Art of Procurement

"The goal isn't to create a room where people consume content, it's to create a room where they come ready to work on their organization." - Philip Ideson, Founder and Managing Director, Art of Procurement The pace of business change has made traditional procurement conferences feel outdated. Senior procurement leaders can't afford passive learning; they need real conversations with peers who face the same challenges they do. That's what the Art of Procurement Catalyst event series was built to deliver. This week, AOP Founder and Managing Director Philip Ideson and Jim Cahalan, Art of Procurement's new Director of Events, discuss what makes AOP Catalyst events different from other professional gatherings. Jim explains how thoughtful event design, unique venues, and practitioner-led discussions are the keys to outcomes that matter at the CPO level. From building trust among decision-makers to focusing sessions on what you'll do first thing Monday, this episode will help you see event participation as a true 'catalyst' for change. Listen to this episode to hear Philip and Jim discuss: Why Catalyst is built for action, not just ideas How unique venues and small group formats drive real conversation The value of practitioner-led facilitation and outside perspectives How CPOs can future-proof their teams beyond AI implementation Links: Learn more about AOP's Catalyst Event Series for senior procurement leaders Philip Ideson on LinkedIn Jim Cahalan on LinkedIn Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube

Procurement talks about "the data" as if it's neutral. It rarely is. For years, we have talked about "the data" as if it were a single, uniform thing… a stack of invoices, a dashboard of KPIs, a quarterly business review deck handed over by a supplier. Here's the problem: invoices are curated. Reports are crafted. And, most of the time, suppliers decide what you see… unless you know what to ask for. In this episode of Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement, Brian Gamble, COO at FineTune and a 30-year veteran of indirect services, joins podcast co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to unpack BuyLaw #6: "develop expense-specific systems." The directive is fairly simple on its surface, but it's also disruptive: no single data set or measurement system works across diverse categories. Uniforms are not utilities. Security is not pest control. Waste is not janitorial supplies. And trying to manage them all with the same playbook guarantees procurement will create blind spots. Brian has seen those blind spots from both sides up close, first as a regional VP for a national uniform provider, now as an advisor helping clients defend their P&L against quiet leakage. He doesn't mince words: if your definition of "the data" is whatever appears on an invoice PDF, you are operating inside a commercial narrative written by your supplier. The episode walks through examples that sound almost unbelievable until you realize how common they are. Security "dark hours" where posts go unfilled but still get billed. Pest control programs charging for weekly service where there's been no activity in months. Uniform inventory definitions that vary between suppliers, creating a scenario where 17 cents can be far more expensive than 21 cents, depending on what number you're multiplying. None of that shows up cleanly on a summary invoice. Which brings us to AI… As procurement leans more heavily on AI for benchmarking and research, the technology can generate polished, authoritative answers, even when the underlying data is thin or incomplete. But, the quality of the output rises or falls with the quality of the inputs. For example, Brian shares a live demonstration his team conducted internally: a generalist asking AI for "a good price" in a complex service category gets laughable, contradictory answers. Garbage in, garbage out, so to speak. A more informed user does slightly better. When a true category expert feeds AI high-quality, relevant, structured data does the output become meaningfully useful, and even then, it still requires human judgment to separate signal from noise. This episode also challenges another sacred cow in procurement: not all dollars are created equal. A $100 million utilities category might require minimal management. A $1 million uniform program might require 50 times the oversight. Yet procurement teams are often sized and measured purely by spend under management, not complexity, risk, or management intensity. If procurement is going to be measured by what actually hits the P&L (as the earlier BuyLaws argue) then they must design contracts, data rights, and reporting structures that allow real validation. The future of procurement won't be won by those who have the most data. It will be won by those who know which data matters and, perhaps most importantly, why. Links: Rich Ham on LinkedIn Learn more at FineTuneUs.com

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.

Imran Shaikh, Head of Presales and Business Development at Samsung SDS America, drives Cadencia’s design-to-source-to-pay and BOM collaboration work. He talks about shifting procurement upstream, Cadencia as the orchestration layer between PLM and ERP, AI-powered BOM intelligence for cost simulation and supplier risk, and practical pilots and governance-first implementation advice.

