Beroe & Kearney: Making Procurement Continuously Competitive

Beroe, a global leader in procurement intelligence, and Kearney, the global management consulting firm, today announced the launch of Beroe MAX powered by Kearney, an AI-native, always-on decision engine designed to make procurement continuously competitive.

Launched from the main stage at DPW NYC, MAX is designed to close the gap between intelligence and decisive action, providing a unified view across cost, risk and ESG.

Navigating the modern CPO challenge

The CPO’s responsibilities have outpaced the traditional procurement operating model. Despite flat or shrinking resources over the past five years, leaders must now manage resilience, ESG compliance, tariff fluctuations and margin protection. This shift creates three core challenges:

• Velocity: Supply markets move in hours, not quarters, yet category strategies update infrequently.
• Fragmentation: The profusion of procuretech in recent years has armed procurement teams with tools that provide insights and others that help execute, without a connection.
• The Missing Link: What has been missing is an intelligent system that bridges the two.

Vel Dhinagaravel, Founder and CEO, Beroe, says: “The processes procurement relies on today were built for a world that no longer exists. Teams have always had access to market data, but what they have lacked is a system that connects that data to their specific spend, applies procurement logic and tells them where to act, continuously.

“MAX puts that capability into the hands of every category manager, not just the ones in the room with a consultant, enabling decisions and outcomes that were previously impossible.”

Bridging the gap with agentic AI

MAX bridges this gap. Operating as a connecting layer between data and execution, the platform combines agentic AI with Beroe’s global market intelligence and Kearney’s proprietary consulting frameworks.

By layering this data over a company’s unique spend, contracts and supplier base, MAX delivers real-time, contextual recommendations. Whether it’s a sudden tariff, a commodity price spike or a shift in supplier risk, MAX automatically flags the decisions that need immediate attention.

Developed through a multi-year partnership between Kearney and Beroe, MAX was shaped alongside a Strategic Advisory Council of 13 global procurement organisations. Managing some of the world's most complex supply chains, these leaders validated the platform's real-world application to ensure MAX solves actual operational challenges, not just theoretical ones.

Shifting from episodic to continuous

Suketu Gandhi, Co-leader of Global Strategic Operations, Kearney, adds: “CPOs are being asked to deliver competitive advantage in markets that move in hours, not quarters. MAX gives procurement leaders the real-time visibility and prioritised recommendations they need to anticipate shifts, focus where it matters and move decisively.

“This is not a faster version of the function procurement has always been. It is a different function, one that stops waiting to be asked. It moves from responding to anticipating, from episodic to continuous. That is what it means to compete.”

A CPO member of the Strategic Advisory Council, says: “Today, category managers are forced to be selective; focusing on the top 20% of spend, the most strategic suppliers, and the categories with the largest potential savings. Smaller opportunities go unrecognised because the analytical cost outweighs the return. MAX changes the economics of that decision. Category managers can now cover every supplier, every category, every day.”