Modern procurement is being rewritten in real time: cost savings still matter, but they are no longer the defining measure of success or even the most interesting part of the conversation. In London, ahead of the start of the World Procurement Congress, a group of senior procurement leaders explore what really defines impact today: new KPIs, a different posture within the business and with Financial leadership, AI-enabled operating models, and a more deliberate leadership playbook for a function in transition. These are the hard, structural questions at the heart of modern procurement.
Around the table, savings was treated as an entry ticket, not the full strategy. The metrics that truly animated people were speed, stakeholder experience, supply continuity, and supplier-led innovation. If procurement processes slow down onboarding or third-party risk checks to the point that they hinder go-to-market, no amount of negotiated unit-price reduction can compensate. In that context, “speed” becomes a primary KPI rather than a secondary efficiency measure.
Leaders also described building broader scorecards: the number and proximity of new vendors brought into tenders, supplier NPS to capture how easy or difficult it is to work with the organization, internal NPS to gauge the experience of requisitioners, and resilience indicators such as diversification away from single-source suppliers. These measures are more complex than a single savings line, but they reflect what the business actually feels: can it move fast, work with the right partners, and trust that the supplier base can weather shocks.
Beneath the KPI shift sits a deeper identity shift, with many leaders sharing the decisive move away from a policing posture and into a role as a commercial and growth partner to the business. This has required reframing conversations from “price off” to return on investment and reinvestment: not “we saved you this amount,” but “here is the value we have created and the choices it enables.”
Some have gone as far as removing savings as a formal functional KPI, particularly where traditional savings figures lacked credibility with finance, or distorted behaviour. In those cases, letting go of the savings target initially created what one leader described as “a minor identity crisis” for team members whose careers were built around year-on-year savings goals. Yet it also unlocked richer discussions about specifications, value, and risk, because stakeholders no longer felt procurement was there to claw back budget. The focus shifted to improving the return on every dollar the business already plans to spend.
When the conversation turned to AI, it was not framed as a buzzword exercise or headcount discussion, rather the aspiration was for an “80/80” model: a leaner procurement organization that nonetheless covers far more spend and activity through digitalization and self-service. Achieving this requires unglamorous foundations: clean data, standardized processes, clearly defined use cases, but the intent is to change the mix of human work, not simply automate existing tasks.
Leaders described rolling out pilots across their teams, running live use-case hackathons with finance and procurement together, and consciously distinguishing between AI for personal productivity and AI for true skill augmentation. Drafting an RFP, summarizing supplier surveys, or generating first-pass analysis are now table stakes. The next frontier is using AI to propose stronger category strategies, richer scenario modelling, and more nuanced risk assessments. The value is then in redeploying human time into areas AI cannot reach: building supplier relationships, co-creating innovation, and navigating the organizational politics of change.
Perhaps the most candid part of the discussion centered on the relationship with finance teams. Many CFOs remain skeptical of traditional savings figures that cannot be clearly traced into the P&L. Leaders acknowledged that while savings can be a useful and important internal management metric, it is not the language that earns trust in the boardroom. The more productive question has become: what should the financials measure, and how can procurement make its impact visible in the income statement and balance sheet?
That shift is shaping a new leadership playbook where executives are mapping end-to-end processes to expose and eliminate friction, using data as both carrot and stick, and being unapologetic about the scale of transformation required. At the same time, they are acutely aware of change fatigue and of the personal transitions their teams are navigating as legacy metrics and operating models are dismantled. Leadership now requires creating clarity on what impact looks like in a new world, helping people build the skills to operate in an AI-enabled, growth-focused function, and ensuring that procurement’s voice in the C-suite is grounded in metrics that truly matter to the enterprise.
The emerging picture is of a function that is more commercial, more data-driven, and more outward-facing than ever before. Leaders shaping that evolution are raising the standard for what procurement can and should deliver for their enterprises.
As procurement leaders redefine success around speed, resilience, stakeholder experience, and enterprise value creation, the operating model itself must evolve alongside those ambitions. Explore the findings from the our 2026 Procurement Orchestration Study with The Hackett Group® to see how leading organizations are redesigning procurement to enable faster decisions, stronger cross-functional alignment, and AI-enabled execution at scale.
By Kate Jeter, Director of Global Field Marketing
Kate Jeter is a strategic B2B procurement tech marketing leader 25+ years of experience specializing in field marketing, events, and demand generation for SaaS and enterprise platforms. Before ORO, she was the Head of Marketing, Community, and Growth at ProcureTech. She is an expert in aligning marketing and sales for revenue acceleration, pipeline growth, and global brand positioning.