At the inaugural LevelUp conference in San Francisco, businesses like Acrisure and Ace Hardware showcased how AI-enabled procurement is delivering tangible savings, streamlined workflows, and stronger supplier relationships amid evolving industry challenges.
Adam Andolina and Leigh Barbeau used Levelpath’s inaugural LevelUp conference in San Francisco to show how procurement teams are turning AI promises into measurable enterprise outcomes.
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erage by CPO Rising, Acrisure’s chief procurement officer, Adam Andolina, described the work he began after joining the fast-growing InsureTech firm in 2024: a three-year plan to reposition procurement as a trusted business adviser by 2026. Acrisure, which the company reports generates roughly $5 billion in revenue and employs about 20,000 people globally, began with relationship-building and discovery in 2024, established a procurement team in 2025, then moved into execution this year. Speaking at LevelUp, Andolina recalled his early stakeholder approach: “I went into meetings without a slide deck,” he said. “I just asked: What do you need?”
Acrisure’s early diagnostic work uncovered $450 million in procurement spend, with around $360 million judged addressable. Industry-style modelling used by the team projected sourcing savings in the mid-single digits and identified further gains from beating inflation escalators, proactive renewals, and payment-term negotiation. Those forecasts helped secure executive backing for building the function and investing in tools. After a consolidated RFP process, Acrisure selected Levelpath as its procurement platform. According to the presentation, the organisation has since realised $15 million in savings, $12 million in cost avoidance, completed more than 25 RFPs through the new sourcing module, and executed some 400 contracts totalling about $400 million in value, outcomes Andolina argued validate a talent-first deployment of technology and early focus on business-aligned priorities.
Leigh Barbeau, Director of Indirect Procurement at Ace Hardware, offered a contrasting but complementary case focused on the challenges of decentralised retail procurement. Ace operates with roughly 12,500 employees, 16 distribution centres, about $1.1 billion in spend and a procurement team of 14, yet handles some 100 new contract requests a month and maintains approximately 5,000 contracts. In her LevelUp keynote she outlined a programme built around a centralised intake and orchestration layer, AI-assisted supplier enrichment, and consolidated sourcing workflows to reduce fragmentation and speed decision-making. “A foundation that gives stakeholders a reason to return,” she told the audience, was central to winning adoption across a cooperative model where individual stores retain autonomy.
Barbeau’s account aligns with other public information on Ace’s broader procurement and retail initiatives. According to Ace Hardware’s corporate newsroom, the group’s SAVINGSource group purchasing platform is approaching $100 million in cumulative savings since its 2015 launch, a milestone the company says will be reached in its 10th anniversary year. Separately, Ace has signalled major capital investments and store-format innovation as part of a wider effort to modernise the business, reinforcing the need for more scalable supplier and sourcing practices.
Taken together, the two customer keynotes underlined a common playbook: diagnose addressable spend, secure leadership backing with a quantified business case, staff for domain knowledge and career development, then adopt technology to automate intake, manage contracts and run data-driven sourcing. According to Levelpath’s event materials, LevelUp was designed to surface such practical customer stories alongside product demonstrations, emphasising how AI-native orchestration and supplier visibility can amplify the work procurement teams are already doing.
Both presentations also highlighted limits and trade-offs. Andolina stressed that technology alone does not transform procurement, people and clear accountability do, while Barbeau emphasised the cultural and governance challenges of rolling central processes into a cooperative retail model. Their results, millions saved and streamlined workflows, serve as operational proof points for vendors pitching AI-enabled procurement platforms, but they also underscore that returns depend on disciplined execution across people, process and data.
As procurement organisations look to scale, the lessons from LevelUp suggest a phased approach: start with stakeholder-centric problem solving, quantify value to win investment, build the team, then use platforms to industrialise intake, supplier data and sourcing. For Acrisure and Ace Hardware, those steps have already produced tangible results; for other organisations the key challenge will be replicating that sequence at speed while protecting governance and supplier relationships.
Source: Noah Wire Services
