At the SIG India Summit, industry leaders highlighted the shift of procurement from support to strategic core, driven by AI and soft skills, with Indian GCCs leading the charge in reskilling and innovation for future competitiveness.
Procurement in India is moving from a support function that keeps the wheels turning to a strategic node that shapes business outcomes, according to discussions convened at the SIG India Summit in Bengaluru on 28 January 2026, hosted by Eve...
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rest Group in partnership with the Sourcing Industry Group. Leaders attending the summit described a rapid reconfiguration of roles, skills and operating models driven by artificial intelligence, expanding mandates, and rising expectations for value beyond cost savings.
Attendees argued that the profile of effective procurement talent is shifting decisively. Technical fluency in analytics and AI is now table stakes alongside category expertise, while soft skills, stakeholder orchestration, judgement-led decision-making and change leadership, are increasingly crucial. This aligns with industry research: a report by The Hackett Group found 64% of procurement leaders expect AI and generative AI to transform their roles within five years, even as teams face an efficiency gap caused by rising workloads and constrained budgets. According to The Hackett Group, accelerated AI adoption is therefore essential to close that gap and lift productivity and value creation.
Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India are at the heart of this transition, wrestling with talent availability and the need to reskill existing teams quickly. Summit roundtables highlighted practices such as role rotation, focused leadership and soft-skills development, and tighter integration between people, process and technology. Market reporting shows many firms are responding by building AI capability internally rather than relying solely on external hires: India’s GCCs now fulfil a substantial share of future-tech and AI roles through internal mobility, and major consultancies and vendors are investing heavily in AI talent pipelines. Industry forecasts cited at the event and elsewhere point to robust growth in India’s generative AI sector, reinforcing why organisations are prioritising upskilling and redeployment.
Technology is being described not as a replacement for procurement expertise but as an enabler of higher-value activity. As routine execution is automated, activities such as spend analytics, category strategy, supplier performance and risk management become more prominent. Participants stressed that getting value from AI requires combining tools with governance and operating muscle: clear access controls, audit trails, human-in-the-loop processes and explicit accountability for decisions. The summit echoed wider commentary that change management, not just tool selection, is the primary determinant of return on investment when scaling AI across procurement functions.
Supplier risk and resilience emerged as a persistent priority as external volatility and new regulatory expectations increase complexity. Delegates recommended formal third-party risk management programmes that segment suppliers by business criticality, data sensitivity and AI usage, embed ESG criteria into due diligence, and tie contracting and SLAs to measurable business outcomes and exit plans. The focus on operationalising TPRM through applications, well‑designed questionnaires and trigger-based reassessments mirrors published guidance urging firms to bake risk thinking into sourcing lifecycles rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Several presenters pointed to leading-edge research and tools that could accelerate more rigorous, auditable decision‑making. Work on integrated data architectures, combining Data Mesh and Service Mesh approaches to unify diverse datasets and make them queryable for large‑scale model training, was discussed as a way to improve procurement intelligence. Separately, emerging fairness and evaluation frameworks and tooling aim to make AI assessments reproducible and certification-ready, which procurement teams will need as oversight expectations and standards mature.
Taken together, the discussions in Bengaluru painted a picture of procurement entering a new capability cycle in India: the next competitive advantage will accrue to teams that pair judgement and orchestration with data and AI fluency, operate under robust governance, and redesign processes to deliver speed, transparency and measurable business impact. According to reporting from supply‑management bodies and trade press, success will depend as much on upskilling and internal mobility as on technology investment, with GCCs playing a pivotal role in accelerating adoption.
Organisations that move deliberately to formalise TPRM, embed responsible‑AI guardrails in end‑to‑end workflows, and invest in the cross‑functional skills needed to translate analytics into decisions will be best positioned to convert the current disruption into long‑term advantage.
Source: Noah Wire Services
