The Globality Blog

AI has been democratized so quickly, already used in so many areas of our lives (it's the only tech that both my parents and my kids adopted at the same time, but that's a story for another day!). It's also become a commodity. GenAI is everywhere these days - from search engines to mobile phone software to music composition tools.

However, just because GenAI is everywhere, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always welcome, or indeed working well, everywhere. Corporate procurement is a notable exception. Procurement is unique because it’s a complex, intensive process whose decisions not only impact the bottom line but can also determine success. Enhancing procurement with AI helps companies identify their best-fit suppliers, even in historically hard-to-procure spend areas that are complex and high-value. Because these areas have also been the hardest for machines to understand, they’ve been the most challenging to automate and optimize, relying exclusively on humans to handle.

At last, that’s changing. Procurement specialists no longer need to spend hours or days writing long, detailed briefs that cover every possible sourcing scenario. Now, they can “partner” with an AI agent, trained over many years by procurement experts, to receive a personalized sourcing journey with instant access to all the information and insights they need.

This is game-changing. No matter the company, bidding for complex services requires teams to articulate their needs through lengthy RFPs. The complexity and detail of these documents make it difficult to fairly and accurately evaluate and compare vendors' solutions, proposals, pricing, and specific requirements such as diversity, sustainability, and cultural fit. 

Using AI Agents to Increase Your Impact Across the Business

Doing this work repeatedly, at scale, is a big ask for procurement teams. That’s why being able to actually “converse” about every aspect of a brief with systems that have infinite amounts of patience, vast recall, and meticulous attention to detail is a real step change. Effectively these systems act as informed colleagues who read all the information for you, synthesizing them in seconds to give fast answers, and generating ideal responses to the market that are compliant with all your company policies.

Procurement teams can now convey “complex intent” at different stages of the buying journey, using AI to extract project information from existing documents and performing scoping interviews using natural, conversational language. This enables them to define what they need quickly and easily to avoid overbuying, manage demand, and save time on every sourcing event.

Adobe's Chief Strategy Officer and closely followed AI trend watcher Scott Belsky has been writing about how AI agents will streamline and optimize operating models to increase efficiencies and productivity.

As he writes, “Rather than hire out teams of specialists for every function, companies will have the opportunity to purchase AI capabilities—often in the form of agent-based tools or ‘AI teammates’—that (or is it who?) automate parts of a process or entire workflows within individual functions.”

Having such a partner not only saves considerable time but also helps business users achieve much better outcomes than trying to do all this on their own. Why? Because dedicated AI-teammates such as Globality’s agent Glo, built from the ground up for nearly a decade, can draw on massive bodies of accumulated knowledge and intelligence from millions of buyer and seller transactions.

Crucially, the ultimate decision-making remains with the carbon and not silicon-based side of the partnership. Whether or not we are truly heading for Gartner’s vision of a world where machines increasingly buy from machines, and where, by as soon as 2030, 15-20% of your revenue will come from selling directly to such non-human customers, I believe a large part of B2B procurement will increasingly be driven and orchestrated by human experts working in productive partnerships with AI agents.

Adopt the Power AI to Reap the Benefits

By partnering with this new class of AI agents, buyers will not only work smarter, but they’ll also enhance their reputation across the enterprise. Implementing data-driven processes that identify the best providers, proposals, and outcomes will lead to improved business metrics, enabling procurement to add more strategic value and help drive new growth. As the effectiveness of these processes becomes more visible, increasing numbers of stakeholders, including those who typically avoid procurement, will become engaged, bringing more spend under management.

However, it’s important to emphasize that unlike other areas, in complex sourcing we’re not yet talking about machine-to-machine-only transactions. Complex purchasing decisions always involve relationships; buyers and sellers need to feel confident and trust each other. Partnering with AI automates low-value repetitive, manual tasks, allowing you to focus on more strategic work such as supplier collaboration, scenario planning and becoming a true partner to the business. Relationships (internal and external) will always be crucial in procurement, and these will continue to be managed and led by people, while AI agents do the background work.

