Name: AI in Procurement for CFO Strategy and Business Growth
Uploaded: 2026-10-06T16:17:15.474Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: AI in Procurement for CFO Strategy and Business Growth

Transcript for "AI in Procurement for CFO Strategy and Business Growth": Hello, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today. This session is brought to you by finance chief in association with Amazon Business, and we're pleased to have you with us for today's discussion on AI in procurement for CFO strategy and business growth. Procurement generates huge amounts of data about how organizations spend money, where that money goes, and how suppliers and purchasing activities are managed. But turning that data into useful intelligence has traditionally been difficult. Spend can be fragmented, reporting can be retrospective, and opportunities to improve efficiency, control, and decision making can be difficult to identify quickly. AI is beginning to change that through intelligent automation, analytics, and greater visibility into organizational spend. For finance leaders, the opportunity goes beyond procurement efficiency. Better intelligence around spending could support financial planning, strengthen control and compliance, and help organizations make more informed decisions about where resources are allocated. So where is AI genuinely making a difference, and how can smarter procurement contribute to wider business growth? Today, we'll explore those questions with two experienced procurement leaders, Jared Glover, director of cost management and procurement at Santander UK, and Natasha Gurevich, founder and CEO of Kandor Procurement. Thank you both for being here. So before we jump into today's discussion, if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself and giving us kind of snapshot about your career in procurement. And, Natasha, if we could start with you first, please. Wonderful. Thank you very much for having me. I've been on procurement for twenty eight years. My last corporate job was, global chief procurement officer at Nike. Be... Before that, I was, running sourcing organization at Salesforce, ran procurement transformation at McKesson. At some point in my career, I build procurement organization at PayPal when it acquired... When it was acquired by eBay. And two years ago, I opened procurement advisory firm called Kendra Procurement, and now working with various procurement organizations across the industries and, across the globe in helping elevate the power of procurement. Perfect. And Jared? I mean, what what an introduction to have to follow. Hey. So I'm Jared. I've worked in procurement for, got, twenty odd years myself. I look after cost management and procurement for Santander. The... This this span of that extends beyond procurement, so I also look after a finance team. So my insights relate not just to the kind of procurement end, but also how we translate that into value for the chief accounting officer who I work for and how we make that real for them. So I've had a background in kind of property and business services and then meet in financial services where I've been for the last twelve years. Perfect. Again, just thank you both for giving up your time and your your expertise with us today. So if we could start by looking at the changing role of procurement, where should CFOs be looking at procurement as more than than simply a source of of cost savings? And and, Natasha, if we could go to you on that one first, please. Absolutely. And the question is very timely because we're actually partnering with one organization on exactly that, how to change the role of procurement and go beyond, traditional cost savings. And there are a couple of areas that I would like to highlight. One is that, CFO is now managing bottom line just as actively as they used to manage top line. And there are a lot of aspects where procurement can make an impact. Cash flow would be one of them because procurement has all the levers in their hands to manage and control payment terms, supplier financing, and working capital. And when managed and pull strategically and mindfully, it can generate enormous financial impact to the company and free up quite significant amount of cash flow that business can reinvest into other aspects. In addition to cash flow, I would say, that procurement and, frankly, COVID and supply chain disruption related to closure of Strait Of Hormuz demonstrated that that by smartly planning capacity availability, procurement can step in into revenue protection. The role that previously was not necessarily attributed to procurement because in many instances, having supply availability and having capacity availability protects the revenue. And last but certainly not least, is, from my perspective, is, margin architecture because we often put... Like, procurement has to create category strategies and own the multiyear outlook on how spend will develop in particular, area of business, but we haven't really connected it to margin architecture in the past. And I think now having more advanced technologies, we can connect category strategies, hedging long term supplier agreement to the margin architecture. And done smartly, procurement is enormous contributor to, financial spending of of the enterprise. Right. Thank you, Natasha. Gerald, do you have anything else to add to that? Yes. I think all in Natasha's points are incredibly wise. I think the only other thing that I'd mentioned is procurement has always told people that we have a role in income generation, how we can attribute value. And I think now when AI and the proliferation technology is so high, there's a real opportunity to make sure that you purchase smartly on elements that can improve your income. And in financial services, but also applies in other areas, I'm talking about where you look at AI and technology interventions that do things like reduce call handling times, which means that your customers can get contact quicker. Looking at smart ways to divert people through different channels, looking at your sales channels and optimization of your sales channels. And I truly think at the minute, this... The pace of change and the speed of of growth in those areas of AI advancement that is also