By Kate Jeter, Head of Global Field Marketing
In a recent webinar, Lance Younger from ORO Labs, together with Chris Sawchuck from The Hackett Group and Scott Whelan from Pfizer, unpacked new benchmarking research on procurement orchestration, grounded in real-world experience rather than vendor hype. More than 100 organizations participated in the Hackett 2026 study, conducted between September and December 2025, with the findings analyzed and released in February. This research represents a new, parallel cut of Hackett’s signature Metrics study, focused specifically on organizations using procurement orchestration, enabling direct side-by-side comparison with non-adopters.
Across six core themes, the discussion connected hard performance data with the operational realities of modern procurement teams.
Hackett’s comparative analysis, contrasting organizations with and without orchestration, makes a compelling case for its impact. “We are seeing a 30% improvement in terms of efficiency, with the top-quartile performers at over 50%,” Sawchuck noted, adding that survey participants “attributed 25% of cost reduction and avoidance to the impact of their orchestration solution.” Velocity gains are equally striking: organizations with orchestration “were able to do a process such as source-to-contract in a much faster way, 20 days faster than those that did not have an orchestration platform in place.”
User experience emerged as a core driver behind this momentum. In orchestrated environments, 93% reported a positive experience compared with only 49% without an orchestration platform, as Younger noted, “99% of all enterprise organizations are considering and/or adopting some form of intake and orchestration,” now expanding beyond intake into risk and deeper workflows. Whelan summarized his perspective in that “It all starts with the user experience - you can build the perfect system and get nothing from it.”
The study compared metrics across six processes; intake, sourcing, contracting, supplier onboarding, risk, and purchase-to-pay, contrasting orchestration adopters and non-adopters - and ultimately showcasing where orchestration is reshaping how work flows through each. For intake, organizations with orchestration showed “high degrees of integration” across applications and data sources, which Hackett linked to better user experiences and automation outcomes.
On sourcing, Sawchuck highlighted improved source-to-contract cycle times as “one of the biggest drivers to improved experiences,” especially in environments where procurement’s speed has historically lagged the business. Contracting showed higher percentages of spend with approved suppliers, which he attributed to guided, orchestrated interactions: “We would expect more spend being guided, being directed, being orchestrated and coordinated to the approved suppliers.”
Supplier onboarding remains a critical pain point, but orchestration is changing the dynamics. While Hackett saw some counterintuitive cycle-time data, Whelan suggested the nuance is that organizations are onboarding fewer, more appropriate suppliers and shifting effort onto suppliers themselves. “To me, clock time doesn’t matter as much when it’s not a Pfizer person doing the work. They’re the ones with the incentive to get added to my financial vendor master, not me.” Younger concurred: “Typically when we introduce automation, you’ll sometimes see cycle times go up a bit longer… then they’ll drop down.”
Experience came through as both a quantitative and qualitative value driver. Sawchuck’s data showed materially better scores for stakeholders in orchestrated environments, not just for procurement users but also for business stakeholders and suppliers.
Whelan described how orchestration lets Pfizer move beyond “one size fits all” journeys to context-specific paths: “The orchestration tools can allow us to guide that person on the right journey. How do we make it almost invisible to them that they are working through 3 different systems below the orchestration layer?” That guided experience doesn’t just make people happier, it enables more spend to flow through compliant channels without feeling like bureaucracy.
If orchestration is the coordination layer, agentic AI is increasingly the execution engine running the machine. In purchase-to-pay, Hackett found organizations with orchestration have “a much higher degree of embedding” agentic AI, and report significantly higher shares of touchless purchase orders. Sawchuck described guided buying becoming “much more of a reality, something we’ve been talking about for well over a decade.”
For Pfizer, the first AI use case was highly pragmatic: agentic approvals on requisitions. “We went from signing a contract to doing agentic approvals in Ariba at scale with ORO, in 6-8 weeks,” Whelan said, positioning it as a way to deliver a clear, CFO-friendly payback before scaling bigger ambitions. Long term, he sees orchestration as the data and process backbone for AI: “Once you have processes, once you have data right, everything opens up for you. Everyone overlooks how hard those first steps are.”
Not all benefits show up immediately in cycle-time metrics. Hackett’s extended benefits lens surfaced impacts in areas including data visibility, real-time pricing, and supplier collaboration. 75 of the 100 organizations improved data visibility through orchestration deployment, with notable improvements in real-time visibility, agility with pricing, and supplier collaboration.
Risk management is also emerging as a prime frontier for agentic orchestration, with Sawchuck describing a multi-step model: defining risk parameters, automating data collection, analyzing and scoring, generating reports, and triggering workflows, as “purpose built for an agentic environment,” with nearly 30% of organizations already using orchestration for risk assessments at a high or extensive level.
For Pfizer, that’s “phase two.” Today, risk is handled via a flat questionnaire; tomorrow, Whelan wants to “break things apart” and ask the right questions at intake, onboarding, sourcing, and contracting. The goal is to avoid asking the same question 11 times through the process,” and instead flow risk intelligence end-to-end: “Now we can flow through the process, so I’m not bothering my customer asking the same question 11 times… which really ticks them off.”
Hackett’s broader technology research shows that orchestration and intake are at the top of the exploration and investment agenda. “A full two thirds of organizations… are either going to upgrade or go out and buy a new technology when it comes to orchestration,” Sawchuck noted, adding that among existing users, orchestration has “the highest level of satisfaction… exceeding expectations in terms of the realization of the benefits" across procurement tech, second only to GenAI itself.
Yet the message from Pfizer was to resist a “boil the ocean” mentality. Whelan emphasized starting where value is clearest: “Start with small projects where you can demonstrate value… because it then unburdens you to do bigger things that you know you want to do.” From there, orchestration becomes both a design canvas and a diagnostic: it reveals where to invest next, which tools you really need, and how to tailor journeys for different stakeholder groups.
In closing, Sawchuck framed this research as a foundation for business cases: “If you’re out there and you’re exploring and you’re considering this particular area, you now have some foundational data to start to look at where we are seeing impact… as you put together that business case.” Whelan’s advice was equally pragmatic: “Everyone’s going to sell you AI.. but if you don’t have process and data, you will fail. You’ll be one of those pilots that fail.”
For procurement leaders, the message is clear: orchestration is no longer just hype or an intake wrapper. It is becoming the operating system for how work, data, and intelligence flow across the source-to-pay lifecycle; and increasingly, the platform on which agentic AI will be built. For those working to make a business case for agentic procurement orchestration, this report serves as a critical guide that shouldn't be overlooked.
Download the full report here and watch the webinar below.