Name: Cost Optimization Using Artificial Intelligence In Procurement V1 (1080p)
Uploaded: 2026-11-03T16:17:12.777Z
Duration: 42 min 2 s
Description: Cost Optimization Using Artificial Intelligence In Procurement V1 (1080p)

Transcript for "Cost Optimization Using Artificial Intelligence In Procurement V1 (1080p)": Before Amazon Business, buying for work was chaotic. Now it's easy to find products from thousands of suppliers in one place. Save on every type of purchase from individual items to bulk orders. At any time, you can view your spending on pre built easy to use dashboards. Plus, you can free up cash flow if you choose to extend payment deadlines and view and approve your team's purchases easily. With Amazon Business, things just got a lot more manageable. Hello, and welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's session. This webinar is brought to you by Finance Chief magazine in association with Amazon Business. And today, we'll be exploring cost optimization using artificial intelligence in procurement, driving efficiency, visibility, and smarter enterprise spending with AI driven procurement strategies. Now cost optimization has become a critical priority for organizations facing economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures, supply chain disruption, and rising operational costs. But procurement leaders are being asked to deliver more than cost savings alone. They must also strengthen supplier relationships, manage risk, maintain operational continuity, and improve resilience, while contributing to wider business objectives. Balancing those demands can be difficult when procurement processes remain fragmented, spend visibility is limited, and teams lack timely insight into costs and supply performance. AI is creating new opportunities to address these challenges, helping organizations analyze enterprise spending, automate workflows, improve supplier evaluation, strengthen forecasting, and identify inefficiencies that might otherwise go unnoticed. The opportunity extends beyond reducing spend, which we'll discuss today. By enabling more predictive decision making, greater operational agility, and better informed resource allocation, AI has the potential to make the field more strategic to be part of business importance. In today's session, we will explore how organizations are applying AI to optimize procurement costs, where the technology is delivering measurable value, the challenges involved in implementation, and what leaders should prioritize as they build smarter, more efficient funeral functions. Joining me, I'm delighted to say I won't be doing this alone, are three experts in procurement strategy, technology, digital transformation, and enterprise operations. Please join me in welcoming Natasha Gurevich, Founder and CEO of Camden Procurement and former CPO at Nike Nitin Momeneni, Founder and CEO at InfinityLoop and Idana Chukupakova, Chief Operating Financial Officer at Rydoo. Let's get into it. We've got a lot to discuss. Really quickly, just the context for for people watching to really grant, you know, ground your insights a little bit. If you don't mind, we'll we'll have a thirty seconds, a quick intro from each of you. Just a little bit about your role, your responsibilities, and I guess a couple of areas of of focus, for you at the moment. Adana, I... I'm looking at you first. No preferred order, but if you're okay to start us off, I'll I'll come to you first. Sure. Hi. Well, as you already mentioned, I'm a portfolio trade too. What we do does is basically spend management, simply put. The software controls both expenses and IT. Therefore, we do have our hand in both direct and indirect spend for the company. Thank you. Nathan? Yeah. Hey, everyone. I'm Nathan, founder and CEO of, InfinityLoop. I was a former practitioner, across different industries as well as a former management consultant and noticed that most companies couldn't answer the simple question, did you get a good deal or not? So we built, the platform we wish we had, which is what we call negotiation intelligence. Essentially, it automatically identifies savings opportunities in any third party contract and then provides the specific strategies and recommendations for your teams to go and execute. Wonderful. Thank you. And Natasha? And I am a procurement practitioner as well. I have been in the field for twenty seven years. Before becoming global CPO at Nike, I ran procurement organization at Salesforce. Before that at McKesson. At some point, I built procurement organization at PayPal, when eBay acquired it. So been in the field for a long time and just knitting. When I left the corporate, I went to create something that I always wanted to have, a consulting procurement advisory firm that doesn't just consult, but helps, to elevate the voice of procurement. Wonderful. Thank you all so much for joining us. It's fantastic to have you. Let... Let's let's get into it. We'll start with some context. We we talked a lot in the introduction there, so let's kind of pull some of those, points apart, beginning really with why cost optimization is becoming more complex. As we said, businesses are trying to improve efficiency while still maintaining resilience, supply performance, operational continuity, long term growth, all of those things, which is a challenge, and and it's putting rising pressure on procurement teams. So a starting point for for all of you, an open question, whoever wants to come in first. Let's begin by discussing what factors are making procurement