integrating with the traditional channels of your, voice and chat channels that there is a real opportunity for us to show we can do things and bring market innovation to allow us to mean that we have less cost... Customer dropout, more customer taking product. And there's a real opportunity there where it's nascent in tech. We can we can do something great if we're engaged properly. Obviously, the the procurement challenge is always when those AI companies engage with you, your sales channel leaders, and suddenly you find some of it out of your architectural design that that leaks in. But I think there's a huge opportunity now for pure leaders to be talking about how you can generate additional revenue through those interventions. Yeah. It's clear that with AI that there needs to be a greater understanding of of where you want the tools to be and what you need to address and how your data can be extracted in order to to drive those efficiencies. But I was wondering, you know, what are organizations still missing when it comes to understanding where their money is going? Jared, if you could kick us off on this one. Yes. So I I think the biggest challenge in procurement remains being able to track true cost of products. And I think there are different industries that are sort of stronger at this. I think, you know, there are manufacturing and and closer to core product production businesses that are really close to that. But I think as you go further down value chain and and closer to a service based industry, there are still great difficulties of linking your products to your third party and your allocation of cost. And in a in a kind of finance head, I look at that quite frequently where we look at those central unit costs where you're gonna be allocating cost to a product, and it may be a little bit more hit and miss. The the way that you interrogate your iPads, the way that you look at your third party costs and tie that back to product, I think, is is still the holy grail for a lot of organizations. And I I do think that when you're looking at the way that AI works on inverse classification, when you're looking at the way that you can use it for taxonomy identification, market analysis, there is an opportunity to improve that. It will still remain that goal that you continue to chase across different industries, but I do think there's a huge opportunity for us to look at that kind of classification and tie back to product based costing. I observe, in various enterprises that the the biggest misconception or the biggest challenge today, and it really... It's related to what Jared said, that tracking cost, full cost of product, is that we rely on AI to solve, the problems that we have with disparate systems and with imperfect data. And I've been procurement for twenty eight years. So as Jared, we've been talking about data from our day one. I think the conversations about data will continue, long after we retire. But the reality is that it's fundamental. It's basic. Right? And, we fell into the same fallacy when outsourcing became really prevalent, like, about twenty four years... Twenty five, thirty years ago. We were like, okay. We can't... Like, the the two schools of thoughts. Right? Like, why would we outsource if we can do them house, and why would we do it in house if we can outsource it? And anything that represented the big mess, instead of fixing it in house, fixing processes, fixing data, connecting the systems, we're like, we're just gonna push it out and let them, third party, figure it out. We're falling into the same fallacy now with AI. We're putting AI on the top of imperfect data, on on the top of disparate and disconnected systems and clunky processes, and we think it will it will... It it will be a solution. It won't because it can only work, and it works very efficiently, and it's always available, but it works with what we give it. And if we are applying it to the cumbersome processes or data exchange, or multiple systems, it would take a simple, like, supplier onboarding. We, negotiate the contract and store it at CLM, then supplier onboarding is happening in another tool that doesn't necessarily have all data points from negotiated contract in it, then we're paying them through a third tool that is also disconnected. And when this when this systematic discrepancy and disparate, systems exist, it impacts financial standing of the company because you can never really know what you pay, to who, for what, and how you can positively impact it. So going back to data process connectivity. You mentioned there, you know, we can't put AI on top of the broken data. We need to have that kind of clear sense of of clean data and kind of better visibility. So with that, I'll go through this question now. Either of you can kinda jump onto it. So, you know, when procurement has that better visibility and that intelligence, how does that change the way finance leaders kind of plan and make decisions? Just helps them to accurate, to more accurately forecast. It helps budget more accurately, helps forecast more accurately, it creates visibility to spend. It frees up money for investment, investments. It, actually even puts, employees, whether it's in procurement or in finance, in a much more strategic and thinking position that instead of, I don't know, doing some, tactical low value by high volume work of connecting data points and trying to make them accurate, whether it's PO invoice reconciliation, whether it's contract reconciliation. Instead of doing that, did they apply their strategic thinking, into, like, real important problems for the company that actually everything is connected that improves company's financial standing when, when a risk... Human resources are used not on tactical, kinda like fragmented stuff, but on strategic solutions. So I think that the companies that, really want to start using AI, probably one of the one of the greatest missteps I've seen is that everyone wants to go big and and go fast. Now let's say, I'd encourage start slow, start with the area where data is the cleanest, and see how it can propel into greater results, across the enterprise that will be beneficial for financial purposes and overall how enterprises led. Perfect. Gerald, do you have anything else to add on in how this can help finance leaders kind of plan and make decisions? No. I I I just completely agree with everything that's just been said. But the fundamentals you're purchasing are, you're working out over the next period of years how much cost you're gonna have versus how much income you're gonna have. And you're making decisions of the data points that you have available to you. The better the data points are, the better decisions you're gonna make. And the more that you'll be able to determine where you should invest resource to improve either your income or your cost, and Booking one can play a role in both of those. So as long as your data is clean, it allows you to make a wiser decision about that. Great. Jared, if I could get you to kick off this next one. So, you know, can AI help procurement move from from reporting what has happened to giving the wider business better insight in... Into what to do next? Yeah. So that kind of scenario and what if analysis, I think the availability of it is is already there. I think a lot of the major ERP systems have been offering or suggesting that kind of what if analysis and scenario analysis has been available for probably the last seven or eight years. But, fundamentally, what will AI allow you to do? It should allow you to do that scenario analysis quicker. I completely agree with the points that we just made about disconnections between systems. I think that the the latest trend in in in procurement, as we all know, has been for orchestration tools and talking about rather than fixing your system, can you put another system in that will make your system talk? But there are still some fundamentals that you can do. You can do invoice trend analysis. You can get AI to roll over that and start to look forward on that. You can look at, you know, market conditions and when those market conditions prevail, what did you see coming through your cost base, and then scenario map and model, how that happens in the future. All of those things you can do as a procurement team now. The problem is that right now, as a procurement team, you're probably focused on executing your tenders, look at the pipeline that you've got, and your availabilities to that kind of analysis is constrained by the fact that you've got a day to day, and you probably got a plan about what you're gonna do. AI is a plug in, makes all those things simpler, and it gives you extra extra digital hands to achieve that kind of analysis and probably a degree of accuracy that is equivalent to your other areas. And I I think the point was made earlier that that also got sold as part of BPO, didn't it? When you said, you know, you could do this scenario analysis, but you you can have a BPO and they'll do that for you. But I think what what you found... What we found is, you know, data planning and data quality inhibits the ability to do that. But also when you have a BPO, the BPO gets gets caught in the data data you have as well. Potentially, their ability to think about the future and do that forecasting falls away. Whereas an AI agent doesn't get distracted because it's got one task and it's coded to it. So I think it gives us the ability to do it. I think we have the ability now. It just makes it easier. Thanks, Jared. And and then, Tasha, what do you think about AI helping businesses kind of how AI can help businesses decide what better to do next? I think it's exactly that what Jared and I, mentioned already. Like, we we used to be concerned that AI will take our jobs. And I think the greatest gift of AI is that it doesn't take our jobs. It helps us to refocus. And it it it help us it helps us to really put, put the efforts and resources into growing business versus solving a lot of operational, issues that procurement is frequently, distracted by. Guess it would be a wonderful day if I can just focus on, true procurement, on planning, strategizing, learning the business, connecting the dots of what's happening in the world in economic development with, the strategic three year plan that my company has. But procurement is still dealing with issues. It's like, my supplier didn't get paid, or where did this, like, shipment get stuck, or why are we not, sending enough purchasing cards and stuff like that. Right? And, I think that's that's the greatest gift that, workload, as I am observing across multiple companies, is not lessening for procurement organizations. If if anything, procurement is getting involved in more critical and strategic areas of planning, forecasting, budgeting, with their... With key stakeholders. And, I also think another aspect, Jared and I, we haven't spoken about it yet, but probably will, make sense to touch is, relationships with suppliers and how quickly suppliers adapt, various AI solutions in their service delivery and how we, as their clients, can benefit from it and how we can align our solutions with their solutions. I know very, very few companies who started scratching that surface, but that is, that would be enormous unlock of productivity for procurement, productivity, creativity, innovation if we can start aligning our AI strategy with suppliers' AI strategy because that will eventually elevate our business solutions. On that kind of topic of of alignment, excuse me, on that topic of alignment, if procurement is going to become a more strategic part of the CFO agenda, you know, what needs to change in the way the the function operates? Natasha, if you could kick us off on this one, please. Alignment of goals across the enterprise would be very beneficial. And but, again, that's that's frankly nothing new. It's not driven by AI. But if, if procurement's main measurement of success is savings and full finances, margins, revenue growth, and, cash flow. And for business, it's speed and outcome. And for supply chain, it's capacity availability, then we continue operating in a slightly mismanaged, environment. I think that one of the, maybe, like, the most, progressive and necessary, changes that we need to bring into enterprises is how we're gonna create shared values, shared values, shared goals, aligned objectives. I'm like, maybe I would go in that direction. Perfect. Jared, what... What's your thoughts? So thanks, Aaron. I just want to