"The strategic rationale of selling is not really to make money. It's about preserving 200-plus jobs and making sure your colleagues have continuity in their lives." - Alessandro Comerci Strategic divestitures and factory closures have become more common as organizations reshape their portfolios and seek agility. For procurement, these aren't just commercial events: they affect livelihoods, brand trust, and supplier ecosystems. Navigating them well demands a broader set of skills, perspective, and empathy than most of us learn in our core work. In this episode, procurement veteran Alessandro Comerci draws on hard-earned experience negotiating large corporate divestments for Procter & Gamble. Alessandro reveals how job preservation, trust-rebuilding, and a nuanced understanding of local realities can drive better outcomes than straightforward cost calculations ever could. If you've ever faced tough transitions or wondered how procurement leaders adapt to 'the other side' of the table, Alessandro's practical, candid insights will strike a chord. In this episode, Alessandro covers: How job preservation and trust-shaping drive strategic divestments How procurement skills translate to high-stakes selling Why supplier relationships outlast the deal and why that matters How divestments can spark unexpected supplier-led innovation Links: Alessandro Comerci on LinkedIn Subscribe to This Week in Procurement Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube

Jason Busch, founder of Spend Matters and builder of AI "co-workers" for procurement, explains why partial data is dangerous as procurement adopts autonomous AI. He contrasts copilots, agents, and multi-agent co-workers. He stresses broader data needs—financial health, inventory, tariffs, market signals—and warns supplier-shaped data and cultural bias can institutionalize harmful decisioning.

Tomas Wiemer, a global procurement and digitization leader who builds procurement teams and decisioning platforms. He discusses shifting procurement from transactional work to strategic sourcing. Topics include what decisioning platforms are, how they give forward-looking visibility, influencing demand and volume, and where to start when tech and data are limited.

In this episode of the ProcureTech Insider Startup of the Week, host Jyothi Hartley speaks with Ricky Ho, Co-Founder and CEO of SourceReady, about how AI and big data are transforming global supplier discovery and sourcing strategy. SourceReady is building an AI-powered sourcing platform designed to automate the most time-consuming parts of the sourcing process – from supplier discovery to quote comparison and risk analysis. With access to 1.2 million suppliers across 100 countries, the platform helps procurement and sourcing teams uncover new suppliers, analyze risk, and streamline supplier communication. Ricky shares how his background in a family textile business and his experience building and selling a supply chain startup led him to create SourceReady. Together, they discuss the limitations of traditional supplier directories, the growing complexity of global sourcing, and how AI agents can help procurement teams focus on strategy rather than manual tasks. Links: SourceReady Provider Profile Download the 2025-26 ProcureTech100 Yearbook Subscribe to This Week in Procurement Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube

Andrew Daley, Managing Director of Digital Procurement and Supply Chain and AI-focused advisor, talks talent and transformation. He explores which skills matter in an AI-driven world. He discusses why upskilling lags behind tech spend. He outlines traits of professionals who will thrive and how operating models must evolve to capture AI’s value.

Procurement's incentive problem doesn't stop at the contract. It gets worse after signature. In this Phil-Ins episode of "Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement," Rich Ham and Philip Ideson are joined by Kelly Barner to unpack three "Buy Laws" at once, mainly because they're inseparable in practice. First: count only what hits the ledger. If the value doesn't show up in actuals, it doesn't count. That means moving procurement out of the projection business and into the results business… where the CFO lives. Second: stop counting only the good. The status quo lets category managers rack up credit for isolated wins while bad outcomes quietly pile up elsewhere. Procurement can't become more credible (or more strategic) if the scoreboard only records highlights. Third: fund a validation function. If you're going to demand that outcomes be real, you have to resource the work that proves it. Validation isn't optional. It's the bridge between negotiation and execution, the place where contract adherence, leakage, "technically compliant but avoidable" spend, and invoice-level reality either confirm the deal… or expose the fiction. Along the way, the conversation also confronts the uncomfortable tension at the heart of all three Buy Laws: procurement can't control everything that drives financial outcomes. But that can't be an excuse to keep rewarding imagined savings. The answer is a healthier system altogether, which should include clear carve-outs, smarter attribution, and a consistent discipline of asking the simplest kinds of questions procurement too often avoids: "this was supposed to be 12… so why is it 15?" If procurement wants to claim value, they have to stay involved long enough to validate it, and build a measurement system strong enough to survive contact with reality. Links: Rich Ham on LinkedIn Learn more at FineTuneUs.com