cost optimization, excuse me, more challenging in today's environment. Maybe we can have a discussion around that. If anyone wants to jump in and start us off. Yes. I can kind of kick things off. So there's been a ton of kind of rising pressure, amongst procurement teams, honestly, mainly because of technology. Over the last twenty years, there's been a ton of solutions out there helping sales teams get more efficient on increasing revenue, etcetera, but that solution hasn't been built for the buy side. So we're kind of seeing this pendulum swing and now people are starting to realize, like, there's no real time market intelligence that tells people if they're getting good deals or not, and kind of putting the power back in the hands of the buyer, right. So that's really kind of where we're seeing, across different industries, not just IT, but manufacturing, health care, etcetera. And that's the reason why we set up to build Infiniti Loop as well as to kind of shift that, you know, pendulum back into equilibrium. So, just putting the hands back in the hands of the buyer. The power back in the hands of the buyers is important. Got it. Thank you. I would take it a little bit on a on a more elevated level. I think what makes, prediction very difficult today is actually, lack of stability in political and economic and geopolitical factors because, for better or worse, but in the past, but there was there was some more or less clear way of forecasting, hedging, estimating, predicting. But the events of the last six years, closure of the ports related to COVID, pirate attacks in the Red Sea, Strait Of Hormuz. The factors like that, they actually make it very, very difficult for, procurement to have clear picture of what cost prediction forecast, and cost optimization can be. That... That's just... It... It's one of the factors that that is real. I think another one, in light of technology utilization, we procurement professionals have a term that many stakeholders don't like. We call them hobby buyers. So people who negotiate on behalf of the company without having clear affiliation with procurement. So... And what's interesting in the in the time of... In the era of EI, now the hobby buyers who do not have the the responsibility to negotiate but who love the fun and thrill of negotiating, they actually have, a lot of data coming from AI that enable them, to negotiate on behalf of the company, that actually leads to spend segregation and spend dilution, which is not helpful either. Thank you, Natasha. Adana, anything to add or to build on in those points? No. I think, the previous speakers covered it quite well. I would be able to double down on on Natasha's points on general volatility and just fragmented spend. It's harder to control. You do have more technology, but if technology is also decentralized and the buyers are decentralized, it's just getting harder. Okay. So so let me ask you, Adana, and maybe build on some of these points. We we talked about technology. Nipun talked about the the the limits of technology as it were, and we'll come on to that certainly in some of those solutions addressing that. But what about procurement processes, structure in itself? Where are the limitations of of traditional human models, and and how are they creating inefficiencies, or or how are they limiting cost visibility, for example? Uh-huh. I think it can lay in a couple of factors. Right? Age is more decentralized tools in all ways with buying. I think within the standard, it's a good process. I think the good technology should be able to tell you even before the cash is out. If the PO is matching, if the details are correct and so on and so forth. But since it is more fragmented and decentralized, a lot of people have access to purchasing in general without proper POs, without proper approvals. And then the analysis always happens postmortem. Right? At that point, it might be a bit too late. It takes away from the agility. It takes away from the efficiency, and it's just making harder to make decisions on which costs are essential. And if they're in line with your expectations, what do you need to adjust? Because given the volatility, you also don't have a lot of time. It's not like it used to be when you take months and quarters to adjust your strategy. Right now, we're asked questions almost on a daily, weekly basis. So given the limitations, it can be hard sometimes. Okay. And and, I guess, to to to to the group, those limitations, those challenges, I guess, how how difficult do they make that kind of balancing act of of, you know, financial efficiency and and that cost optimization with the things that you talked about, Natasha, resilience, operational agility, which which is increasing all of the time. I I guess that's a growing complex ever moving beast to kind of get that balance. Is that fair? It is fair, because it impacts... Whenever these factors impact, revenue, they impact profitability, they impact, workforce, distribution, they impact, cash flow. So there are, there are more companies right now, and and stock market shows it very clearly. There are more companies that's facing financial distress even though stock market performs very well, but but there are a lot of corporations that actually experience, very significant drop, in profitability. So... And, frankly, we also should not discount the cost of AI itself, because everyone started very enthusiastically. It's like, oh, yes. Let's put AI here, and let's remove people and put AI here. Then the cost of the tokens