echo something that Natasha said. And, look, I I think this is the the unlock of value for us in procurement when we talk about it. If we only talk about procurement systems and we only talk about procurement execution in those systems and we're missing the true value of procurement. The real real benefit that we can bring is talking about how procurement enable across our supply chain greater alignment of strategy and delivery to make sure we have end to end cultural alignment, goal alignment, and outcome. I think as you step more and more into AI, you will have different organizations that adopt AI in different ways. There will be concerns in your organization about sovereignty of data and how those AI tools work. And if you can align and make sure that the the clear cultural and strategic direction on systems, architecture, and data flows into your third party partners, then that is where the true value procurement is rather than how effectively you utilize your ERP and whether or not you have a data layer that that sits on top of your invoicing. It's all about how we embed within our supply chain partners where we want to be as an organization. Perfect. Thank you both. So kind of to start off there, we've spoken a lot about, you know, the opportunities and the the dreams and and what we want to see the function look like. So I wonder if we can maybe look a little bit more about the kind of a practical effects, particularly when it comes to AI. So, you know, you know, what AI can can actually do for us right now as we as we sit here and have this conversation. You know? So where are you seeing AI already making a mean... Meaningful difference in in procurement? Jared, if you could kick us off for this one, please. Yeah. So we... We've started on our journey across AI, and I'm I'm starting to see benefit in just the little simple things like... So we've deployed the conversation chatbot for people who want... Who who actually wants to comply with the procurement process, telling them how to comply with the procurement process, things to think about, and allowing punching into live data so they can see, you know, where's my invoice, where's my PO, so they can punch out the conversational agent directly into a data source that will tell them the answers to the questions they need. And, ultimately, what does that do? That that pays time back into my organization. When it pays that time back into my organization, it allows my team to focus more on that strategic relationship building with our supply chain, looking at those kind of long term activities that we wanna take it to market and things that we wanna develop. I think as well, look, there... There's a lot of, lot of procurement companies out there that are that are selling kind of negotiation auto autonomous agents, and you're starting to see them begin to proliferate. And, honestly, I've seen some, I think, are really good in the test environment, and I think they will start to bring value. Where they'll bring the value, I think, is in the tail. As they begin to manage your tailspin, they'll allow you again to to focus on the strategic. So Natasha said this earlier, and I completely agree. Are these AI agents giving us less work? Not necessarily because what we're doing is we're almost immediately reinvesting that time and effort into the strategic. So what they should be doing is giving me greater income, reducing my cost base by allowing me to invest that time in truly strategic activity. Natasha, where are you seeing AI already making a meaningful difference in procurement? I would say that, so, plus one on a tailspin for sure. And AI not only helps with autonomous sourcing or, autonomous contracting, and there are many firms that do that. Few do them well, but but they exist. They also... Like, as AI learning up your environment, it can can also suggest not just... The AI doesn't just continue sourcing the same thing like triple bid, something that is high high high volume, low value. But it also... If you train it, it starts giving suggestions that you can reduce, like, you have repets... You have suppliers who provide redundant services. In this location, this location, this location, especially it's relevant for businesses who who who who who who who who through acquisitions. And very frequently, acquisitions are not... Acquired entities are not fully integrated into the entity that acquires it. And if acquisitions happen often, you find the redundant cost everywhere. We didn't need AI to tell us that. We we knew it before, but AI helps us to identify the areas. It's like, k. Well, you have... Your one company, but you have, like, 57 agreements with Marriott, for example. Right? So this is an opportunity for you to create one master or something. So that that is one of the areas for sure. I would say also that AIs help to flex with resources when you needed something, like, Ajentic AI. If you need, flex quickly or if you need a particular level of expertise or if you have, like, repetitive, negotiations that need to happen. And, having agents as part of your workforce is actually extremely helpful. Again, it helps our people who are our employees, our teammates. It helps us to give them more strategic, more fun, more interesting projects to explore and experiment while the work that still must be done can be done by, by iGentic by iGentic AI. I also see a lot of, benefits in, actually, building, some team... Teamwork and team personalities, within within the group. Let's say, for example, put all my direct reports through the talent assessment. Not not talent assessment, not skill assessment, but kinda behavioral style assessment, loaded all the profiles in, in some AI tool, and I said analyze it and predict some dynamic within the team that can... That these types of personalities and behavioral types can generate what's the best pairing, what's the worst pairing? How can we make the worst pairing the best pairing? You may argue that's not exactly kinda like finance related, and I'll, webinar today is about productivity and finance and changing role of procurement. But I would say any positive dynamic in in any teamwork, leads to productivity. Productivity leads to, higher effectiveness and efficiencies, of the of the team. So this is