Procurement on the pitch: moving from defense to offense with AI

Every Chief Procurement Officer is asking some version of the same question right now, which is “what does my team look like a year from now?”

Intake and orchestration AI is automating the work that used to fill the day, from the data entry and validation to the handoffs between disconnected point solutions. Work that once ate real team bandwidth now runs on its own, and every procurement leader has a decision to make.

And I think Spain’s World Cup win last Sunday can actually teach quite a lot about how to build a winning team.

Procurement's AI fork in the road: cut headcount or redeploy talent

Procurement has long been asked to do more on the same budget. As AI and orchestration Superagents clear out the manual work, that pressure sharpens, and leaders are feeling it. 

In our State of AI in Spend report, a survey of 1,050 global procurement, finance, IT, and operations leaders, the share of teams expecting a smaller function in five years doubled in twelve months, from 17% to 34%, while growth optimism fell from 38% to 28%. Nearly half of organizations have cut or plan to cut roles because AI can now do the work (29% already have, another 19% plan to).

That transformation pressure brings us to a fork in the road:

• Option A: Shrink the org. Cut roles where AI now does the work, capture the efficiency, and hand the headcount savings back to the business.
• Option B: Redeploy. Treat this as a rare inflection point and move that talent toward the strategic, value-generating work procurement has always been capable of and rarely had the capacity to pursue.

For forward-thinking leaders, the answer is usually with Option B or a blend of both, and the data backs the instinct. The report splits respondents into ‘Builders,’ the organizations showing clear, measurable ROI from AI, and ‘Bystanders,’ the ones still stuck in pilots. 

Builders are doing both things at once: while most have eliminated or consolidated roles, they’re at the same time growing their team. The Builders are cutting and hiring the same move. They're recomposing the team around higher-value work and hiring into the space that opens up. 

To get there, you need to rethink what procurement is for. The answer seems to be right there on the soccer field.

A World Cup framework for procurement's role in the AI era

Last Sunday's FIFA World Cup final made this framework come to life on the field. 

Spain spent 120 minutes pressing forward, took 20 shots, and finally broke through when substitute Ferran Torres struck in extra time for a 1-0 win. Argentina spent the match doing the opposite: sitting deep, absorbing pressure, and betting they could survive to penalties. They didn't manage a shot until extra time. The side built to attack won; the side built only to defend went home.

Let’s take a step back. Imagine 22 players spread across the field, each in a distinct position, each with a distinct role. The team's success depends on more than individual talent. It depends on how those roles are structured, how cleanly players move between phases of play, and whether the side is built to attack or only to defend.

For years, the limits of procurement technology forced the function into a defensive formation. Think of the backfield: defenders and goalkeepers whose whole job is preventing bad outcomes. In procurement terms, that has meant:

• Goalkeeping against rogue requisitions and unauthorized spend
• Defending against late stakeholder engagement and compliance failures
• Enforcing process gates so every required step gets completed before the ball moves forward

This is no knock on the professionals playing those roles; they're doing exactly what a fragmented, manual, reactive system relegates them to. They spend their days chasing approvals, correcting data, and policing process adherence. Their tools demand it, even though it's nowhere near the highest use of their skills.

The result is a function held back from the value it could deliver, the value finance leaders and business stakeholders have always expected from it.

How orchestration AI shifts procurement to an offensive formation

AI procurement orchestration changes how the game gets played. When it handles the defensive work, validating data, routing workflows, holding the compliance line, connecting systems that don't talk to each other, procurement professionals are free to move up the pitch. 

And the freed-up time is real: 89% of leaders in our report say AI is a net productivity gain even after they account for correcting its mistakes, with 21% calling it a significant one.

So what does an offensive procurement formation look like?

Midfield: the strategic connector. Midfielders are the engine of the team, linking defense to attack, distributing the ball, creating chances. In procurement, that's the category manager who engages stakeholders before a need becomes a crisis, brings market intelligence and supplier insight to the table early, and shapes demand instead of simply fulfilling it.

Striker: the value creator. Strikers drive toward goal. In procurement, that's the strategic advisor who builds category strategies aligned to enterprise objectives and works suppliers proactively to spark innovation, lift performance, and tie supplier capability to the company's mission.

This is the work procurement professionals have always aspired to do. It's also the work CFOs, CPOs, and business leaders have always expected from procurement and rarely seen delivered consistently, because the team was too busy defending.

Rebuilding the squad: AI's impact on procurement talent and org design

The move from defensive to offensive procurement is a talent and organizational design story as much as a technology one. You can already see it in what teams are staffing for. The single most in-demand capability in our report is evaluating and fact-checking AI output (49%), ahead of managing AI compliance and risk and designing automated workflows. Someone still has to check the AI, and that someone is increasingly a strategic hire.

The recomposition shows up most clearly at the entry level. Among bystanders, 69% say junior roles are roughly the same as before; among builders, only 21% do. The leaders are actively reshaping early-career work.

CPOs who seize this inflection point will:

1. Redefine roles. Move people off process enforcement and toward stakeholder advisory, supplier development, and category strategy.
2. Invest in capability building. Equip teams with the commercial, analytical, and relationship skills a strategic advisor needs.
3. Retire the low-value work. Help team members see AI-driven automation as a release from tasks they were always overqualified to perform.
4. Become an employer of choice. Give every team member tools and processes that let them operate at the top of their capability, and attract the talent that will define procurement's next chapter.

There's a principle underneath all of this is that tools should work for people. For too long, procurement professionals have worked for their tools, compensating for system shortcomings through manual effort, workarounds, and sheer persistence. The next generation of procurement technology flips that relationship.

The CPO playbook for the AI transition

This is a rare window. The CPOs who resist the short-term temptation to simply cut headcount, and instead invest in repositioning their organizations, will build procurement functions that deliver value worth multiples of their cost.

Some leaders are already wiring this into how they hire. In our report, 7% of organizations now require a manager to justify why AI can't do a job before they're allowed to bring on a human. Whatever you make of the policy, the front-runners are already treating every hire as a capacity decision that AI gets a vote in.

Those teams will be built to:

• Engage stakeholders proactively, bringing solutions before the requisition lands
• Develop supplier relationships that drive innovation and performance improvement
• Deliver category strategies tied directly to business outcomes and enterprise objectives
• Earn a standing seat as a strategic partner to the business

The procurement organizations that make this shift use the AI transition as the catalyst to finally become the function they were always meant to be.

Procurement's AI future: lead the attack or defend the half

The pitch offered a useful truth on Sunday, which is that the best teams don't win by defending. Argentina held out through 90 goalless minutes, leaned on a World Cup final record 11 saves from their keeper, and bet everything on reaching penalties. They still lost to a Spain side that kept moving the ball forward until it found a way through. Winning teams build systems where every player, goalkeeper to striker, understands the role and is set up to contribute to the attack.

Procurement has spent too long pinned in its own half. Intake and orchestration AI is the substitution that finally lets the whole team move up the pitch.

Every CPO faces the same choice. The transformation is coming either way; the only open question is whether they lead it or spend the next few years defending against it.

The full picture, including how the builders are pulling away from the bystanders across ROI, hiring, and team design, is in our State of AI in Spend report.

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