Humana builds an AI-enabled procurement operating model

Recently Humana’s CPO Bryan Miller joined Zip on stage at DPW and Dickson Senkunda, Associate Director, Systems Analysis & Optimization and Haley Poff, Procurement Program Delivery Lead, presented at Zip’s annual AI Summit, where they shared their procurement transformation.

Challenge

Humana is one of the largest health insurance and healthcare services companies in the country, with over 17 million medical members, 67,000 employees, and roughly $6 billion in annual indirect spend. Being in the healthcare field means a lot more regulatory compliance that needs to be followed, with clinical, operational, regulatory, financial, and cyber risk being managed in parallel every day.

Humana's procurement organization was operating in a more reactionary manner. Requests came through email, tickets, and informal channels, making it nearly impossible to track, govern, or influence spend before decisions were already made. An incumbent platform built in-house proved difficult to scale, and there was no solid system to provide real-time visibility across spend. Stakeholders on the intake side had no self-service, transparency, or easy way to check status without picking up the phone.

At the same time, when Humana's leadership issued a company-wide AI mandate, investment was toward more front-end business, including member experience, primary care, and pharmacy. IT wasn't incentivized to prioritize AI tooling for procurement, meaning the team would have to advocate for itself with a credible solution that could work alongside Humana's regulatory needs.

Solution

Rather than pitching Zip as a procurement tool, Bryan and procurement leadership positioned it as a single front door that would bring control to how spend demand enters the enterprise. The argument was that fragmented intake wasn't neutral; it was accumulating technical debt and governance gaps with real cost. That shift moved the conversation from "why fund procurement" to "why leave this problem unsolved,” with leadership approving the investment.

On the implementation side, Dickson and Haley led the Humana team through a six-month build, standing up Zip alongside Globality for autonomous sourcing and integrating with Oracle ERP on an aggressive timeline. The team conducted extensive discovery sessions across the organization, documenting stakeholder pain points and current workflows before configuration began. The CPO's directive shaped the entire effort: every customer has a voice in this transformation.

Zip provided the foundation Humana needed, including a standardized intake process, real-time visibility for stakeholders to self-serve, and clean data flowing across the procurement lifecycle. Critically, the regulated environment proved clarifying rather than limiting: it forced precise architectural decisions and non-negotiable design constraints that made the system more durable from the start.

Results

Humana went live with Zip this past June. With orchestration in place, the team now has the infrastructure to embed AI at the point of intake, where demand is first expressed and decisions get shaped.

The roadmap ahead reflects that foundation, and Humana is already scoping custom agents, including an executive summaries agent for easier routing and reporting, and an enhanced intake validation agent to capture technology purchases that business users incorrectly categorize. Longer-term plans include a direct Oracle connection for streamlined AP processes, automated vendor setup with OFAC and IRS compliance checks, and Zip-generated requisitions to reduce manual downstream work.

The broader vision is AI that feels invisible, guiding stakeholders toward compliant behavior rather than catching exceptions after the fact. Policy stops living in documents and starts living in the system. For Humana, that's not just a technology upgrade, it's a fundamental redesign of how procurement operates, with Zip helping orchestrate.