Patrik Spalt: Making Procurement More People-Centric

The future of procurement is paradoxically more human because of the rise of the machines.

Patrik Spalt, Director and Head of Digital Procurement at PwC, explores the total transformation of reporting, analytics and stakeholder management. Patrik spoke to Procurement Magazine at Ivalua NOW 2026, in Pairs.

He broke down how AI is removing the manual burden of "number crunching," detailing how this allows procurement teams to shift from administrative back-office functions to strategic, people-centric leaders of the enterprise.

Tell me a little bit about PwC and what you do.

PwC is a professional services firm operating in three main areas: Assurance, Tax and Legal Services and Consulting. Our overarching goal is to create trust in society by helping organisations navigate the various challenges they face today.

Talk me through your partnership with Ivalua, how it began and what it means to PwC?

We collaborate with Ivalua to create value in procurement using technology. The core of our partnership involves working together on client projects to ensure we build and implement the specific solutions that offer the best fit for each client.

How do you see AI changing the procurement landscape?

If you look at how reporting and analytics are handled today, depending on the size of the company, you might have anywhere from two to 50 people crunching numbers and creating reports for management to interpret.

To a large extent, this will be automated by AI. You will be able to press a button and the AI will tell you exactly how spend has changed in a specific region and the reasons behind it. This allows those people to stop crunching numbers and start focusing on value-adding tasks.

How will this change the procurement team function and affect the people within it?

It’s clear that repetitive and administrative tasks will eventually be handled by automation. The more interesting question is what new capabilities will procurement teams gain.

The future of the function is more about people and less about managing processes. Procurement professionals will act as the "spider in the web," connecting stakeholders, understanding their needs and connecting dots from the supplier to the customer.

Key Shifts:

• People-Centric: A move away from administrative work toward a relationship-based business.

• Strategic Focus: Teams will finally have the time to discuss strategic value creation, something that is often lacking today because everyone is too busy with manual tasks.