became the reality. And, if the budget prediction in the past was let's remove the headcount and replace it with AI, well, tokens become frankly more expensive than than some humans who who used to do the work before. So the volatility in, almost... Like, quite the challenges of making accurate forecast and optimize cost these days is very, very difficult, especially because the cost of raw materials is going up, which always tags and drags everything else with it. Thank you, Natasha. Look. Let... Let's come on to visibility, and and Nitin, we'll start with you. You you mentioned the technology the technology debt, although the legacy technology maybe not being up to the task as it were, although I put that very bluntly, I appreciate. But, tell us more about that. Tell us about the visibility challenge, why organizations struggle to to gain that kind of accurate accurate real time insight into their costs and supplier performance. And maybe give us a bit more information about how that impacts the business. And others, please feel free to join in after Adana and Sasha. Yeah. I think it comes down to two things. Right? It's around number one, visibility, but that means detail of visibility. Right? Because most people have a good idea of how much money they're spending, but when you really dig down into the details of that, whether it's specific SKUs or even by supplier, all of the challenges Natasha mentioned earlier around the... How the macro impacts, you know, that particular supplier's business, it's not regurgitated back to you as the negotiator, right, in a dynamic way. Because all of that stuff is updated almost every single day. And that's where kind of this lack of information is just asymmetry at a specific moment in time will impact how you negotiate. Right? It factors into your own shared cost modeling as you negotiate into, you know, the suppliers. It impacts how suppliers will price their goods and services and use the macro effects as excuses in some cases as you do the negotiation. So there's all of those different factors that come into play from a detail and and and dynamic standpoint that isn't really captured currently. And that's where that gap is right now. Right. Thank you. Natasha, Adana, would you like to build on that? You you must have, I guess, experienced some of this lack of visibility or or seen it firsthand. Right? Can you can you give us any any information on what that looks like in your perspective as a procurement leader? We've been absolutely correct. Like, I would say that spend visibility and clear analytics have never been as important as they are now. I mean, I've been procurement for almost twenty eight years. For twenty eight years, we're screaming, give us clean data. Give us clean data. Give us clean data. Well, clean data doesn't exist because when it's clean today, it's gonna be dirty tomorrow anyways. Right? And I think what's important is that, this is where we procurement professionals rely on the concept of category management and category leads. People who spend, consciously, significant amount of time trying to learn specifics and details of the categories that they manage, the categories that they lead, what's happening in the categories, trying trying to do some sort of predictive analytics, maybe not even from analytical perspective, but also from the perspective of what's happening in the market, how, like, geopolitical factors can change the price dynamic and all of that. And I also think that, luckily, we now have quite, powerful spend analytics tools that, that I would encourage. We're not here to promote any particular tool or system, but I would encourage all procurement professionals to actually look. There are a number of instances available that have a lot of, like, quite significant percentage of GDP under their management that can help them with, predicting the, the pricing. Thank you. Well, look. I think we should come on to the tools. We we we talked at the start about how AI is is transforming procurement cost optimization. Let's get on to it. Let's talk about some examples. Obviously, as we said, AI is is is giving procurement teams the ability to move from reactive cost management, I guess, towards much more kind of predictive and intelligence driven decision making, crucial as we've established there in that first part of the webinar. So let's come to some points around how it's doing that and look at how AI driven spend intelligence is transforming organizations. An opener. Nitin, I'll start with you. You've talked a lot about AI and and... But, guys, let... Let's have this around the room if we can and and we'll all share. But let's have a start to pretend on on how organizations, how procurement teams at the moment are using AI to better improve their visibility and and to identify some of those cost optimization opportunities that we've all been talking about. I still think that we're in the infancy stages of AI implementations at these large enterprises. Like, we're just now scratching the surface. They're getting their OpenAI and kind of anthropic enterprise licenses, and they're kinda tinkering with how can this actually help me. And that only happened because the boards and CEOs at these companies are forcing or hearing AI is this great thing, and my teams need it, so we need to go in and implement it. Right? And they're obviously gonna start with the the large language models. Now as we see these procurement teams start utilizing it, I think you're gonna run into a lot of issues around build