Be Bold and Stand Out From the Crowd

So, my advice to procurement professionals is this: just as you continually develop and nurture your partnerships with colleagues, focus on how to best partner with AI. Consider the types of guidance, instructions, and prompts you can develop to unleash AI’s potential within your organization. Strive to create an impact that is unparalleled and uniquely tailored to you, your company, your creativity, and your proprietary data.

This approach is both the most creative and value-adding strategy you can adopt for using AI agents to help better manage all your company spend, as well as for your personal career development, marking you out as a forward-thinking procurement leader who wants to move the profession from tactical back-office function to strategic driver of growth at heart of the business.

Click here to learn more about how Globality's AI-driven autonomous sourcing platform automates routine tasks and enables procurement teams to focus on more strategic tasks

Can an AI Agent achieve $15M in savings in just one hour? This may sound too good to be true, but it's exactly what happened today when we launched the latest version of our automated negotiation tool. After receiving multiple proposals and setting up an automated negotiation session, Glo, our AI agent, delivered an impressive $15M in savings on a single project for a leading G2000 customer of ours.

Of course, outcomes like this depend on the size and scope of the sourcing event, but it’s a prime example of how Glo drives significant savings by emulating human behavior and decision-making.  

Inspired by the techniques of real negotiation specialists, such as multi-round bidding strategies, price pressure dynamics, and data-driven proposal evaluations, our goal was to replicate their results but autonomously and at scale. That’s exactly what Glo accomplished: an unsupervised negotiation delivering results on a par with, or above, those of an expert human negotiator.

And the most exciting thing is, this is just the beginning. Since proposals are inherently language-based, Glo excels at understanding sourcing language. The next iteration will incorporate our assessment criteria understanding, contract components, and more. Imagine an AI agent seamlessly managing these complexities and delivering better sourcing outcomes faster and more effectively.  

What’s particularly fascinating (and perhaps even a little controversial) is how people feel about negotiation. For some, negotiation can be seen as a high-pressure, confrontational process, while others see it as an opportunity to strategize and create value. Some thrive on it, while others find it draining. If you're someone who doesn't enjoy negotiating, Glo can handle it for you effortlessly. For those who love negotiation, Glo enhances the process, making it more powerful and efficient.  

This is just the start of an exciting journey in autonomous negotiation AI. Stay tuned – there’s much more to come!

Click here to book a demo and learn more about how Glo can save you millions of dollars in one hour!

I often get asked where I see things heading, so I wanted to share a few insights based on our experience so far at Globality, building the market-leading AI-driven sourcing platform.

If you are in procurement and wondering what the combination of Procurement + AI will mean for you in the months and years ahead, these five insights will help you navigate the transformation and drive better business outcomes. 

Introduce AI as a partner and an extension of your team. When introducing AI to your procurement organization, show empathy; let your employees know they will get the credit for becoming 10x more capable using AI, while decision-makers and economic buyers who brought AI into the organization benefit from its financial gains.

2. AI Will Evolve Faster Than You Can Imagine; Embrace It
AI is becoming smarter and more accurate at a rapid pace, approaching human-level intelligence in many tasks and already exceeding it in some. Next-generation large language models are reaching PhD-level intelligence, and the intelligence displayed by each generation of models is accelerating. Fueled by the leaps in computing power, especially GPUs, that drive AI performance, AI is advancing beyond the pace predicted by Moore's Law. Rather than fearing these advances, teams who embrace it to enhance their work will gain vital competitive advantage.

3. Agentic Architectures Are Here
AI agents are evolving from simple chatbots to proactive, predictive, and collaborative partners. Agents like Glo don't just converse with users—they act on their behalf. This transition from conversation to action will redefine procurement, making it faster and more efficient, with AI autonomously handling repetitive, manual tasks, enabling procurement teams to focus on higher-value, more strategic work such as building supplier relationships and scenario-planning.

