How a 125-year-old global business is using orchestration, data, and AI to redesign procurement as a strategic engine for innovation, speed, and compliance.
The next wave of enterprise transformation will be won in the invisible layers of how work gets done, not in the interfaces organizations build on top. As leaders quietly redesign the flows between people, data, and systems, organizations are creating leverage that no single app, dashboard, or point solution can match.
Procurement is one of the clearest testing grounds for this shift, sitting at the intersection of growth, risk, and operational efficiency, yet in many organizations, processes are a maze of tools, approvals, and exceptions that business users must independently navigate. The real opportunity is to flip that experience: making procurement nearly invisible in the day-to-day, while delivering a tremendous impact on innovation, speed, and compliance that is impossible to ignore.
This is the journey that British American Tobacco has embarked on, as the 125-year-old global business reinvents itself beyond tobacco. Rather than procurement functioning as a transactional gatekeeper, they are reinventing the function into an orchestrator of new categories, new suppliers, and new revenue streams. As Eduardo Chrispim, Head of Procurement Excellence, described, the ambition was simple to state but far more difficult to execute: create a buying experience that feels effortless for users, and a backbone of data, processes, and technology that is anything but simple.
From High-Touch Gatekeeper to Invisible Growth Engine
BAT’s starting point will feel familiar to many large enterprises. Over time, the ecosystem of systems, suppliers, and processes has grown increasingly complex; even for procurement professionals, let alone business users. The team found themselves spending a disproportionate amount of time “in the tail”: many suppliers, low individual spend, and a great deal of hand-holding on relatively low-value purchases.
As Hamish McKechnie-Sharma, VP of European Implementation for ORO observed, when 80% of suppliers account for just 20% of spend, treating every transaction like a bespoke process is simply not sustainable. At BAT, the ambition was to flip that equation: move procurement away from high-touch transactional activity towards a strategic, value-add role focused on innovation, risk, and growth. In order to achieve this, the team needed to unlock time, and to simplify the experience without losing control.
Orchestration Starts with Data and Ownership
Like many digital transformation journeys, the real work began not with shiny AI features, but with data. BAT had multiple data sources, inconsistent structures, regional variations, and a great deal of undocumented ‘muscle memory’ guiding buying channels. Before they could orchestrate anything, they first needed to assign ownership.
Eduardo described a key mindset shift: “We realized we didn’t just have a data problem, we had an ownership problem. Until someone owns the buying channels, the preferred supplier lists, and the rules, AI would only automate bad decisions faster.” By defining clear ownership for channels, master data, and policy logic, BAT created the conditions for orchestration to deliver value consistently over time.
This did not mean waiting for perfect data, but rather working within boundaries: focusing on core buying channels first, aiming to cover the majority of use cases, and using each iteration to highlight gaps and improve. Across the organization, the message was clear: if you wait until everything is clean and completely harmonized, you will never start.
Designing a Single Front Door that Works for All Users
The most visible change for BAT’s internal stakeholders was the creation of a single front door for procurement. Previously, the source-to-pay platform assumed that users understood cost centers, category taxonomies, and the appropriate workflow for each purchasing scenario. Frequency buyers could manage, but infrequent users were often lost in a maze of tools and approval paths.
Leveraging orchestration and AI, the new model hides complexity, allowing users to describe what they need in their own words, with the system guiding them to the right channel, supplier, or catalogue, while embedding the necessary rules and guardrails in the background. As Eduardo explained, “We wanted someone to describe what they need in plain language, and let the system worry about categories, cost centers, and workflows.”
This shift has changed how the business user perceives procurement; rather than being seen as a bottleneck or rigid set of processes to navigate, procurement becomes a guided experience that feels intuitive, while at the same time delivering speed, efficiency, and compliance by design. It moves the organization closer to the idea of “procurement without procurement,” where the function sets the stage and the system does the heavy lifting, freeing experts to focus on more strategic work.
Change Management as a Community Sport
Technology alone does not deliver this kind of transformation, and BAT treated change management as a community endeavor, not a one-off comms campaign. Building a network of change agents across geographies and categories, these leaders act as local advocates, sounding boards, and sources of feedback.
Tailoring the value proposition to different groups was also a key to transformation success; frequent buyers faced significant change in day-to-day workflows, while infrequent buyers wanted reassurance that the system would simply “work” without requiring deep procurement knowledge. Internal awareness campaigns, training, SharePoint hubs, internal digital campaigns, and visible sponsorship from senior leaders all played a role in normalizing new ways of working.
Reflecting on the BAT journey, Hamish noted that the technology was, in many ways, the easy part: “The hard part was winning over the people who use it every day and turning them into advocates, not critics.” Investing in conversations, champions, and culture, BAT increased adoption and ensured the orchestration layer became embedded in how the business operates.
From Workflows to Agents: Laying the Groundwork for the Next Wave of AI
Underpinning all of this is a clear view of where procurement is heading next. Orchestration is not the end state; it is the foundation for a more agentic, AI-driven future. Eduardo and Hamish offer a practical distinction: workflows define the agreed path, while agents will use live data to decide how to best navigate that path in real time.
In that sense, orchestration becomes the connective tissue that allows agents to operate safely and effectively. Picture an AI agent that can spot a supplier risk issue, alert the category manager, and proactively suggest alternative suppliers based on current contracts, performance data, and risk indicators. That vision depends on structured data, clear ownership, and well-designed workflows; all areas where BAT has laid the groundwork.
Crucially, BAT’s approach to agents mirrors their approach to orchestration: do not wait for perfect data. Instead, define a bounded pilot; perhaps a single geography or category; and prove the value, using that learning to improve data quality and scale. As Eduardo framed it, if you wait to be “technology ready,” you may never start. The journey is what makes you ready.
Why this Matters Beyond Procurement
For digital transformation leaders beyond procurement, BAT’s story is a reminder that the most impactful use cases for AI and automation often start with clear problems, not technology shopping lists. BAT anchored their efforts in a tangible set of goals:
- Simplify the user experience
- Create capacity for strategic work
- Support a business model shift
- Build conditions for adding value
Invisible procurement, in this sense, is a useful metaphor for any function looking to modernise: design the experience so that complexity is hidden from the user, but ensure that ownership, governance, and data foundations are robust behind the scenes. When those pieces come together, AI and orchestration stop being buzzwords and start to become everyday infrastructure for how work gets done.
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By Kate Jeter, Director of Global Field Marketing
Kate Jeter is a strategic B2B procurement tech marketing leader with 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.