Deloitte Global CPO Survey: How AI is Driving Transformation

As technological advancements reshape the way in which businesses operate, procurement teams find themselves at a crossroads – does investing in digital and AI tools represent the best chance of finding success, and how can a procurement team drive success?

The 2025 Deloitte Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey has shown that despite the incredible innovation around AI, there is still a huge need for there to be a human in the loop to maximise these new technologies – with research indicating a strong correlation between the combination of technology and talent competence, and better enterprise performance.

One of those people who took part in the survey said: "Procurement is used to being asked to do more with less, but with increased pressure from an inflationary global market and an emerging trade war, those aims have become harder to achieve."

How Gen AI is revolutionising procurement

With tools like large language models (LLMs) to advanced chatbots, Gen AI has become a driving force across the business landscape. With tools like LLMs being used to create powerful AI agents, built with memory, the ability to reason and the ability to operate tools such as web searches – all with the capabilities to transform procurement.

But given this drive, businesses must be digitally literate across all of their procurement team, with the essentials being:

• Developing and applying skills and knowledge for core processes
• Understanding how technology can automate and augment traditional procurement processes and roles in new ways
• Identifying where and how to best combine human talent and digital skills into new capabilities for knowledge management and agentic workflows
• Keeping up with the latest developments in technology

The ROI: making returns on digital investments

Investment into talent as well as using the digital tools used to harness these benefits, such as driving performance improvements, are key. The CPO survey shows that those organisations betting big in the right way for their businesses are outperforming followers across all procurement performance metrics.

With respondents highlighting superior results in the following vital areas:

• Cost savings (96% exceeded/met plan vs. 80% of followers)
• Cost avoidance (94% exceeded/met plan vs. 75% of followers)
• Internal stakeholder satisfaction (84% exceeded/met plan vs. 59% of followers)
• Supplier performance (84% exceeded/met plan vs. 59% of followers)
• Innovation enablement (56% exceeded/met plan vs. 24% of followers)

Protecting performance amidst volatility

Procurement teams face an unprecedented amount of challenges. From rising cost pressure, geopolitical complexity, regulatory compliance issues and more, effective risk mitigation strategies have become increasingly important for CPOs given their responsibilities to help the enterprise optimise operational and financial performance.​​​​​​​

These strategic investments are proving successful, as organisations leading in digital transformation consistently outperform others in every key metric—from cost savings and stakeholder engagement to risk management. Their strong digital literacy and adept use of emerging technologies—especially Gen AI, advanced analytics and agentic capabilities—translate into tangible returns.

For instance, Digital Masters achieved an average 2.8x return on Gen AI investments, far outpacing Followers, who saw only a 1.6x return.

Deloitte's report offers Chief Procurement Officers a clear roadmap for accelerating their transformation into agents of change. By following its guidance, CPOs can empower their organisations to safely harness the opportunities of increasingly digital supply markets and redirect valuable resources towards more strategic, high-value initiatives.

Procurement stands at a pivotal moment, presenting Chief Procurement Officers with a critical choice. Organisations that invest in digital capabilities—particularly Gen AI and other emerging technologies—whilst also transforming their workforce to embrace digital ways of working, are already seeing tangible returns. As external challenges accelerate, investments in digital tools and talent have become more essential than ever for organisations aiming to thrive.

These agents of change do more than just reduce costs and boost operational efficiency; they create measurable value and help advance broader strategic goals. However, this is only possible through the careful integration of technology, talent and process transformation.

The report concludes by asking CPOs a series of key questions which can help leaders to reposition themselves as the agents of change:

1. What digital transformation initiatives are successfully deployed, in progress, or planned for the next 12 months to improve your procurement function's digital capabilities?
   
   
2. What automation tools are you using to manage workload volatility and focus on strategic areas rather than operational or transactional tasks?
   
   
3. What is your overall talent strategy to attract, upskill and retain professionals with both next-gen technical skills and core procurement competencies?
   
   
4. How are you leveraging technology to integrate strategic suppliers with your processes to gain synergy?
   
   
5. Have you identified high-value use cases for GenAI in your procurement function? Consider defining two to three strong digital use cases if you have not already (start small, act fast, think big).
   
   
6. For GenAI deployments already under way, what KPIs are you monitoring to measure impact?
   
   
7. What barriers do you foresee in implementing GenAI within your organisation, both internally and externally?
   
   
8. What governance model have you established for seamless implementation of GenAI and next-gen technologies?

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