more like the side, positive side effect. And the the last one I would mention about hedging. You can't ask AI, like, what should I hedge and at what price? Right, because, like, I seriously doubt that if someone would ask AI six months ago who would would do... Who would win the World Cup that they landed on Spain on a 100% cases. Right? But predictive analytics and just proper prompt and keep digging and keep fitting with data and keep analyzing. I think hatching is another area where, AI can can help a lot. Help, not lead. The leading and judgment still resides with procurement teams. Thank you, Natasha. And you've actually already started to to answer my next question. So I'll throw this one over to Jared. So, Jared, how can you see automation kind of freeing up procurement teams from repetitive work and allow them to focus on that higher value decisions. So I I think Natasha has eloquently covered lots and lots of of what we can do, and we've already talked about that kind of tails and how we can use autonomous bots to to do chats and also do negotiation. I think there are other areas that people are talking about right now as well, which relate to kind of bid analysis, how you look at outliers, how you look at best case. I think that's really valuable. But I I think it's it's worthwhile as well mentioning. One one I'm concerned about, I think, is being championed at the minute as as a kind of resource reduction, I'll tell you why I'm concerned about it. So there's a lot of category management software for the drawing together category plans that's been launched, which is AI driven. And I have a a slight concern around this at the minute, the reliance on it, and and I'll I'll tell you the reason why. So I think particularly within our industry at the minute, we see a lot of kind of deep fakes and AI taking images and data and learning from it and providing information that's that's not accurate and relevant. And I think when we're doing market analysis, I think we have the potential for companies to use their own AI to enhance their standing when your AI goes and searches a market, I think this will grow in the same way that people were able to improve their returns on Google search, things like that. But I think it will be exponential. And I have a concern that generation of category plan and market analysis may be something that AI right now is good for, but AI in six months may actually return more false... Positive than than I would actually want to see within a cap plan. Absolutely. And and, Jared, if we could stay on you and just to kind of flip that question a little bit about how... Is there a way that AI can, you know, help improve kind of spend visibility, optimization, and particularly compliance? So I I think there's there's a lot of reg tech that's coming out of AI right now. And we're we're particularly in third party risk view, which is is big for financial services, looking at where we think there are potential areas where you can you can pull information that previously was quite manual, but also look forward, look for vulnerabilities. So there's there's a lot of kind of screen scraping, company's house reporting that can enable you to do that supplier certification, supply due diligence. And I think there's a lot that's coming out now looking at market and doing that kind of scenario testing that we talked about financially earlier. But you can also expand to, you know, geopolitical events and looking at the impact that you might have. And Natasha mentioned this earlier when she talked about on us. But I think there's there's cases of kind of oil shock and prices that are moving around, energy grid reliability in countries where they have, you know, less stable infrastructure. And, obviously, there's there's a lot going on in The Middle East at the minute and the impacts that that may have for different people. So there's a lot available that can allow you to to begin scenario testing based on the information you have available. We're also going to look further information. So if your supplier database says you deal with a with a supplier that's UK listed, but actually parent company isn't the company you deal with and that's listed in Israel at the minute, there there may be a degree of risk that, that you may not be aware of with traditional onboarding vetting checking that that really becomes relevant and visible. So I think red... Red tech is definitely an area where there's there's a lot of lot of development and potentially not development that was originally geared towards procurement, but has use cases that can transfer across. Thank you, Jared. And, Natasha, what about you? Where are you seeing AI improve stuff like, you know, spend visibility, optimization, and compliance? Spend visibility is is the cornerstone. Right? It's it's it's a major pillar for any financially successful organization. And when it comes to play, again, it it helps with forecasting, with budgeting, with hedging, with, resource reallocation, with the right supplier engagement. So it's, it's very it's very, productive, effective, efficient, and really help enterprises to to plan properly and be, and be on the top of their game. Maybe one area we haven't touched yet is that the insights that AI provides without the right activation and without the right implementation is just a lot of fancy reports. And this is where I wanna highlight the importance of procurement. You know, inspect. We've been in this field, cumulatively for over fifty years, and our passion and commitment is to the field of procurement. And this is where, practical implementation of all the right intel and all the right guidance that procurement is receiving from AI still resides with real people. Their judgment, their ability to act, their critical thinking because, that's kinda like one of the area that concerns me today that a lot of new generation coming in the field of procurement, they rely on AI a 100%, and they actually do not engage their critical thinking, their reasoning, their judgment into evaluating what AI, just delivered for them. And even less prepared they are to execute upon those recommendations. So a lot of great data is coming in spend visibility, in various planning scenarios, but it's still on