versus buy. Right? You're going to see these at the large enterprises saying, hey, there are all these other solutions in the market. Why can't we do it ourselves because we have enterprise licenses? That's going to be a very important distinction, and ultimately, it'll come down to the data. Right? Because what people should care about when they're implementing AI is, does this either save me time or does it save me money? Like, what is the actual outcome here? So in terms of that prioritization, I think you're gonna see a lot of that in the enterprise, around implementation. But again, it'll come down to the datasets to make that distinction between build versus buy. And that will go through iterations and cycles. Some companies will get burned, some won't. It really just will depend on how they prioritize those initiatives and which ones they take a chance on. But if there was one piece of advice as a former consultant, focus on the outcomes. Yeah. I see a lot of companies start using AI with the most fanciest business cases for analytics and so on and so forth. But for us, especially given the fact that we do provide the solution that is AI powered for spend management, I do actually believe that the best use case and the best efficiency gains you will see from AI is actually... The very the very first step is quite unglamorous, if you will. It's AI taking those receipts. It's taking those invoices and actually turning it into structured data that you can use later on for analytics. Right? You need humans to set up the policies. You need humans to set up the coding structures, but you can absolutely use AI to implement those policy, to implement the checks and to only route, you know, the... Maybe something that looks weird to something that does need attention. And based on that, you can build your insights. You can build your analysis. You can inform the procurement specialist, the budget owners, and so on and so forth. So for me, the best use case for AI is basically the very repetitive, boring tasks. That's how we started. I I would... I could affect the first and the infancy stages in a lot of cases, but this is where we personally see, quite a lot of gains within the finance and procurement teams. Wonderful. Thank you. Natasha, do you have a take on that? I would I would just agree with both Nathan and Adana and emphasize that start slow, move fast. There is, very often, some senior executives in the company say, let's invest in AI, and let's show how enormously productive and revolutionary and business changing it can become. Great idea. It doesn't work that way. So start slow, start with small things predictable that can be controlled, that can be fixed manually or with manpower if needed be, and prove the case that way and, and then emphasize, like, grow it greater. Even... You know, I I live in the Bay Area, all Silicon Valley companies in my backyard. And, being in the industry for so many years, I know all the all the CPOs, and many of them are struggling because, like, the CPOs of AI companies, they are struggling because they have a mandate to significantly reduce their teams and demonstrate that AI can, factually and effectively replace humans. Just doesn't work that way yet. I'm not saying that it won't. It's just, you know, we... It's still growing. Three years ago, I was presenting at at at your conference, in London, supply chain... Supply chain conference, And, we had maybe 200 people in the room, maybe two fifty, and we asked the question, who is utilizing AI on a daily basis? Okay. There was only one hand in the air Wow. Wow. Out of 250 people. So in less than... In three years, we've gone a very... Sorry. That was two years ago. So in two years, we've gone massively long way because now there would be... Probably everyone in the room would keep their hand up, just because they utilize it to some degree. So let's, let's give ourselves a grace to learn how to walk before we run and not to choke organization with something that, organization just is not prepared for yet. No. That... That's a really interesting point. And and, actually, one thing that always comes up when we're having these discussions is is exactly as you've all discussed, we're at the early stages and and there's lots of encouragement to adopt AI and just use AI and more AI. Right? But but one thing that always comes through is how to demonstrate that that that ROI, that that return on investments and to do it in a measured way. Is that the best approach for you? I know we we kind of reached the consensus there, but start small focused on specific areas. Is is that the best way to do that and to demonstrate that ROI before scaling with AI? Yes. Absolutely. I think, we all... We would all agree on that. And as Natasha said, start small. That's very fast. Pick one process, the most manual and annoying one, if you will. Try to build our trails with your data. Try to set up your rules, deploy AI. If you see the efficiency gains, either hours saved or money saved in best case as always, deploy further at the end of the day. It... It's not just to demonstrate ROI. Okay. I... Forgive me for for repeating myself, but I really wanna make a strong point about do not choke organization with a change. Because if organization is not prepared to... For a massive transformation... And then introducing AI is transformation because you're moving organization from one way of doing thing to different way of doing thing. And if you're doing it too fast to too many organizations, it will be organ rejection. And once organ gets rejected, it's very difficult to introduce that change second time. So just be mindful, like, curve your enthusiasm a little bit. It's like, let's do it all at once. Let's not. Yeah. Just one thing... Last thing I'll say about the implementation. ROI is important, but... And then at the end of the day, it comes down to the people. Right? That's what make up the company. There's a lot of, you know, news going around that AI is this disruptive force that, you know, could get rid of a bunch of jobs. So I think change management on implementation is absolutely the most important thing. To Natasha's point and Adana as well, if you don't want the organization if you want the organization to adopt AI and make it sustainable, you have to have proper change management. Otherwise, it's not gonna work. That that... It's... And would you agree that it's a little bit schizophrenic today? Because on one hand Yep. We're saying start slow, move fast. On another hand, we're opening, Economies, then we're reading the article that AI will kill all of us, if not tomorrow than the day after. It's like, okay. Are we still crawling, or we're already at the serial killer stage? Right? And maybe both instances are right because, but but again, let's let's remember that the room was not built in one day, and everything takes time to mature. Yeah. And, we just, and as procurement professionals, we just have to be mindful about suggesting organizations the right pace to mature. Yep. Exactly to that point. You know? Think of this as the new Internet. Right? How long did it take people and organizations to get, you know, onto the Internet, and adopt all of those policies in place? It's the same type of thing. There's gonna be bubbles. It's cyclical. I think the biggest thing is, like, yeah, you gotta keep mindful of that. But, obviously, some people are doom and gloom and some people are very optimistic. So it's... It depends on, like... You just got to internalize it at the end of the day. Absolutely. It's a really good point. And and do you think, I mean, in terms of challenges around implementation and adoption, do you think that cultural piece is is is the biggest challenge, that that change management process? Are there any others related to technology? I know we always talk about getting your data in order. We talked a little bit about data and so on. But you think that kind of change management piece is is the most significant challenge? Certainly, leaders watching this will will will recognize and will be facing. Yes. Absolutely. There is no proper adoption of the company. What you're looking at at the end of the day. Right? If there is fear of AI replacing you as previously mentioned, people will also hesitate to go on this new journey and probably, adopt AI. Right? I think it's it's a matter of setting the guardrails, but also bringing the people on board and also allowing them time to to try and implement it and play with it and also voice their concerns if there are any rather than deploying something and expecting a given amount of hours or dollars in a quarter. I'll add to Adana's point, that change management is a massive factor, But, also, do you remember, like, Newton said, think about it as new Internet? I would also say think about it as new outsourcing. Like, I'm probably the oldest procurement professional in the fall. So... But I remember early days of outsourcing about thirty years ago, and everyone felt that, you know what? There were, like, two schools of thoughts. One was, why do we do them house if we can outsource it? And another one was, why do we outsource it if we can do them house? And I would say the truth and the winning solutions was was in between. Let's learn how to do them house. Let's build the right processes. Let's connect the right dots and then outsource. Because when when enterprises were outsourcing broken processes, like, broken connections between stakeholders, poor budget management, poor cost prediction, and they would drop it all in outsourcers. It will be done by different people and from different country, but the outcome will be the same. It's garbage in, garbage out. So I think we can apply exactly the same philosophy here. If you do not have, clear data, if you do not have well established processes, you load all of it into any AI solution, it will stumble. It'll it will speed back something that you cannot fully utilize or you can utilize, but you're gonna come up with the wrong results anyways. So you still need to do your homework. You still need to validate too. I think whatever AI process that you are building, they have to be multistep. Because if something breaks, you need to trace it back. Traceability is very important, so you know where it's screwed up, basically. Otherwise, you end up with the result a. It's hard to understand if it's correct or not, if the data is cracked, if the process is cracked. Second of all, even if you know it's wrong, where is the problem? For us, I I think what I'm personally somewhat proud of is we removed AI as a last step for validation or advice. It has to be the human. The goal is not to to raise the humans. Right? The goal is to make them more, yes, of course, efficient, but also give them better judgment in general. Thank you. So so look, we we we... We've... I'm sorry. They're they're really interesting points, and and you've covered a lot of ground with the question that we had actually to ask. It's fascinating stuff, Liz. We talked about not not not running before we walk. We