Did you miss the recent webinar “CPO Pressure: Hitting Year-end Targets While Responding to Rising Risk, Tariffs, & AI,” featuring Andrew Bartolini, founder and chief research officer for Ardent Partners; Emily Rakowski, chief marketing officer for ORO Labs; and Scott Whelan, senior director, source-to-pay for Pfizer?
The webcast brought forward insights from ORO Labs’ 2025 State of Enterprise Procurement Agility Report, unpacking how enterprise procurement teams are adapting, where they’re falling short, and what leading organizations are doing differently. Listen as experts break down what’s driving today’s procurement pressures, from tariff-driven churn to bloated tech stacks — and examine how AI is being adopted faster than ever, even as trust lags.
Today is Part Two of a two-part article series that brings forth the key points from the webcast, with a link to the event.
Pfizer’s Path to AI-Driven Procurement: From Automation to Intelligence
When Whelan from Pfizer jokingly blamed his brief technical glitch during the webcast on “talking negatively about AI,” it set the tone for a conversation that was equal parts humorous and revealing. Beneath the lighthearted remark was a story of serious transformation: how one of the world’s largest life sciences companies is leveraging artificial intelligence to simplify operations, improve compliance, and drive measurable return on investment across procurement and supplier management.
Pfizer is a global giant with over 80,000 employees, operations in 200 countries, and 30 manufacturing sites around the world. In 2024, the company generated roughly $63 billion in revenue and produced 11 products with sales exceeding $1 billion each. The company’s mission, however, extends far beyond financial results. Last year alone, more than 1.4 billion people received a Pfizer product (from vaccines to life-saving medicines). It is this global impact, Whelan explained, that drives every operational and technological initiative, including the current wave of AI-driven modernization.
Pfizer’s procurement organization faces challenges unique to a company of its scale. Tariffs, complex global supply chains, and rapidly changing regulations create constant friction. Managing procurement across such a vast and regulated landscape demands precision, agility, and reliable data. According to Whelan, Pfizer’s approach to AI and automation is rooted in pragmatism: every project must demonstrate a tangible ROI. Gone are the days when digital investments were justified purely on user experience or potential time savings. Each initiative must deliver measurable financial and operational outcomes that can be communicated directly to the CFO who funds it.
Pfizer and ORO Collaboration Use Cases
This ROI-driven mindset guided Pfizer’s decision to partner with ORO Labs to streamline some of its most time-consuming procurement processes. The company identified three initial use cases, with each designed to balance practicality with innovation and deliver rapid impact.
Requisition approval automation. The first was automating the requisition approval process. What might sound like a simple administrative task is, in reality, a 26-step workflow involving multiple checks, validations, and cross-references. Every time a requisition is received, the system must confirm details like supplier information, insurance documentation, and compliance attachments. Previously, each step required human intervention, consuming time and creating bottlenecks. With ORO, Pfizer developed a pilot where an AI agent now performs these checks autonomously, learning and improving through “human-in-the-loop” oversight. The goal is to achieve a 90% accuracy rate by early next year, at which point human approval could be significantly reduced. This change will not only save time but allow employees to redirect their efforts toward higher-value strategic work.
Automating supplier onboarding. The second use case focused on supplier onboarding, which is a notoriously cumbersome process across industries. Although Pfizer uses robust systems like SAP Master Data Governance (MDG), Whelan described the current onboarding experience as “painful.” Scientists and business users were often tasked with chasing suppliers for information and manually entering data into systems. The new AI-enabled process automates supplier validation, banking verification, and compliance checks using real-time APIs from ORO. The result is a faster, cleaner, and more compliant process that removes friction for end users and ensures data integrity from the start. For Pfizer, this represents not just an operational improvement but also a compliance and risk management win.
Unified workflow engine. The third initiative (the “procurement front door”) is where Pfizer’s vision truly begins to take shape. Instead of requiring employees to navigate complex procurement tools like Ariba or learn the intricacies of split accounting, the system allows users to describe what they need in plain language. Whether they are hiring a consultant or purchasing lab equipment, the AI-driven front door interprets intent, gathers necessary details, and determines the right workflow automatically. Behind the scenes, the system decides whether a supplier needs to be added, if a confidentiality agreement is required, or if the purchase exceeds thresholds that trigger an RFP. For users, the experience feels effortless and resembles tracking a pizza order online. For procurement, it’s a unified workflow engine that intelligently routes tasks to the right systems or teams, creating visibility and control without burdening the requester.
These three foundational projects form the launchpad for broader ambitions. Pfizer’s procurement and AI teams are already exploring two additional opportunities: supplier risk automation and data lake integration. The supplier risk initiative aims to embed intelligent risk assessment into every stage of the procurement lifecycle. By understanding the intent of a transaction (whether it’s a service engagement or a material purchase — and its geographic and regulatory context), AI can determine when and how to apply risk protocols. This capability promises to move risk management from a reactive, manual process to a proactive, data-driven one.
Equally exciting is the prospect of consolidating data across the company’s many systems into a single, AI-accessible data lake. Pfizer works with multiple enterprise platforms such as SAP, Icertis, and Ariba, each housing valuable but siloed information. ORO’s approach, as Icertis described, involves “OCR-ing the heck out of everything” to extract and standardize data across systems. The result is a unified data layer that enables advanced analytics, prompt engineering, and AI modeling — all without manual data wrangling. This represents a foundational leap toward intelligent, autonomous procurement, where insights are readily available and workflows can be dynamically adjusted in real time.
A Rapid but Confident Strategic Transformation
Pfizer’s journey is still in its early stages, but the pace is rapid. The goal is to have all three core use cases live within the first half of next year, a timeline that reflects both the company’s urgency and confidence in its chosen approach. What began as a cost-saving exercise is evolving into a strategic transformation. By combining pragmatic ROI thinking with an ambitious vision for data and automation, Pfizer is redefining how procurement operates at scale.
As Whelan concluded, the future of procurement isn’t about teaching scientists how to use purchasing tools or navigating layers of approvals. It’s about creating an intelligent, frictionless experience that empowers the business while maintaining control and compliance. For Pfizer, AI is not a buzzword but a new way of working, one that honors both efficiency and purpose.
