Procurement’s traditional operating model is under pressure to evolve.

For years, Procurement and PTP teams have operated in suboptimal environment structures, with a disproportionate amount of time absorbed by transactional work, such as managing fragmented spend, onboarding suppliers, resolving exceptions and navigating processes that often require more effort than the purchase itself.

AI and orchestration are now creating the urgency to fundamentally rethink that model. CPOs are asking what work can be automated, which decisions can become more autonomous, and how procurement teams can become leaner, more strategic and more focused on value creation.

But AI alone won’t solve the operating model.

AI can accelerate decisions, automate tasks and surface insights. What AI cannot do is fix poorly designed buying channels or overcome processes that were never designed for the way organisations buy today. The real opportunity is therefore not simply to add AI to procurement, but to redesign the operating model around the work that genuinely needs procurement expertise while finding better ways to manage the transactional activity that doesn’t.

In 2026, the Procurement Leaders community explored how procurement operating models could evolve. In 2027, including at the inaugural Performance Forum at World Procurement Congress 2027, the conversation moves from ambition to execution: what does it actually take to build the new model?