procurement to apply the judgment, read the data. Like, if you are just beginning your career in procurement, my suggestion, or strong recommendation is that do not ever give to your leaders report that you didn't read or that just don't rely a 100% on the AI and pass it on. Know what you're passing on because you will be asked questions. And at some point, you will have to implement some portions of it. Absolutely. And, Natasha, I could say with you, you know, we speak... We've spoken a lot about bringing in AI to the workflow, but giving that kind of trust. So what do you think needs to be in place for organizations to trust the intelligence AI is giving them? It's human judgment that we talked about. Also, I would say that familiarity with AI and utilization of AI varies in different companies, and even with the same company would would vary from one organization to another. The older the workforce, maybe the more intimidated they are by by AI. So I think it's the role of the leaders to make AI digestible. I have a colleague, working in one of the AI development companies in Silicon Valley, and their requirement is that use AI first, then try to kinda, like, figure it out on your own. This is good, but this is the center of Silicon Valley, and it's AI development company. Right? So that's that's slightly different aspect. I think the role of the leaders is to make... To bring AI into, into all levels within the organization, provide training, create, maybe can, like, gamify the environment to encourage people to utilize it, maybe have some tournaments who will ask AI the most, tricky question or who will find the most mistakes. So, the tools are developing. They're developing fast. They're developing faster than organizational adaptability of those tools and familiarity with them. Because two years ago, there were classes like how to put the best prompt. Now AI can offer you so much more than probably prompt, while still important, is not the main area you're learning. It's like how you connect different systems. Like, someone was trying to figure out, do I even need the level of orchestration and procurement if I can connect Claude directly to a r... ERP? Do I even need anything else? Right? Thanks, Natasha. Jared, do you have anything to add about, you know, what needs to be in place for for organizations to trust the intelligence AI is giving to them? I I I just like to think of it as you just gained a really smart new colleague. If you ask them a question, they tell you everything they know about it. So you've gotta be able to have the judgment to say from what they've told you what actually matters to you. So we... We've we've got a set of really smart people that we employ that that are sort of specialists in their area. But I do worry exactly as Nasash said that we we have a generation that's joined us that won't know enough of of what your smart colleagues just told you, your AI colleagues just told you, how to fly the judgment and what what to do around that. And in in The UK market specifically, I think the use of apprenticeship schemes and gradual intake and and having the flexibility to still train people and bring them in at a point where they can learn from the generation that is beginning to age out is incredibly important. Because if if people are used to... You know, even even so far as there's a set of people in my my workplace that didn't... That come from before Google, and there's a set of people that come from, you know, when Google became a predominant search engine. And you all have different skill sets and can do different things. In the future, Google, for for the people that are joining us is AI, and they know nothing different. So we have to be able to apply those kind of barriers around people to say, when someone really smart tells you something, how do you work out which bit's relevant to you? Because sometimes it's just a stream of consciousness that they've they've embedded into you. And and acknowledging that even the smartest people in the world can get things wrong, and the AI agent will get things wrong. And how do you work out what critical thinking and critique you of life for that really smart person to make sure when they get it wrong, do you know what they've got wrong and why? Absolutely. Thanks, Jared. If we could stay with you. So Can I just add to that? Because Jared's saying, like, triggered my thinking about the role of the leader in the age of AI because you have older workforce that is intimidated by AI, and they need very, different level of education and, can, like, help them to can, like, infuse it into the the way of working that they already got used to. But you also have younger generation that, if you think about the college, like, the the the youngest workforce now, they are the the guys and and gals who went to college during COVID, which means that a lot of their learning was done online without interacting and having the benefit of, life interaction with people, learning from professors' life through the conversations and and, like, impromptu and spontaneous exchanges. And, they need to be led differently. And if one need to say utilize AI more, rely less on your institutional knowledge because some of the practices you implemented twenty five, forty years ago, they're no longer relevant in the current environment. But tell younger generation that, like, slow down on AI, rely on some sort... Like, learn at least some sort of institutional knowledge because it will help you to arrive to better... To better conclusions. So it's it's very interesting. I don't remember that, that we had this challenge, like, thirty, forty years ago, just because the technological development was not that drastic. Yep. I completely agree. And I I still got some people in my team, Natasha, who who have the graphite sheets that we used to order on. And graphite sheet to AI is just an exponential change, isn't it? Leading those people is is such a challenge. It's such a fascinating fascinating time to be working in the world of procurement and seeing all those kind of the way that people people work within your team and and how differently they operate. So if we could go back to, you know... You've got that really smart employee like you compared AI to. Once it