4. Multimodal AI Capabilities Expand Options
As AI models become multimodal, they are able to understand, process, and interact with diverse data types, including text, images, audio, and video. Don’t think only text—think rich media, images, presentations, and far better formats to consume information or present it. Procurement will be able to use AI agents such as Glo to create more accurate scoping briefs from diverse sources such as video calls, meetings, presentations and simple discussions with business stakeholders or colleagues.

Seize the Moment and Embrace AI in Procurement
AI is here, it’s smarter than we can imagine, and it’s going to become exponentially smarter as it shifts from providing insights to taking actions autonomously. As the models themselves become commoditized, success will require an AI-native product that brings specialized knowledge to assist and enhance your team’s work Don’t just add AI to an old application; push the boundaries of what AI can do for your organization. If you are an economic buyer or leader, you will see enormous financial returns by boldly making the leap to showcase how AI can increase efficiencies and productivity across your procurement team. If you are a user, let AI boost your capabilities, accelerate your career, and make you a standout 10x performer. Procurement has a unique opportunity—it is the perfect use case for AI given the different types of work and collaboration across the business involved.

Go win it!

AI has been democratized so quickly, already used in so many areas of our lives (it's the only tech that both my parents and my kids adopted at the same time, but that's a story for another day!). It's also become a commodity. GenAI is everywhere these days - from search engines to mobile phone software to music composition tools.

However, just because GenAI is everywhere, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always welcome, or indeed working well, everywhere. Corporate procurement is a notable exception. Procurement is unique because it’s a complex, intensive process whose decisions not only impact the bottom line but can also determine success. Enhancing procurement with AI helps companies identify their best-fit suppliers, even in historically hard-to-procure spend areas that are complex and high-value. Because these areas have also been the hardest for machines to understand, they’ve been the most challenging to automate and optimize, relying exclusively on humans to handle.

At last, that’s changing. Procurement specialists no longer need to spend hours or days writing long, detailed briefs that cover every possible sourcing scenario. Now, they can “partner” with an AI agent, trained over many years by procurement experts, to receive a personalized sourcing journey with instant access to all the information and insights they need.

This is game-changing. No matter the company, bidding for complex services requires teams to articulate their needs through lengthy RFPs. The complexity and detail of these documents make it difficult to fairly and accurately evaluate and compare vendors' solutions, proposals, pricing, and specific requirements such as diversity, sustainability, and cultural fit. 

Using AI Agents to Increase Your Impact Across the Business

Doing this work repeatedly, at scale, is a big ask for procurement teams. That’s why being able to actually “converse” about every aspect of a brief with systems that have infinite amounts of patience, vast recall, and meticulous attention to detail is a real step change. Effectively these systems act as informed colleagues who read all the information for you, synthesizing them in seconds to give fast answers, and generating ideal responses to the market that are compliant with all your company policies.

Procurement teams can now convey “complex intent” at different stages of the buying journey, using AI to extract project information from existing documents and performing scoping interviews using natural, conversational language. This enables them to define what they need quickly and easily to avoid overbuying, manage demand, and save time on every sourcing event.

Adobe's Chief Strategy Officer and closely followed AI trend watcher Scott Belsky has been writing about how AI agents will streamline and optimize operating models to increase efficiencies and productivity.

As he writes, “Rather than hire out teams of specialists for every function, companies will have the opportunity to purchase AI capabilities—often in the form of agent-based tools or ‘AI teammates’—that (or is it who?) automate parts of a process or entire workflows within individual functions.”

Having such a partner not only saves considerable time but also helps business users achieve much better outcomes than trying to do all this on their own. Why? Because dedicated AI-teammates such as Globality’s agent Glo, built from the ground up for nearly a decade, can draw on massive bodies of accumulated knowledge and intelligence from millions of buyer and seller transactions.

Crucially, the ultimate decision-making remains with the carbon and not silicon-based side of the partnership. Whether or not we are truly heading for Gartner’s vision of a world where machines increasingly buy from machines, and where, by as soon as 2030, 15-20% of your revenue will come from selling directly to such non-human customers, I believe a large part of B2B procurement will increasingly be driven and orchestrated by human experts working in productive partnerships with AI agents.

