How AI Will Transform Procurement Into a Growth Engine

Procurement stands at a pivotal moment. With agentic AI maturing rapidly, the function is experiencing its most significant technological transformation since e-sourcing platforms emerged in the early 2000s.

Peter Wetherill, VP EMEA at Globality, believes 2026 will be the year procurement evolves from a cost-control function into a strategic business powerhouse.

Through faster processes, democratised access and intelligent risk management, AI is fundamentally reshaping how organisations buy goods and services – and what procurement professionals do with their time.

What's the single biggest change AI is bringing to procurement right now?

Speed. We're seeing complex RFPs that traditionally took 6-9 months now completed in approximately 25 days. For simpler purchases, we're talking hours or even minutes instead of days or weeks.

This acceleration is clearing backlogs and enabling our G2000 customers to competitively source 3-5 times the amount of spend they traditionally managed, with cost savings ranging from 10-30%.

How does democratising procurement access actually work?

Think about how booking travel has evolved into a guided, self-service process. Agentic AI is doing the same for enterprise procurement. An AI agent like Glo acts as an accessible team member with unlimited capacity, walking users through every step of complex buying processes.

As these tools mature, users will be able to set parameters like their preferred negotiating style and determine how much human intervention they want at each step.

Doesn't faster, more accessible procurement increase risk?

That's the beauty of agentic AI – it offers "freedom within fences." While delivering speed and access, it simultaneously enables procurement to establish rules and guardrails.

The system provides visibility to prevent shadow procurement and monitors changes to trade and compliance rules.

In these geopolitically uncertain times, AI-driven spend management can expose hidden geographic vendor concentrations and quantify dependency risks, like what percentage of spend is exposed to a specific region or currency.

What does increased ROI from procurement access actually look like?

When levers to boost savings and buying efficiency are intuitively available across the enterprise, it drives up EBITDA growth and frees up capital for top-line investment. With intelligent, agentic AI, enterprises no longer need strategic sourcing to serve as a throttle for controlling costs – it becomes an engine for growth.

If AI is doing the sourcing work, what will procurement professionals actually do?

Many procurement teams are under-resourced and overstretched. While AI handles the grunt work of data monitoring, synthesis, analysis and workflow, humans provide nuanced oversight and accountability.

They ensure materials and services are delivered on-time, to high quality standards – whether that's personally ensuring an engineer turns up in Liverpool – on a cold Monday night to fix a boiler or managing delicate cultural tensions in a strategic supplier relationship.

How will procurement roles evolve?

We'll see culture change and some disruption, certainly. But the procurement teams I work with who are successfully applying agentic AI are transitioning from being primarily transactional, reactive gatekeepers to becoming proactive, strategic business partners.

They're engaging stakeholders more effectively and directly contributing to enterprise growth and innovation. The shift is from task master to strategic growth driver.