Art of Procurement 859: The Real State of Procurement Orchestration: Trends and Trade-Offs W/ Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner
Mar 30, 2026
Kelly Barner, procurement expert and ProcureTech analyst, breaks down the State of Orchestration research. She highlights market growth, taxonomy struggles between orchestration and S2P, and the five-point framework for evaluating platforms. Short practical advice covers AI depth, native vs integrated features, avoiding over-engineering, and starting small with sandboxes and focused pilots.
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Orchestration Label Is Becoming Overbroad
- Vendors increasingly label diverse capabilities as 'orchestration', blurring category boundaries between process and execution tools.
- Kelly Barner noted this convergence complicates vendor taxonomy and ProcureTech categorization.
Forcing Training Kills Adoption
- Expect users to abandon tools that require training; modern orchestration must be largely invisible to stakeholders.
- Kelly Barner recalled how forcing users into training killed adoption and stressed UX-first design.
Use A Five Dimension Evaluation Framework
- Evaluate orchestration vendors across five dimensions: AI depth, S2P breadth, orchestration depth, operational maturity, and ability to execute.
- Kelly Barner presented this framework as the core of their RFI and report evaluation.