Procurement leaders shift focus to technology-driven value in 2027 despite execution gaps

Digital tools have overtaken people as procurement leaders’ preferred engine of value creation for the first time in 15 years, according to Procurement Leaders’ latest sounding of its chief procurement officer community on 7 September 2026 (procurementleaders.com). That finding, drawn from conversations with more than 50 CPO m...

embers, suggests the function is entering 2027 with a broader ambition than cost control alone: leaders are talking about revenue, resilience and what Procurement Leaders called the “return on supplier investments” (procurementleaders.com).

What is striking is how widely that mood is echoed elsewhere, even as the underlying technology remains only partially deployed. AlixPartners’ 2026 CPO Executive Insights report, based on responses from more than 120 CPOs across 11 countries and 11 industries, says nearly half of respondents now see digitisation as their primary value lever and are aiming to digitise as much as 70% of procurement processes by 2027 (alixpartners.com). Yet the same study says only 5% of organisations have fully deployed AI across procurement processes, with most still in piloting or planning phases (alixpartners.com).

That gap between ambition and execution runs through much of the latest reporting on the profession. Procurement Leaders says CPOs increasingly expect procurement to blend into the wider business as functional boundaries blur, raising both the prospect of faster, more consumer-focused decisions and the risk that procurement could lose strategic visibility if it does not prove its value clearly enough (procurementleaders.com). ProcureAbility’s 2026 Annual ProcureCon CPO Report frames the same shift in more explicit organisational terms: 82% of leaders expect greater decision-making influence, while 55% say improving supplier relationship management is now their top priority (procureability.com).

The top-performing teams appear to be those pairing technology with a wider operating remit. AlixPartners says procurement “Leaders”, defined as the top 30% of performers, generate an average P&L impact of 4.7% from advanced AI implementation, compared with 3.6% in less mature organisations (alixpartners.com). The consultancy also says 70% of those leading teams manage more than 80% of spend, against only 15% of “Followers”, and that the best performers achieve annual cost-of-goods-sold reductions of 5% to 6%, compared with an industry average of 3.5% (alixpartners.com). The same report says more than 70% of CPOs are working towards some reshoring, with half expecting to move more than 30% of currently offshored volumes, underlining that resilience is being treated as a balance-sheet issue, not just a supply-chain one (alixpartners.com).

PwC’s Digital Procurement Survey points to similarly aggressive targets, especially in Ireland and the UK. In a press release published on 28 February 2024, PwC Ireland said respondents from those markets expected 82% of procurement processes to be digitalised by 2027, well above the 70% global average and up from 36% at the time of the survey (pwc.ie). Small and medium-sized businesses in Ireland and the UK planned to invest EUR500,000 a year through 2027, while large and very large companies expected to spend EUR1.728m annually (pwc.ie). PwC said improved financial performance was the main strategic driver for 45% of respondents, but compliance and regulation ranked first for 20% in Ireland and the UK, compared with only 5% globally (pwc.ie). At the same time, just 25% of respondents in those markets were prioritising data analytics, versus 33% globally, suggesting that many procurement teams still want the outcomes of digital transformation before they have settled on the disciplines needed to sustain it (pwc.ie).

PwC’s own executives were blunt about the implications. Áine Brassill, an operations partner at PwC Ireland, said procurement excellence was “heavily dependent” on digital transformation and argued that automation, AI and data could help allocate scarce resources better, but added that “a greater focus on data and AI is needed” if organisations want a seamless shift (pwc.ie). Mark McKeever, procurement and supply chain director at the firm, said teams needed professionals and users “on board with the right skills” and called for greater attention to talent retention and upskilling (pwc.ie).

ProcureAbility’s January 2026 findings show why that warning matters. According to the report’s press release, every surveyed procurement leader reported some level of AI use in operations, and 65% described their organisations as “mostly ready” with a clear strategy and active pilots (prnewswire.com). But only 11% said they were “fully ready” and already using AI with measurable impact (prnewswire.com). Among the rest, 67% cited data privacy and compliance concerns as a barrier, 54% pointed to poor data quality and weak cross-system integration, and 51% worried about AI displacing human judgement in decision-making (prnewswire.com). Conrad Snover, ProcureAbility’s chief executive, said “the real opportunity lies in tackling them systematically” (prnewswire.com).

Other research suggests the people question has not gone away simply because technology has moved to the front of the queue. Ardent Partners’ AI Rising 2026 study, based on more than 300 CPOs and procurement leaders worldwide, says organisations sit at very different points on an AI maturity curve, from basic learning to embedding AI in core processes, while still contending with cost pressure, supply-chain volatility, talent constraints and growing demands from senior management (ardentpartners.com). Art of Procurement, discussing SAP’s 2024 Economist Impact research, quoted Baber Farooq of SAP saying “the skill sets for procurement are changing” and highlighted storytelling, data analytics and technology proficiency as emerging requirements alongside stubbornly human capabilities such as supplier negotiation, relationship management and innovation (artofprocurement.com). The same discussion said 84% of C-suite procurement executives regarded procurement insights as essential to overall company strategy, but only 60% to 67% were confident procurement could execute effectively (artofprocurement.com).

The supplier side of the equation is becoming just as important as the internal one. In a TechRadar Pro opinion article published on 14 November 2025, Amy Worth, Amazon Business’s director for UK and public sector customers in the EU, argued that procurement was moving from a transactional model towards strategic partnerships (techradar.com). Citing Amazon Business research, the piece said 51% of procurement leaders had dealt with suppliers that could not scale with their business, 33% of UK leaders saw suppliers’ inability to support digital procurement as a major challenge, and 83% said difficulty sourcing sustainable suppliers was obstructing their ESG goals (techradar.com). It also said 66% were broadening their supplier base and 95% of UK procurement leaders were actively seeking new supplier relationships, often with partners that could support their digital ambitions (techradar.com).

Taken together, the latest surveys and commentaries point to a procurement function that is trying to become more central to how companies grow, manage risk and allocate capital, not merely how they buy. The technology push is real, and by Procurement Leaders’ reckoning it has now edged past people as the dominant enabler of value (procurementleaders.com). But the evidence from AlixPartners, PwC, ProcureAbility, Ardent Partners, SAP and Amazon Business suggests that the winners by 2027 are unlikely to be the organisations that automate fastest. They are more likely to be the ones that can combine AI, cleaner data, stronger governance and better supplier relationships with the human judgement needed to make procurement matter beyond the procurement department itself (alixpartners.com).

Source: Noah Wire Services