talked about that kind of measured approach. Let me ask you because I do want to to make sure we have time to to come on to how we go about doing this, and how we build those those smarter procurement teams using AI. But we talked about some of those initial use cases. Where where for you where for you all, by all means, come in, do you see the the the best application for AI, whether it be now or as we carry on this adoption journey in terms of automating those... Some of those processes, really optimizing some of that kind of cost efficiency, and also indeed things around supplier management and sourcing. Where do you think we can get to and where do you think it will have the most impact in in procurement teams? Yeah. I think our our view as a company is that, you know, we want to provide kind of the democratization of the expertise of these, you know, expensive consultants and, provide them the right strategies and insights to make the most informed decision. Right? And by way of doing that, you're basically empowering the internal team with the right information at the right time to make that informed decision. So it's what I call decision intelligence. It helps them make, again, like, the most informed decision and the right one based on fact and data rather than on instinct. Because negotiations right now, they're primarily done by instinct. Because nothing is dynamic. The data is out of date. So, you know, they're just kind of negotiating based on that instinct. So we wanted to change that, and that's kind of our mission and goal. Wonderful. Thank you, Nathan. I mean, I don't know. I did that that, maybe two things. One is, automate better yet, eliminate all the steps that procurement people hate. Like, all minutiae, like, related to paperwork, related to kinda like data tracking, like matching invoices, POs. I can't believe that thirty years after I've been in this field, we're still talking about it. But it's still an issue. Like, find a way to automate that. Like, take away from people something that is that is redundant, that is low value, that doesn't require people's intellect. It just requires checking and verification. We can't imagine how many companies are still doing that. I've always been working when I was in house for, like, very, well, renowned brand name. As I became serving clients and I'm face... I... And I'm... And I've been facing a lot of companies with low maturity procurement, There are more procurement organizations that are low maturity than on high maturity. So automate that. Put AI there so that people don't have to do soul crushing job jobs. So that may be one. And another one, which may sound strange from someone who've been on procurement for her whole professional career, I am a very vocal and active anti RFPer. I've always been. I think that RFPs are... Is such, an orthodoxy, and I don't know why we cannot get rid of them because they take enormous amount of time from suppliers and from procurement teams and from internal stakeholders. And we have to figure out better way to to know what price need to be paid and who has the right capabilities to deliver services. There are, like, there's some RFPs that last for six, seven, eight months. Just imagine how much money and time it takes from both sides. That's not a aspect of a soul crushing job for me. So I would say focus on that first. Fantastic. Thank you. I I don't know. Anything anything from your perspective to add in on that? No. I think it's... It always comes down to the basics. Automation, as mentioned, is hard. Right? Accuracy and compliance and timeliness because you can get the first two, but if it's too late, what's the point? Absolutely that. Just to build on Natasha's, old point, I think it's exactly right is, the sole crushing jobs need to be automated. I think everyone agrees that the fun part is actually doing the negotiation. So that's the piece, like, if you can get automated way all of that prep work and all the manual repetitive tasks, then people can focus on the fun part, which is actually dealing with the suppliers, building those, you know, still human relationships. That is what, you know, should... AI should be used for within the procurement function. Absolutely. So so in terms of that that human in the loop, that that human judgment, really, this is a case of letting your procurement teams, letting your procurement expertise add that value, that that real kind of strategic value that you're looking for. Is it... Is that is that the case? Factor. Yeah. I would also say to build on Newton's point that negotiation also changed. Because negotiation used to be take the hammer and beat supplier over the head Yeah. Until they... And until you squeeze them to the point when they actually realize that they... If they give in a little bit more, then they won't be able to fulfill the the the services because they just won't have enough money to operate. I think that these days, AI gives you a lot of insights to learn about suppliers' business, to understand what kind of cost pressures they experiencing, to arrive to negotiation very well prepared and understanding the company that's sitting in front of you, public or private, that you have enough data points and you have enough, industry knowledge to structure your negotiation without using the hammer, but jointly arriving to what the price should be and how to get there. Because suppliers pay tariffs on our behalf. So when they charge us tariffs, then they... It makes no sense to beat them with a hammer over the head. At