Adopt the Power AI to Reap the Benefits

By partnering with this new class of AI agents, buyers will not only work smarter, but they’ll also enhance their reputation across the enterprise. Implementing data-driven processes that identify the best providers, proposals, and outcomes will lead to improved business metrics, enabling procurement to add more strategic value and help drive new growth. As the effectiveness of these processes becomes more visible, increasing numbers of stakeholders, including those who typically avoid procurement, will become engaged, bringing more spend under management.

However, it’s important to emphasize that unlike other areas, in complex sourcing we’re not yet talking about machine-to-machine-only transactions. Complex purchasing decisions always involve relationships; buyers and sellers need to feel confident and trust each other. Partnering with AI automates low-value repetitive, manual tasks, allowing you to focus on more strategic work such as supplier collaboration, scenario planning and becoming a true partner to the business. Relationships (internal and external) will always be crucial in procurement, and these will continue to be managed and led by people, while AI agents do the background work.

Be Bold and Stand Out From the Crowd

So, my advice to procurement professionals is this: just as you continually develop and nurture your partnerships with colleagues, focus on how to best partner with AI. Consider the types of guidance, instructions, and prompts you can develop to unleash AI’s potential within your organization. Strive to create an impact that is unparalleled and uniquely tailored to you, your company, your creativity, and your proprietary data.

This approach is both the most creative and value-adding strategy you can adopt for using AI agents to help better manage all your company spend, as well as for your personal career development, marking you out as a forward-thinking procurement leader who wants to move the profession from tactical back-office function to strategic driver of growth at heart of the business.

Click here to learn more about how Globality's AI-driven autonomous sourcing platform automates routine tasks and enables procurement teams to focus on more strategic tasks

John Paterson, former Chief Procurement Officer at IBM, once described the relationship between the CFO and the CPO “the most important relationship that exists or needs to exist within the enterprise.”

Back in 2014, he was absolutely right. He was also right when he acknowledged that this relationship has often been fraught with tension. And, unfortunately, the progress made since then has been minimal.

Why? Because if you’re a CPO, it can be a struggle to always make your voice heard. People recognize that procurement handles various tasks, delivers savings, sources categories, manages risk and compliance and improves supplier costs. However, the CFO often struggles to see these efforts reflected in tangible positive changes on the P&L.

The reality is that the connectivity between budgets and budgeting and procurement—in other words, between FP&A and procurement—is sub-optimized. As a result, if a company sets a $73 million budget for the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and procurement helps save $3 million, the CMO will still end up spending the entire $73 million. In an early outsourcing deal, finance essentially said to us, "I'm just tired of procurement telling me how many auctions they ran and how much savings they generated because I never see this in the P&L!"

This also happens because procurement is not brought into the process until the last minute. Procurement should be an enabler to achieve the same or more with a smaller budget, but this often doesn’t happen because the business sees the procurement function as a blocker. A significant portion of procurement's day involves someone coming to them and saying, "I need you to finalize this deal for me; I've already figured it out."

Procurement then asks, "What process did you follow, and what evidence do you have for choosing that supplier?" The response is more often than not along the lines of, "I don't have any, but I'm in a rush—so just do it." Further, even when procurement is involved early in the decision-making process, the loop is not closed with the FP&A budgeting process, allowing value to be re-spent without much rigor or governance.

Finding the metrics that underline your contribution

As it stands, then, there's little reason for the CFO to prioritize this relationship. As John Paterson pointed out years ago, both the CFO and the CPO have the best interests of the business at heart, but they can't always agree on how “best” is operationalized and managed from the beginning of a buying process, through to budget governance.

However, the good news is, there's a way to make the value generated by procurement visible in the P&L and get this relationship back on track. What is needed is a mechanism to finally get some real visibility into spending. If a business needs to generate cost savings, as many do right now, they should reduce the budgets and then involve procurement to ensure that departments like Marketing and IT still get everything they need, but with a 10% lower budget or whatever reduction makes the most sense.

