible to translate systems data into insights, recommendations, and opportunities.
Given these benefits, it’s no surprise that 75% of CPOs expect AI to have a transformational or significant impact on their organizations within the next two to three years.
Where AI Is Being Used Today
Although most procurement teams describe themselves as early-stage adopters, AI usage is already emerging in several areas:
- Strategic sourcing: AI agents can run post-RFP negotiations, often generating 8–15% incremental savings. In roughly one-third of events, the bidder who initially ranked highest does not win once agents drive competitive transparency and final-round pricing.
- Tactical sourcing: AI can identify suppliers, manage three-bid-and-a-buy events, and expand competition — typically producing an additional 2% savings per supplier added.
- Chatbots and knowledge retrieval: LLMs help teams search policies, contracts, supplier data, and process documentation far more efficiently than traditional systems.
These use cases illustrate how AI is moving procurement beyond simple automation. AI agents can now plan, decide, and execute multi-step tasks autonomously, which is a capability that will fundamentally reshape procurement operating models.
Despite the momentum, several obstacles still slow procurement’s ability to realize full ROI from AI investments. Current barriers include:
- Budget constraints, especially for early-stage technologies.
- Data readiness, including the quality, accessibility, and consistency of procurement data.
- Integration challenges, particularly for organizations with complex ERP landscapes.
- User adoption and change management.
Notably, while early procurement technology failures were often blamed on immature tools, the most significant barriers today relate to internal execution: governance, resourcing, adoption, and operational alignment.
How Procurement Leaders Can Accelerate AI ROI
Five strategies emerged from the research and practitioner insights:
- Select the Right Project. ROI is heavily influenced by project choice. Target areas where organizational friction intersects with financial impact include bottlenecks, high manual effort, or categories ripe for optimization. Early wins build confidence, unlock funding, and create momentum.
- Match the Project to the Technology. Because AI tools differ dramatically in capability, procurement must verify that the technology can truly deliver the intended outcomes. Pilots that use real organizational data (not generic demos) are essential to validate performance.
- Start with the Data You Have. While data quality matters, procurement can no longer afford to delay AI adoption while waiting for perfect data. AI agents can now
- Apply Traditional Technology Best Practices. AI may be new, but technology governance is not. Stakeholder alignment, executive sponsorship, risk management, and iterative adoption play critical roles in achieving ROI.
- Leverage Provider Experience. Solution providers see more procurement teams, processes, and categories than any single enterprise. Their benchmarks and guidance help identify which categories offer the fastest wins and most favorable savings bands.
As procurement progresses from experimentation to agentic AI (tools that autonomously plan and execute multi-step tasks), the function will enter a new operating paradigm. The organizations that win will be those that move now, build early competencies, and learn through practical application rather than waiting for perfect conditions.
In the end, AI in procurement isn’t about technology — it’s about readiness, project selection, and execution excellence. The teams that embrace this will capture the next wave of procurement transformation.
