Our Chief Customer Officer Keith Hausmann highlights the big trends he expects to see in procurement in 2025 and as you would expect his predictions are dominated by AI and how it can help the function to operate more efficiently while driving savings and adding more strategic value:

1. The Year AI Goes Mainstream

In 2024, AI evolved from holding a Bachelor's degree to earning a PhD. Despite this, many CPOs are still sitting on the sidelines, watching peers in Marketing or Engineering dive into the AI revolution.

In 2025, this hesitation will end. The entire spectrum of AI—from LLMs to predictive analytics to autonomous agents—will become procurement’s new playground. To showcase its potential, we partnered with HFS Research to reality-check our claims about AI’s transformative power in sourcing.

What they discovered from our customers such as T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments and UCB Pharma surprised even us: automated spend management is delivering instant savings of 20% from more competition and transparency in the sourcing process while the technology enables business users to self-serve, allowing enterprises to competitively manage more spend, even with lower headcount.

If this is the emerging benchmark for AI in Procurement, it’s clear there’s no time left to wait. In 2025 more and more CPOs will embrace the shift to AI-driven strategies to stay competitive and drive better business outcomes.

2. From 'Should We Try AI?' to ‘How Fast Can We Start?’

For three or four years, we’ve been championing the remarkable ROI that AI delivers in sourcing. Back in 2021, we boldly predicted that for procurement to be recognized as a driver of strategic growth and enterprise value, CPOs would need to transform their operating models. This meant embracing a best-of-breed ecosystem that enables multiple digital solutions to work seamlessly together, enhancing user experience while leveraging advanced technologies to eliminate repetitive manual tasks and empower teams to focus on more meaningful, value-creating work.

Fast forward to 2025—and that vision is becoming reality. AI is elevating procurement professionals from being perceived as back-office operators to becoming consultants and trusted advisors with profound business acumen.

In that same set of predictions, we also highlighted a critical shift that’s now materializing: Procurement processes must become autonomous and self-serve whenever possible. By democratizing procurement—particularly for spend outside of procurement’s direct control—generative AI is making this transformation a reality.

Organizations we’ve been engaging with since then are now telling us that in 2025, the question is no longer if AI should be leveraged in procurement, but rather who will adopt it—and how quickly. The momentum is undeniable, building to such a degree that it’s hard to imagine any other technology dominating the conversation over the next twelve months.

3. The Next Big Thing: Agentic AI

Agentic AI has the power to completely revolutionize the field. Why? Because it promises to deliver exactly what CPOs have long been dreaming of.

When I talk to our customers about the future of [Globality’s AI Agent] Glo, I describe a scenario where they can simply ask: ‘Hey Glo— could you scan my spend portfolio and find the top three categories that have the most supplier fragmentation and recommend which 15% of my supply based could handle the majority of my spend?"’

When procurement leaders hear that, they tell me, ‘That’s my dream.’ Could 2025 be the year that dream starts to come true? Only time will tell, but my team firmly believes that Agentic AI is on the verge of making it a reality.

4. The Value of AI in Procurement is in the Billions and Counting

Early adopters of AI in procurement are delivering such significant value to their organizations that their contributions are now being highlighted in company annual reports, as has happened with BT. BT noted that '[Globality’s] generative AI features are accelerating our scoping processes and streamlining how we define our needs, while its new E-Negotiation and online NDA tools are simplifying the entire sourcing process.' Similarly, Santander has reported notable benefits, and Harold Wu, CPO at T. Rowe Price, achieved over  $40 million in operational savings—a success highlighted by the company CEO in The Financial Times’ Ignites news service. Expect more such public declarations to emerge soon.

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, we estimate that the augmentation of the CPO’s office with these advanced technologies will unlock substantial savings and redefine the strategic role of procurement in driving enterprise value.

5. A New Class of AI-driven CPOs Will Lead the Function

Forward-thinking Chief Procurement Officers who are stepping up to the plate to remind us of the value of the function, and what a new, AI-led, data-driven approach to it can offer are on the rise.

This isn’t solely about Globality’s customers—it’s a broader trend led by trailblazers like Paula Glickenhaus at Bristol Myers Squibb, Cyril Pourrat at BT Sourced, Charles Letizia at Tesco and Matt Prichard at Fidelity. These leaders are leveraging autonomous sourcing to revolutionize their organizations’ indirect spend strategies and embracing cutting-edge, digital-first methodologies.

There’s a palpable buzz within the profession about the new ‘rock star’ status of forward-thinking CPOs. Millennials and Gen Z business leaders are also driving this momentum, rejecting outdated, cumbersome RFx processes in favor of fast, efficient digital solutions. In 2025, we’ll see even more innovative CPOs emerging and a surge of interest from digital natives in this historically under-automated part of the business."

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