the same time, some of them do not apply, do not apply tariffs. Then we should find a way to, a, appreciate those suppliers, but also be watchful if they squeeze the cost somewhere else. So what I'm saying is that there are massive ways to utilize AI in a, like, independent, peaceful way, in a very helpful way, to also structure different type of negotiations and outcome that we used to do in the past. Wonderful. Thank you. And you and you can clearly see that. Thank you so much. Look. Look. In terms of... I mean, people watching, people listening to this will be inevitably on their own journeys, in this process and on their own transformations. In terms of building this into some some takeaways, some some future facing points, I mean, we've talked a little, haven't we, about starting with some of those smaller use cases or those specific cases. But in terms of delivering that transformation and scaling procurement to to use AI effectively, keen to hear all your thoughts on this. But but how how can organizations do that without adding additional operating complexity, adding more complexity across teams, and ensuring that the fundamentals stay the same. What what are some of the key aspects in terms of delivering on that AI adoption journey? More or less basics that all three of us, I believe, agree on. Data is key in this case. Make sure that if it's not clean, clean that up. If you need technology or AI to help you capture data better or categorize data better, maybe start with that. Then pick something small yet high volume. I think this is what Natasha and this can also touch upon the soul crushing parts of the job. Deploy AI there. Try to see if it helps you to become better, if it makes them more business partners rather than processing invoices and matching POs. Once you have a baseline metric on either hours saved or cash saved or something, publish it internally to increase adoption and help people continue on their journey. And I think that's a very safe way to start probably. If I'm a leader and I want to pop down my headphones after this webinar, and go and start taking action, where should I look first? What should be the first thing I should consider on on on this journey, or what should be the most important thing I should consider when it comes to me and my team evolving? One takeaway. I think just simple kind of insulting lens, ask your team. The procurement teams, you know, whether it's 20, 50, a 100, 300 plus people, ask them what the pain is, Do some interviews. Write it down because that is gonna help you internally. Number one, that, you know, it's a group exercise, so adoption will be easier when they're bought in. And then second, it gives you kind of the pain points to go out to market with to evaluate different solutions and then prioritize that as part of that implementation. So that's what I would suggest. Start with the team. They're the ones that are gonna be using it. It'll make their lives easier and it'll increase adoption and ultimately that will get the results. Right. Thank you. Maybe to build on that slightly more of a finance perspective, I guess, look at your biggest spend categories or the most crucial ones, not the nice ones to have, but your key suppliers. Keep keep those buckets and and start there. See if it's been volatile. See if you don't have proper control over it or if it's... Information is coming in too late and dig there. Thank you, Adana. And I would add, align your procurement priorities with the enterprise priorities. And, make sure that procurement solutions... The procurement is solutioning to what enterprise is trying to solve. Because we sometimes tend to operate just focusing on procurement priorities that are not necessarily, nested or designed, to satisfy that bigger purpose. So to get organizational support for procurement strategy, make sure that you don't create procurement solutions. You create enterprise solution with procurement support. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Some fantastic takeaways there. That that brings us to the end of today's discussion. It's been a fascinating one. Really enjoyed the discussion. Thank you so much for joining us, but but we are at the end of today's webinar brought to you by finance chief in association with Amazon Business. I want to give a big thank you to all of our speakers for sharing their insights and their expertise. I think there were many themes covered today, but one of the major ones that arises from the conversation is that procurement cost optimization is becoming far more data driven, it's continuous, and it's strategically connected to broader business performance as we said. As organizations navigate increasingly complex operating environments, procurement leaders will need stronger visibility, faster decision making, and more intelligent human abilities, balance their efficiency, good resilience, and agility. As we discussed, AI is helping with that, helping organizations move beyond reactive cost management towards a smarter and more predictive future for human operations. And that's good to see. There are lots of takeaways from this webinar, and we hope you have really enjoyed it. But thank you again to all of our speakers. A reminder that the recording will be available shortly. You can revisit the session. You can share it with your teams, and you can watch it over to gain some more of those insights. For now, thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you at the next session. Thank you, everybody. You too. Thank you.