The Procurement Interview: Etosha Thurman, SAP

Confidence in AI is high – with The Economist Impact study finding that nearly nine out of ten procurement professionals have faith in its potential.

However, a significant gap persists between optimism and execution. For many organisations, the challenge lies not in believing AI can transform procurement, but in building the strategic foundations to make that transformation real.

Etosha Thurman, Chief Marketing Officer for Finance & Spend Management at SAP, argues that confidence alone is not enough. What is missing, she explains, is the infrastructure to move from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide impact.

Bridging the strategy gap

The barriers to wider AI adoption in procurement are less about technology than about organisational readiness. Many enterprises lack the clear strategic direction, top-down vision and change management capabilities needed to scale AI initiatives beyond the experimental phase.

"The pressure to leverage AI is incredibly high, but for many organisations the strategic direction, top-down vision and clear expectations simply are not there," Etosha says. 

"The Economist Impact study shows confidence in AI's potential, but confidence does not equal readiness. What is missing is a clear, consistent AI strategy paired with the investment and change management needed to turn isolated pilots into real transformation."

SAP's response focuses on embedding intelligence directly into core business workflows, rather than treating AI as a separate capability. The next generation of SAP Ariba solutions, announced at SAP Spend Connect Live 2025, for source-to-pay incorporates AI at the process level, automating routine tasks whilst elevating strategic work.

This approach aims to deliver improved efficiency, greater productivity and deeper insight through relevant business recommendations that accelerate decision-making and time to value.

"We have set a clear AI vision and are executing on it, so customers don't have to manage the pressure alone," Etosha says. 

"Our goal is to amplify the power of procurement and give organisations the clarity, capability and confidence to realise the full value of AI."

Resilience through predictive intelligence

As global supply chains face continuing volatility, the ability to anticipate and respond to disruption has become a competitive necessity. Next-generation SAP Ariba solutions address this challenge through embedded AI capabilities across the source-to-pay process, enabling organisations to predict risk, adapt sourcing strategies in real time and strengthen supply chain continuity.

Etosha emphasises that resilience in 2026 will depend on three critical capabilities: visibility, speed and the ability to anticipate change before it happens. Next-gen SAP Ariba brings these elements together, marking what she describes as "a major shift from operational management to true value delivery".

"Procurement cannot plan for every disruption, but it can prepare to respond," she explains. The result is faster decision-making, smarter sourcing and stronger supplier relationships that make global supply chains not only more efficient but fundamentally more resilient.

Amplifying human capability

The introduction of advanced AI features represents a significant evolution in how procurement teams work. SAP's forthcoming Sourcing Assistant will support multiple sourcing processes, including bid analysis, taking on the complex work of comparing supplier bids, summarising responses and highlighting optimal options in seconds.

For procurement teams, this translates into faster award cycles, more informed negotiations and the ability to pivot sourcing decisions with confidence when market conditions shift. Rather than replacing human judgement, these capabilities are designed to free teams from time-consuming analysis, allowing them to focus on strategy, supplier relationships and value creation.

"The next evolution of procurement is about amplifying human capability," Etosha adds. These features reflect SAP's broader Business AI vision – intelligence that is embedded, role-aware and designed to make work simpler and smarter. For procurement leaders, this means faster, better-informed decisions powered by AI that understands the unique context of their role and delivers actionable insights they can trust.

User experience as a driver of adoption

Technology capabilities mean little if users struggle to access them. SAP Ariba's redesigned interfaces and guided workflows address this challenge directly, making procurement simpler, faster and more intuitive for every user.

The cleaner interface and guided workflows help teams complete work with less friction, improving compliance while freeing time for higher-value activities.

Early customer feedback has been extremely positive, with users praising the intuitive design, connected experience and modern aesthetic – particularly the enhanced Contracts user experience and streamlined launchpad.

This focus on user experience proves critical in driving adoption rates and ensuring that AI capabilities actually get used in daily work.

Proactive compliance and risk management

Intelligent contracting capabilities demonstrate how AI can fundamentally reshape contract management. By automatically extracting key information, identifying terms and obligations and flagging potential compliance risks, the technology gives procurement and legal teams real-time visibility into exposure before issues materialise.

Etosha envisages this shift moving contract management from a reactive to a proactive discipline, where assurance and governance are built into every step.

For SAP customers, it establishes a new benchmark for consistency and transparency, helping to strengthen trust across supplier networks, reduce manual oversight and ensure compliance standards evolve alongside changing regulations and business priorities.

Workforce agility as a competitive advantage

Recent AI enhancements in SAP Fieldglass illustrate the broader potential of intelligent spend management.

By analysing role descriptions and skills data to match talent in half the usual time, the platform enables organisations to move from managing external labour as a cost to harnessing it as a strategic capability.

This gives procurement and HR teams a faster, more efficient and accurate way to close skills gaps and strengthen workforce agility.

The lesson extends across SAP's broader spend management portfolio, where visibility, integration and intelligence help customers manage spend, suppliers and talent with greater agility and confidence.

With procurement now actively supporting workforce transformation, teams can leverage AI to unify data and insights, gaining the visibility and predictability to treat talent and spend as strategic assets that drive growth and resilience.

Quantifying the opportunity

Looking ahead to 2026, SAP's AI innovations target outcomes that extend well beyond cost reduction. Early estimates suggest the potential for substantial productivity gains across multiple functions: up to 60% efficiency gains in category management, 70% reduction in time to create RFPs, 85% faster job description creation and up to 50% faster execution of search and transactional tasks.

Additional benefits include a 40% reduction in invoice reprocessing effort, 50% reduction in content creation costs with AI-assisted intelligent listings and 50% improved sales productivity for answering supplier discovery postings.

These figures represent more than operational efficiency. In times of uncertainty, spend remains one of the few levers companies can actively control. SAP's embedded AI capabilities across SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP Business Network and SAP Fieldglass enable leaders to strengthen resilience, advance sustainability goals and unlock new value across the enterprise.

"Across procurement, supplier collaboration, travel and workforce management, SAP's vision for AI is to extend human capability," Etosha concludes. 

"We see a future where intelligence is built into the flow of work, freeing people to innovate, collaborate and create value in new ways. That is the promise of the next generation of spend management, where connection and context turn uncertainty into opportunity."

As procurement continues its evolution from back-office function to strategic value driver, the organisations that succeed will be those that bridge the gap between AI confidence and AI readiness – transforming isolated capabilities into integrated intelligence that runs through every aspect of spend management.