starts identifying patterns, uncovering risks, finding opportunities in your spend, what does it take to start to turn those insights into action? I'll just throw that out. Whoever wants to grab it. The the key thing is to make sure that whatever you're doing with that agent or that that process is repeatable. Because what what I'm finding is there's a lot of AI use cases that are kind of plug and play, but we haven't built the infrastructure to make it continuously repeatable. So I wanna make sure that the insight that I've got is repeatable insight. That means I can continuously action it. So the the... I throw that something that tells me, you know, I have an opportunity somewhere. I wanna make sure that I can... The first thing I do is I I embed and build that agent so it continues to tell me about those opportunities across time. Because then the next step is to reprocess or reorient my team to be able to take advantage of that insight. If it's only spinning out once I reorient my team, then I'm I'm gonna be a a different type of breakage. So embed the agent and then look at the process that surrounds it. And then, honestly, when it gives you that level of analysis, it's gotta be a decision made in in the way that you would at any point in procurement about whether it's gonna give you a strategic opportunity or whether it's a tactical opportunity. And if it's a strategic opportunity, take a view on how long you you wanna embed that, looking at the opportunity across the end to end, and whether you can replicate that analysis in different scenarios as well as the scenario that you've now embedded. So I think you end up in a... I'll continue my analogy of the smart human. I've got a smart human who then begins telling me things. Now I wanna say, do I limit it to that thing they're telling me about, or do I want them to go and look at other things? And then my other smart humans that are... The physical humans that surround it, how do I make sure that I've got the instruction and the best way to take opportunities from that? And there are some things that that that aren't genius that are coming out of AI right now, like you you rebate analysis and things like that. Once you have a rebate analysis engine built and a tool and put in, you can pretty much embed that. It'll flow across your supply chain. You can put someone that goes and says, you know, we should be getting this rebate. AI thinks we haven't. That's a quite a bit of human judgment. Is it because rather than get them paying cash back to us, we've gained extra work? What's happened? But there are some use cases that as AI becomes more and more established, will be much more complex and will require a lot high degree of intelligence around it, and it's... You've got to have that organizational structure that sets up to take advantage of that. Thanks. So, Natasha, anything to add about how to turn those insights into action? Just act on them. A lot of great ideas died because they were just great ideas and nobody really stepped in and executed them. And I think that this is this is what I like our field for. Procurement is very practical. Procurement is very focused on execution and strong procurement professionals and best known CPOs. I don't know... Not those who have great theories about how things should work, but those who know how to inspire the team, communicate with a clear strategy, whatever they have as their insights, their own ideas or suggestions generated by AI, but they build the process and they build a team to execute and deliver value to the enterprise. That's why I think that, who is the servant, who is the master. And it was frequently positioned that AI is gonna become a master. In procurement, I don't see at least yet. I think that we're still the masters, and we use AI as as the servant who enables us to move maybe in a more accurate and, like, more, just in a more educated way, supported by more accurate data. Thank you so much. So we've we've spoken a lot about visibility, efficiency, and control. So let's kinda bring this back to kinda wider business. So so what does a generally more agile and data driven procurement model look like in practice? Natasha, if you could kick us off, please. Probably organization that has one major attribute. They probably have well established processes. They're connected across the enterprise, and they're not backed down by operational issues and transactional activities because those are fully automated. Perfect. Thank you. Jarrah, anything to add to that one? I I I think the only thing to add, and I think we've talked about this this across this conversation is, look, you want your team to be more strategic. And by embedding AI, it creates capacity for some of your team to be more strategic. However, there is gonna gonna be that underlying requirement to have a form of data science and data analysis in your team and that capability and skill. And you've got to make the decision on the seesaw whether you think that in your strategic category managers, you build that skill or whether you have it as a separate function. And from from my experience, historically, we've tried to build the category manager who can also do their own analytics and things like that. And, honestly, they're a bit of a unicorn. So you you need to make a call and say, I think that you have some separation about people who understand the bots and also understand the data, people who understand the category and understand the business context more. And over time, maybe those become a merge as people come out and, you know, your your graduates of this year become more data and AI native. I think for a period of time, you can have a separation between those kind of category focused people and the data and AI focused people who will help you grow. And I think, honestly, if you look across a lot of global procurement organizations right now, they probably have a data science, analytics, MI reporting team, and the category team. Maybe as we kind of mature over a period of time, the boundaries between those will start to close, and you'll start to see a more rounded individual. But I think right now, you do need that separation still. Jared, if a CFO was to come to you and asked how they should measure the value that