Realistically, that’s only going to happen if we move closer to true zero-based budgeting. This approach involves asking each year what the business needs to achieve and then building the budget from zero, based on what is required to meet those goals.

If we adopted this approach—driven by the AI-powered autonomous sourcing that many of our customers are implementing—procurement and finance would establish a strong and cohesive relationship. For instance, at UK retail giant Tesco, a new “Spend to Invest” plan exemplifies this. Procurement generated £645 million ($823 million) in value, which the CFO then reinvested to enhance pricing power and expand into new countries, regions, and business lines.

And in the case of global investment management leader T. Rowe Price, a new approach to procurement using AI has helped increase the function’s internal visibility and therefore its standing with finance. 

According to its Chief Procurement Officer, Harold Wu, every member of its management are now big supporters of the discipline. As a result, the firm, was able to generate more than $40 million in operational savings. As he says, “If you're able to increase the value, that gets noticed.”

Using AI to create a clear link between cost reduction efforts and increased budget and working capital for your organization? Sounds like a C-suite individual destined for success!

I often get asked where I see things heading, so I wanted to share a few insights based on our experience so far at Globality, building the market-leading AI-driven sourcing platform.

If you are in procurement and wondering what the combination of Procurement + AI will mean for you in the months and years ahead, these five insights will help you navigate the transformation and drive better business outcomes. 

Introduce AI as a partner and an extension of your team. When introducing AI to your procurement organization, show empathy; let your employees know they will get the credit for becoming 10x more capable using AI, while decision-makers and economic buyers who brought AI into the organization benefit from its financial gains.

2. AI Will Evolve Faster Than You Can Imagine; Embrace It
AI is becoming smarter and more accurate at a rapid pace, approaching human-level intelligence in many tasks and already exceeding it in some. Next-generation large language models are reaching PhD-level intelligence, and the intelligence displayed by each generation of models is accelerating. Fueled by the leaps in computing power, especially GPUs, that drive AI performance, AI is advancing beyond the pace predicted by Moore's Law. Rather than fearing these advances, teams who embrace it to enhance their work will gain vital competitive advantage.

3. Agentic Architectures Are Here
AI agents are evolving from simple chatbots to proactive, predictive, and collaborative partners. Agents like Glo don't just converse with users—they act on their behalf. This transition from conversation to action will redefine procurement, making it faster and more efficient, with AI autonomously handling repetitive, manual tasks, enabling procurement teams to focus on higher-value, more strategic work such as building supplier relationships and scenario-planning.

4. Multimodal AI Capabilities Expand Options
As AI models become multimodal, they are able to understand, process, and interact with diverse data types, including text, images, audio, and video. Don’t think only text—think rich media, images, presentations, and far better formats to consume information or present it. Procurement will be able to use AI agents such as Glo to create more accurate scoping briefs from diverse sources such as video calls, meetings, presentations and simple discussions with business stakeholders or colleagues.

Seize the Moment and Embrace AI in Procurement
AI is here, it’s smarter than we can imagine, and it’s going to become exponentially smarter as it shifts from providing insights to taking actions autonomously. As the models themselves become commoditized, success will require an AI-native product that brings specialized knowledge to assist and enhance your team’s work Don’t just add AI to an old application; push the boundaries of what AI can do for your organization. If you are an economic buyer or leader, you will see enormous financial returns by boldly making the leap to showcase how AI can increase efficiencies and productivity across your procurement team. If you are a user, let AI boost your capabilities, accelerate your career, and make you a standout 10x performer. Procurement has a unique opportunity—it is the perfect use case for AI given the different types of work and collaboration across the business involved.

Go win it!

When you think of procurement, the first association is not necessarily ‘cool’. But here’s a radical thought: AI is making procurement one of the coolest functions in the enterprise! I previously led an AI development team at Microsoft’s Xbox, so I know what cool tech is, and I passionately believe that procurement + AI is not only cool, it is, in fact, glamorous and the cutting-edge of every global corporation.

