Everything from Amazon Business Exchange's Opening Keynote

At Amazon Business Exchange 2026, leaders from across Europe came together at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to discuss the future of procurement.

The opening keynotes looked at the work Amazon Business has completed since its last exchange in 2025 and provided an insight into what is coming next for the technology giants.

Storme Martin, Head of Marketing, UK & EU CPS at Amazon, welcomed people to the opening session. He said it was his honour to bring together “many forward thinking procurement professionals from different industries to share ideas and drive innovation.

"The Amazon Business Exchange was set up with one simple but powerful vision, to bring people together and create a space to share experiences, success stories and to learn from each other.”

The shift to agentic AI

Following on from Storme was Céline Vuillequez, VP, Amazon Business Europe. During her opening keynote, Céline spoke about the importance of AI and supply chain resilience in procurement today – pointing towards research which suggests that while many companies are exploring the use of AI in their operations, many are finding implementation challenges.

She pointed towards the work of Amazon Business, which is serving 8 million customer organisations across the world – all of which want speed, convenience and choice. Amazon Business is helping those people connect to a number of e-procurement systems, with Amazon supporting over 1.5 million jobs across Europe.

Céline talked about how Amazon Business has supported digital transformation of procurement at the likes of Cargill and Sony Pictures Entertainment, and how advanced technology, AI and centralised systems drive efficiency, cost savings and sustainability. This is being driven by Agentic AI.

"Agentic AI is moving procurement from systems that advise to systems that act," Celine said.

"Better tools in the hands of the people already doing the work, that is what we mean by empowering your buyers to make better decisions with a seamless experience. The goal isn't just to move faster; every day that we save creates capacity for our people to focus on higher value work, strengthen relationships, and better support the businesses.

Cargill utilised Amazon Business analytics and guided buying to centralise visibility across 70 countries. Similarly, Sony Pictures Entertainment reduced contract cycles by 50% and cut sourcing timelines down to an eight-week average through digital optimisation.

The University of Glasgow consolidated over 90 individual accounts into one central Amazon Business account. This move nearly tripled their transactions and allowed them to actively track their sustainability commitments using Climate Pledge Friendly certifications.

"That is what transformation looks like, not a single product feature, but a complete shift in how an institution manages resources and creates value," Celine added.

Beyond digitisation: Reimagining the process

Following Céline was Rochelle Seguss, Director of Technology at Amazon Business, who looked at the state of AI in procurement and new and improved Amazon Business features.

The core argument is that procurement technology has moved beyond simple digitisation, where paper became digital and spreadsheets became dashboards, into a fundamentally new era of AI-driven process reimagination. The critical distinction she drew is between passive AI (recommendations, summaries) and Agentic AI: systems that can set goals, create plans and execute them autonomously, with human oversight layered in wherever appropriate.

Rochelle said: "Digitisation was primarily about moving existing processes online. What we're doing now is fundamentally different. We're no longer digitising the same processes, we're re-imagining them."

Rochelle noted that while 80% of procurement executives see AI as the most transformational trend of the next five years, only a few organisations have achieved widespread deployment,  and closing that gap is where competitive advantage lies.

Three Amazon Business launches were highlighted:

• Amazon Quick: an AI assistant available from 30th June, with eligible Prime Business members (Basic, Small, Medium and Unlimited plans) receiving 20% off the Quick Plus plan.
• Spend Visibility (reimagined): near real-time purchasing analytics with 24 months of historical data - up from 12 months - giving teams the depth they need to identify seasonal trends 
• Spend Anomaly Monitoring (updated): expanded access to finance and group administrator roles - and weekly digest alerts keep the right people alerted 

Rochelle closed by painting a picture of procurement in five years: largely autonomous routine purchasing, continuously AI-updated category strategies and the procurement function repositioned as a genuine strategic growth driver.

Rochelle added: "The organisations that have invested in clean data, integrated systems, and clear governance are going to be able to deploy AI quickly and really start capturing that value. If you haven't already, start now. Identify one high-value, bounded use case and run it at real scale with real data."

The strategic human touch

Following her keynote, the opening session was rounded up with a panel, moderated by Rochelle. She was joined by Valeriia Basko, Director, Procurement Technology and Enablement at Liberty Global, and Donna Osiri, CPO at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The two procurement leaders discussed how they are leveraging technology to drive efficiency, reduce costs and enable data-driven decisions. They talked about how they have implemented successful digital transformation initiatives which have modernised operations and delivered real business outcomes.

Both companies operate in very different but equally complex environments. Sony Pictures sources everything from Zebras and period furniture for productions to corporate legal and security services. Liberty Global spans telecoms, power stations, data centres and even Formula 1, across multiple markets each with their own processes, meaning "standardisation" often produces 20 different versions of the standard.

Both panellists agreed the foundation comes first, clean data, streamlined processes and people with the right mindset. Donna stressed that without this, AI simply produces "very great looking garbage." Valeriia highlighted orchestration as Liberty Global's first technology priority, as it sits as a layer on top of existing systems without requiring disruptive migrations.

Results achieved:

• Sony Pictures cut RFP timelines from an 8-week average, and contract cycles from an average of 50 days to 25 days
• Liberty Global reduced contract cycle times by 2.5 to 3 times, with many business requests now flowing through a structured procurement front door
• AI-assisted sourcing requirements mean more junior staff can operate effectively without deep expertise

Donna believes that procurement should be transparent so stakeholders can track progress themselves, reducing the endless ‘where is this?’ chasing and freeing up the team for strategic work: "We call it the pizza tracker. You get to see when your pizza is made, when it's about to be delivered, and you know when it's going to be hot and ready in your hands. Do that with procurement, and you create less cycle time, because they're not calling you asking 'where is this?'”

Both agreed that strategic decision-making, final supplier awards, contract risk interpretation and, in Sony's case, creative ideation are firmly human territory. AI is a thought partner and an enabler, not the decision-maker. Valeriia noted her teams ranked AI highly for sourcing requirements creation, but ranked automated award decisions poorly, the organisation simply isn't ready to cede that call to a machine.

Valeriia added: "It's not about antagonising suppliers just because of price. We need to switch relationships into a partnership perspective,  it should be win-win in the end."

Both organisations are moving procurement from a reactive, cost-control function to a proactive business partner, anticipating needs, developing supplier relationships as genuine partnerships and advising stakeholders on what they need, not just what they asked for.