AI and smart procurement are are creating, what would you recommend them to to look at? What metrics? So, I mean, the CFO does come and ask me this. So it's a it's a good question. So so on this, look, for every agent, we have to have a use case, and we have to be able to declare OKRs that say what success looks like for that. So we we measure the benefit that we're getting from our agents because we... We've moved from that environment where tokens are free, and AI was kind of at its... Right. And it came into market brand new. It's kind of free, wasn't it? And everyone said, just use this. And then, you know, you're all hooked and token become more expensive, and your utilization becomes more expensive, and your data consumption becomes greater. And how you've how you've worded your queries, if they're more data exhausted, means it actually costs you more money, and you need to actually trim your queries and get them tighter. So we've got all those pressures coming down on us now that that actually AI isn't free anymore. It's more expensive. And where it's where it's creating capacity for your team, actually, what it's... If it creates that capacity, it's adding to your cost base because your your team size hasn't changed. So we need to be really clear about what each agent is designed to do and what the impact on the cost base onto the p and l is. And, honestly, I think procurement plays a role in that. So when when the, the chief accounting officer comes and says to me, how can you share the value of it? Well, actually, procurement has to have been part of the business case to build that because AI is a make by decision in exactly the same way as we've historically got a make by decision for the outsourced and beefier, as as Natasha said earlier. It's a make by decision. And if you're choosing to make or build an AI agent, you're choosing not to buy something or you're choosing to buy something, but the thing you're buying is different. And you need to have clear metrics of success established to that point that you go back to. So so it's a kind of roundabout answer there, but in summary for me, procurement needs to play a role in defining the business case, the agent, and then it needs to play a role in holding the business to measurement of that business case. What Jared said is absolutely brilliant, and I I wanna support his example with a very similar example that that, let's see, manufacturing environment has two facilities. One has excess of inventory, another one has low inventory. Now multiply this by 50, so you have a 100 facilities that constantly have not enough too much, not enough too much. So IT decided to build an agent that would manage this inventory by moving it everywhere. What they didn't do, they didn't engage procurement, and, of course, nobody calculated the cost of movement of the stuff from one facilities to another. So now we do not buy more inventory from suppliers, but we spend way more money on moving stuff between the factories located, like, thousand miles apart from each other. We don't have access of inventory, but the operation just became twice more expensive. Right? So it absolutely integral to have procurement professionals in all this AI development because we just trained over the years working on different commodities, different categories of spend, different suppliers, different contractual, clauses. Like, everything what we've learned throughout our career makes us think, like, okay. We're solving this problem. Does it create another problem somewhere else? Thank you both. And, Natasha, if I could get you to kick off on this one. It's another CFO question. If they came to you looking to get more strategic value from procurement, where should they focus first? That goes back to the beginning of our conversation that, procurement has, natural propensity to impact cash flow, not just cost, impact, revenue production, margin optimization, impact sustainability, you know, of that. I would say that whenever CFOs start, looking at overall financial help of organization, CPOs have to be their main... One of the main partners. And, traditionally, it hadn't been that way. So they would go to treasurer first, then to, you know, the head of a or to consulting company versus versus to their own academic procurement organization. Does does it answer the question? Perfect. Yes. Gerald, do you have anything to add to that? No. I just agree, Natasha. Look. Where where does CFOs want the most impact to the... From your CPO? Where do you gain the most income from? So whatever your product is that you gain the most income from, procurement will be able to have value to that. So it's... If if you're a robust CFO that understands your cost base and your income base, always start with your income because a greater source of income should be a greater source of cost. And it should also be, you know, the area that you wanna innovate the most in to deliver greater customer experience, to grow the income, to reduce the cost. So I I think from my point of view, it's a relatively simple conversation, but we should always be focused on how we improve our customer experience, how we drive our income. And and cost is a secondary conversation to that because that flows after you improve the income position. And and I think that's the biggest disconnect that the companies focus so much on the revenue that bottom line becomes secondary until market shifts. And market always shifts. Always. And so then there is, like, fire. Where's procurement? And, like, my ask of all CFOs is that view your procurement partner not as the company. Don't put just the just the cost savings as procurement responsibility, but view procurement as your very strategic capability in driving profitability of the business. So that brings us to the end of today's discussion brought to you in association with Amazon Business. A big thank you to both of our speakers for sharing their insights. If there's one key takeaway, it's this. AI has the potential to change procurement from a function focused primarily on managing spend into one that helps the wider business understand the spend, make better decision, and act more quickly. The opportunity for finance and procurement leaders is to turn that intelligence into