First, we need to agree with the premise that ‘cool’ is a function of creativity, innovation, impact, personal brand and, as my Globality co-founder Joel Hyatt argued in a recent Forbes article, purpose. AI is enhancing all of these attributes across procurement and helping transform the function into a place where the brightest and best want to make their mark.

There’s a very serious point here in the context of the current skills shortage. A recent Gartner study found that only one in six procurement teams believe they have “adequate talent” to meet their future needs. Companies seeking to recruit the best talent and use procurement strategically must have an edge – and that edge is AI. 

So, let’s break down those cool factors: 

Creativity – Fairly or unfairly, procurement’s image is tainted by its association with box-ticking. When many people think of procurement, they think of compliance, regulations, and bureaucracy. This necessary emphasis on processes and controls can give the impression that procurement lacks creativity or flexibility. The good news is that democratizing data access and handling routine processes is exactly what AI does most efficiently, freeing up procurement people to be more imaginative and creative. 

That creativity will look different in every company. It might focus on driving sustainable and ethical practices that positively impact the brand, society, and the environment. Or it could involve collaborating more closely with various departments, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Or running campaigns to raise awareness internally and externally to promote the ways that procurement is having a positive impact through measures like cost savings, risk management, innovation, and sustainability. Or simply staying on top of market trends and being more strategic. 

Innovation – Using AI-driven technology is innovative by definition. However, procurement stands out as one of the best corporate use cases for Gen AI in particular. Gen AI in procurement can analyze and synthesize huge volumes of complex, unstructured text-based documents to help specialists in all types of sourcing scenarios – from scoping RFPs to making buying decisions. 

The key here is learning to “partner” with AI. Complex, high-stakes spend categories are the most difficult to procure – and until now, to automate. Today, instead of investing hours or days writing a long, detailed brief that covers every possible scenario, anyone can “converse” with Gen AI. They can convey what we call “complex intent” at different stages in the procurement journey using natural language. This not only saves considerable time but achieves much better outcomes because the AI is drawing on a massive body of accumulated knowledge and intelligence from huge number of buyer and seller transactions. 

The bottom line here is that AI-powered innovation is doing much more than simply automating simple procurement tasks. It’s transforming a complex process that has never been humanly possible to do efficiently, optimally, and personally, with a realistically sized team of procurement specialists. 

Impact – What’s cooler in today’s lean, cost-conscious business climate than being able to make a positive impact on productivity? As Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and board member of Globality, says in his Substack Implications: “As smaller companies modernize using a new AI-native stack of technology, they no longer need to grow their team to scale their ambition.” 

Procurement’s reputation has suffered in the past due to productivity issues. Activities like data entry, invoice processing, and purchase order processing were very manual and error prone. Systems were fragmented and siloed, leading to inefficiencies. Supplier management was inconsistent and unstructured. AI-based procurement addresses all these issues. 

Of course, the other huge impact of AI-based procurement is its ability to source more intelligently and save companies huge amounts of money. Matt Prichard, Fidelity Investments’ CPO, reported seeing a 20% price improvement by using AI-based autonomous sourcing, for example. 

Personal Brand – The inherent stress of working in procurement with its complexity, tight deadlines, and cost targets makes work difficult enough. But the negative stereotypes about procurement as an obstacle to ‘get around,’ which causes friction and complications, can feel demoralizing. 

Procurement people I’ve met genuinely want to make a positive difference in their companies. But if specialists lack the tools and technology to do their jobs productively, at the pace of business, they are set up to fail, which grinds down morale. 

By liberating people from the drudgery in procurement, making every step of the journey faster, and delivering better outcomes, AI improves every aspect of the function and the lives of those who deliver it. 

To conclude, it is worth reiterating that procurement drives the trade of trillions of dollars around the world. With the power of AI-driven sourcing technology, procurement teams will be participating in the creation of the largest economic engine of our lives, something which glues the world together. I think we can all agree that’s pretty cool!

