Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks on CPO Rising, we’re publishing some “best of” 2025 articles as we reflect on last year and begin tackling 2026.
I attended Zycus’ Horizon 2025 event last week in Laguna Niguel, CA. This annual event serves brings together 200+ customers and partners plus a few analysts. Horizon is a fixture on the ProcureTech calendar much in the same way that the company is fixture in the Source-to-Pay (“S2P”) solutions market. I have had the privilege of attending roughly ten of these annual events over the years and have come to appreciate the effort that the Zycus team puts in to curate an event that is uniquely Zycus’ in a calm and serene setting that is somewhat off the beaten path. Since I first began covering the company, I would say that Zycus has always marched to the beat of its own drummer (this is a compliment, both the company and event are NOT plain vanilla). Horizon has is also a great opportunity to engage directly with CPOs and other procurement leaders that are reshaping their organizations with new solutions. This year did not disappoint.
Hosted by spend management star and Zycus executive, Alexa Bradbury, Horizon’s mainstage offered a blend of keynotes, customer panels, product demos, and the annual “State of Zycus” keynote delivered by Founder and CEO, Aatish Dedhia. Here are some of the highlights of this year’s event.
Beyond S2P to I2O: From Intake to Outcomes with Agentic AI (Founder & CEO Keynote)
Zycus founder and CEO Aatish Dedhia opened his keynote by positioning California as the birthplace of so many global revolutions and suggesting that AI will be the next great one. He acknowledged the duality of innovation: as a capitalist, he is energized by the economic opportunities, but as a realist with social concerns, he noted the almost certain disruptions and job dislocations that AI will bring. He made the strong case that the rise of AI and agentic AI, specifically, is not incremental but transformational, likening it to the Industrial Revolution in its long-lasting impact on work and value creation. Large language models (LLMs) may be the engine, Aatish said, but agentic AI is the scaffolding that makes the engine useful. Agentic AI is what will drive procurement to new heights with impactful business outcomes.
Aatish charted Zycus’ own innovation journey across the source-to-pay (S2P) space since 2010, noting that competitive solution providers in the S2P space have reached parity in feature richness. Today, the differentiator is how broadly a solution provider can leverage agentic AI across its S2P suite. He explained that AI’s true promise lies not just in answering “Where is my purchase request?” or summarizing a contract, but in rationalizing suppliers, orchestrating multi-step goals, and automating negotiation flows. With this example, Aatish traced the evolution of AI from machine learning to LLMs and towards AI’s new “horizon” — agentic AI.
Zycus was early to the AI “dance” and Aatish made that point when he discussed Zycus’ Intake solution, which is built on the fluidity of agentic AI and embedded directly into Microsoft Teams (an example of how “built-in, context-aware AI beats bolt-on accessories every time.”). Zycus’ AI agents are already delivering touchless invoicing, negotiations, and supplier onboarding. He then showcased customer successes, including Tata Play, where agentic AI is being used to automate RFPs and negotiations, delivering measurable value over eight years of partnership. And, with the expansion of AI-enabled features from 184 just a few years ago to 541 today in its “Redwood” release, Zycus offers a robust level of AI capabilities built within its full suite that operates a single data model.
Zycus is also walking the AI walk with its clients … literally. This was shown when he emphasized that Zycus is not only building solutions for customers but also applying AI internally. For example, the company has conducted 10,000+ candidate interviews via Zycus Lumi and now runs AI-driven monthly department reviews.
Aatish believes that the future belongs to procurement teams that can combine guided intake with agentic AI orchestration to build intelligent, value-driven operations. Looking ahead, Aatish urged CPOs and procurement leaders to embrace an “AI control tower” mindset to reduce intake chaos, capture tail spend savings, and protect procurement organizations. The AI future is here, and for a few days last week, it was in Laguna Niguel, CA.
A S2P Implementation Playbook from Complexity to Clarity
In one session, two executives from “One of the Big 4s” detailed one of the largest and most ambitious procurement transformations powered by the Zycus suite. With 90,000 users across four regions (the US, Mexico, China, and India) and more than 20 ERP integrations, the executives’ team implemented a full intake-to-pay solution in parallel with an S/4HANA rollout. Given the project scope, its goals were quite aggressive:
- Elevate procurement’s strategic influence by securing a true seat at the table
- Enable bulk WBS uploads
- Integrate contracts directly into workflows, and
- Deliver real-time visibility into end-to-end risk.
At the same time, the team needed to ensure that the solution embedded compliance into daily operations through seamless “No PO, No Pay” guardrails that would protect the business without slowing it down.
Reflecting on lessons learned, the executives emphasized that simplification should come before automation because adding technology to complexity only compounds problems. The presenters reminded the audience that “data is destiny,” pointing to supplier, spend, and contract data as the foundation for intelligent procurement. Just as important, they believed, is engaging stakeholders early and often to ensure alignment and adoption across the enterprise.
Looking ahead, the executives noted three key priorities: expanding intake coverage to capture more business needs, enabling self-service analytics to put insights in the hands of end-users, and developing hybrid governance models that balance compliance with flexibility.
Their Zycus-powered journey provides a great blueprint for organizations seeking to transform a global S2P operation.
I’m on the road next week, but I hope to get a second article covering more of the Zycus Horizon 2025 event.
