DPW New York: Axiom on the Future of Autonomic Sourcing

At DPW New York 2026, which took place on 3-4 June, some of procurement's most influential leaders and businesses gathered with a firm eye on the future. 

The theme of the event was 'RECODE', a single word focused solely on what comes next for the function and its teams. Over the two days, those gathered discussed the shift from AI adoption to meaningful and strategic execution. They affirmed that, over the next decade, competitive advantage will not come from whether or how companies adopt AI, but from how the redesign their operating models and organisational structures around it. 

For procurement that means rethinking how decisions are made, how work is structured and how humans and machines will collaborate at scale. 

The overriding sentiment at the end of the event was that this is a moment to act, to harness innovative technologies and new strategies and to build an AI blueprint for the future. 

Procurement Magazine discussed this and more with Alistair Cane, Co-founder and Director of Axiom, a next-gen platform that allows enterprise organisations to automate tail spend and transform the experience for buyers, suppliers and procurement. 

He told us how the company has grown from its initial work with pharmaceutical giant Roche, how its innovative technology is enhancing the work of global procurement professionals, and why sourcing as simple as breathing may well be the future. 

Given your 30 years in procurement, what core insights led to the genesis of Axiom in 2020?

We spent those 30 years working with big enterprise organisations, meaning we understood the complexity and challenges they faced. 

Many people think of an enterprise organisation as a single monolithic entity. Actually, when you get inside these businesses, they are massively complex, with different divisions and departments. That’s what Axiom was created to address and solve.

How does Axiom do that? 

About 18 months ago, we realised we had the ability to completely automate tail spend. This is something people have been trying to do for years, but no one has really been able to achieve it.

That mainly comes back to how people define the problem. People will say tail spend is a single issue, but you can't solve it until you get under the skin of what it really means. 

It has multiple component parts that sit alongside different segments of the business, all of which have different requirements. Until you can answer all of those challenges effectively within a single platform, you haven't tackled it. That’s what Axiom does.

What does your tagline of "sourcing as simple as breathing" look like in practice?

While we focus heavily on driving efficiency for procurement, we also look at it from the perspective of the stakeholder outside of procurement – the buyer who just wants to get on with their actual day job. 

They want a platform they don't have to think about. Our view of the landscape right now is that while every technology company here is talking about AI agents and autonomous systems, the next generation will move toward platforms that truly understand the transactions flowing through them, allowing them to self-regulate and self-adjust. 

We’re calling that next-generation autonomic sourcing very deliberately. It’s like the autonomic nervous system that controls the rate you breathe or your heart beats without you having to consciously think about it. 

That's where our platform is moving – it listens to signals across every single transaction, recognises what's happening and adjusts. Initially, this happens with procurement oversight, but ultimately, procurement teams will learn to trust the platform and let it operate on its own.

How does autonomic sourcing change a procurement professional’s day to day job?

On a practical level, a procurement professional will come into the office in the morning, log on and see that the platform has already generated a number of insights based on recent activity. 

They will have the opportunity to review the evidence behind those insights in a very simple way, and the platform will then put forward a recommendation, such as starting an RFQ or taking a specific action. 

The procurement professional just clicks "proceed," and the platform takes over.

Right now, procurement is immediately confronted with raw data and complex dashboards, meaning they have to do all that digging and analysis themselves. 

In the future, the platform will do that heavy lifting for them, allowing them to step into the role of the controller. It really becomes as simple as breathing.

In essence, it’s rethinking how procurement works, isn’t it?

I think so. Testing is definitely yesterday's news. There are technologies here that are working beautifully and delivering real results right now.

But our approach is: ‘Okay, that's fantastic. Now, what's next? How do we make the technology do even more so procurement can focus where they are genuinely needed?’.

That is the ultimate goal of autonomic sourcing is preventing valuable resources from being bogged down by administrative, analysis-heavy tasks

We get to work with massive enterprise organisations, including some of the world's most recognised brands and we see a very bright future ahead. The platform is industry-agnostic, so we aren't restricted to any single sector.

We have two parallel directions of travel: first, we will keep aggressively developing the technology, and second, we are scaling the business. However, it's not growth at all costs; we are being very controlled. For every single client we onboard, we build out a dedicated five-year development plan because we truly love partnering with them to solve their challenges.