As the buzz around AI, and gen AI in particular, refuses to die down all CFOs are on the hook from their CEOs and boards to find use cases for this game-changing technology that deliver instant upticks in productivity and efficiencies while reducing OpEx and positively impacting the bottom line. A select group of innovators have identified that procurement is the lowest-hanging fruit out there, enabling enterprises to drive more value from their company spend by implementing enterprise-wise procurement mandates.

They are adopting AI-driven sourcing and spend management technology to ensure that all third-party spend is tendered fairly, competitively, and transparently — with the right guardrails and policies in place to maintain compliance and risk management. As a result, these CFOs are instantly able to get more visibility, control and assurance of buying the right goods and services at fair market prices across all of their expenditures.

Global 2000 companies spend billions of dollars each year but legacy procurement processes and technology mean that many employees simply bypass the designated systems and engage in ‘maverick’ or ‘rogue’ spend as they need to be able to execute their jobs in the marketing, R&D, technology, human resources, real-estate and other functions in the company with a reasonable degree of speed and simplicity.

But forward-thinking finance leaders have identified autonomous sourcing as the answer to this conundrum – the user-friendly, consumer-like experience means using this technology for all company spend above a certain threshold is one mandate that their workforce is happy to embrace.

Let’s look at what CFOs need to consider in order to encourage participation in the process and make sure procurement mandates drive their companies toward the goal of delivering savings, reduced operating expenses and improved business results.

Why more companies are choosing mandates
Traditionally, mandates haven’t always been welcomed by employees, particularly those within the “frozen middle” of organizations where there’s a large disconnect between the declared company strategy and operational imperatives and ultimately the execution by mid-level managers. However, employees will often take the path of least resistance and not follow recommended business processes and practices as they know there are no consequences for doing so, as long as they don’t exceed their budget. While this ensures budgets are not surpassed, it also ensures companies WILL get less for more within that budget. 

With mandates, CFOs can quickly and effectively encourage the behaviors needed to deliver on business goals, principally more efficient cost control and adding strategic value. That’s why we’re seeing more enterprises adopt this strategy.

CFOs are also realizing that being nimble and being buttoned up are not mutually exclusive. In fact, mandates can increase efficiency and agility, especially within procurement where improved spend management directly impacts the bottom line.

Making it easy for employees to comply
For mandates to succeed, they need to be easy for every employee to comply with. It’s straightforward enough to create mandates that are clear and reasonable, such as: “Anyone spending more than a specific dollar amount on a service must participate in the procurement process.” What’s more critical is ensuring the underlying processes for the protocol you’re mandating are easy to use.

If employees are using outdated procurement systems that are difficult or cumbersome, then they’re going to struggle to comply. If you empower people with self-serve, intuitive AI-powered technology, it will make them want to use the mandated platform on an ongoing basis.

Take travel booking, for example, which used to be an agent-based travel management function. Once employees were empowered with the technology to compare rates, flight times, routes and seats, they could pick the best option that worked for them and for the company. This same model applies for CFOs looking to implement procurement mandates for all of their external spending. By giving employees user-friendly, digital solutions with a modest set of guardrails, you’ll empower them to be their own buyer and simplify compliance.

Autonomous sourcing technology enables CFOs to set mandates without having to fear the reverberation of noise – complaints that it’s too hard to comply or business stakeholders continuing to work in their old, archaic way of email and spreadsheets before going into the system right at the end of the process simply for compliance purposes. While democratizing how an organization buys everything it needs – putting the purchasing decisions in the hands of the experts who own the budgets and allowing them to work however they want – this new model ensures issues such as risk management and ESG targets are adhered to while also improving the bottom line.

Procurement mandates deliver instant cost savings
Successful implementation of a buying mandate means substantially more company spend will be managed by technology with new efficiencies and competition across a transparent, inclusive sourcing process that drives your costs 10-20% lower from day one. This fundamentally leads to either more for less, improvement to the company’s bottom-line (and therefore employee bonuses and shareholder returns) or conscious reinvestment in critical growth initiatives.

CFOs who invest in AI-driven sourcing and spend management solutions will find that mandating their use by the business is far easier than has often been the case in the past and that their organizations will both enjoy value from day one and be better positioned to manage the bottom line in the long term.

Click here to request a demo of the market leading automated spend management platform for instant improvements to your bottom line.

It has long been a quandary for financial leaders but, thanks to new transformative technology the answer is simple – embrace AI and automate your spend management model. 

As businesses continue to embrace the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI), a clear business case has developed for CFOs that delivers an immediate return on investment (ROI), reducing operational expenses (OpEx) and cutting up to 20% on their corporate spend.

As highlighted by McKinsey, Generative AI, which involves using machine learning algorithms to create new content such as text, images, or videos, has the potential to automate processes, improve customer experiences and streamline operations to help drive new efficiencies and create new value across business.

And according to PwC, companies that implement AI technology have the potential to increase their profitability by 38% by 2035.

Identifying the right use cases is key to success

To reap the benefits of generative AI, CFOs must identify and prioritise the most impactful use cases that align with their business objectives, focusing on the tasks and teams which can make the most impact from day one and drive instant improvements to the bottom line.

By successfully identifying the right areas of their operations to leverage generative AI across their workplace tools, companies can increase their productivity, reduce their OpEx and gain the competitive advantage that is more important than ever in today’s volatile economic environment.

The CFOs big opportunity: AI-driven spend management

There is an area, often overlooked by CFOs, where the power of AI and Gen AI can deliver immediate bottom-line savings – every dollar their company spends, especially on indirect goods and services.

The amount of indirect spend is typically around 20% to 40% of revenue, and is usually classified as Selling, General and Administrative expenses (SG&A). For a typical Global 2000 corporation, this can amount to costs that run into billions of dollars.

However, numerous organisations make the incorrect assumption that they have their indirect spend well-managed, when in reality the situation may be quite different.

Globality’s research for CFOs found 82% of procurement leaders say their indirect spend is not well managed during the sourcing process, leaving substantial cost savings on the table.

Leading global companies like Adidas, BT, Tesco, Fidelity and IQVIA are already using advanced AI sourcing tools such as Globality to avoid overbuying and saving 10-20% on their billions of dollars of indirect spend.

A perfect match: generative AI and sourcing

When Generative AI meets autonomous sourcing, the use cases are compelling and it can transforms an organization's spend management by automating processes, providing intelligent insights, and improving decision-making, enabling business stakeholders to buy what they need more quickly with more competition among suppliers and the ability to negotiate better on price.

If CFOs work closely with their technology teams to identify the most impactful use cases and develop a clear roadmap for implementation, they can realise substantial cost savings from day one, ensuring that all third-party spend is tendered fairly, competitively, and transparently.

Autonomous sourcing also supports the tendering process, comparing proposals and driving negotiations, while at the same time implementing appropriate guardrails and policies to maintain full organisational compliance and risk management.

As a result, CFOs now have visibility and control of indirect procurement. They can be much more confident that they are buying the right goods and services at fair market prices.

And if line-of-business managers are freed from unwieldy procurement processes and empowered instead with user-friendly, self-serve sourcing technology, they are highly likely to embrace this new way of working with enthusiasm.

Our survey found that  85% of procurement leaders believe business users would comply with procurement processes if their companies offered intuitive self-service technology.

Equipping your teams to do more with less

Adopting an intelligent and intuitive spend management platform will also free up sourcing teams from transactional work. By automating these low-value manual processes, they can instead focus on high-value strategic tasks, such as supplier collaboration, scenario planning and improving the function’s operational excellence. This shift will greatly contribute to driving much-needed growth across the business.

Contact us for a demo of Globality’s AI-driven spend management platform – winner of Best Technology Provider at the World Procurement Awards – to see how it uses cutting-edge AI, built from the ground up, to deliver 70% efficiencies and 10-20% cost savings instantly.