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Introduction
Recent conversation around AI in procurement has been a mix of bold predictions and cautious speculation.
But forecasts don’t help procurement teams on the ground.
What's actually happening today?
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However there has been zero real-world data on its true application - until now.
This report is the first of its kind, analyzing $618 million of spend and 1000s of real-world interactions with Vertice AI across 100s of procurement professionals globally, to reveal precisely where, how, and why procurement teams are actually using AI and to what effect.
We'll show you what your peers are really doing with AI.
Summary : Procurement is not using AI as you thought they would
2025 View
AI in procurement catalyses greater efficiency by automating several routine tasks like contract management, supplier selection and purchase order processing.
The Reality
Our analysis turns this assumption on its head.
Automation, workflow improvements, and document summaries and searches are popular tasks that are enhanced and sped up by AI.
But the greatest appetite for using AI is focused on high-value, insightful strategic work that directly impacts the bottom line.
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Procurement teams know there is enormous power in their data and, when given the chance in their procurement platforms, will use AI to enhance their negotiating power and pricing understanding rather than to create operational efficiencies.
The effect of this is two-fold:
Teams are flattening and democratizing. AI acts as a ‘role accelerator’, putting the tools and data into managers’ hands to act more strategically, while senior leadership can gain a better understanding of key negotiations and narratives.
Savings triple. In contrast to the 5-10% savings uptick predicted by many industry observers to come from introducing AI to contract negotiations, it transpires that combining expert human negotiators with AI-generated insights drawn from comprehensive datasets leads to a 3x improvement. 1 + 1 = 3x.
The data
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Prompt counts
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Strategy over automation
2025 View
The primary ROI from AI agents lies in automating the intake-to-approve process, reducing cycle times by up to 50%. Efficiency is the killer app.
The Reality
According to our real-world usage data, this view is dangerously narrow.
Process-related actions - such as initiating requests and identifying efficiency gains in workflows - represents 34.29% of usage: a significant chunk.
But compare that with insights and intelligence - almost half (44.25%) of all queries and prompts - and it’s suddenly clear to see where procurement is most keen to use AI.
“Which of these vendors can we build the strongest negotiation position with?”
“How can we consolidate our vendors in this area? Include vendor capabilities, benchmarks, usage and regional price variance.”
“Build me an intake and approval process.”
“How could we make this approval workflow faster?”
“What risks exist in this contract?”
“Summarise what is going on with this RFP process.”
Procurement teams clearly need, want and now expect AI to support them with everything from summarizing documents and improving processes, all the way through to arming themselves with the very best information to support complex decision-making.
But why is there more appetite for insights & intelligence from AI?
Procurement teams are plagued by a persistent irony: a wealth of data and information, but also a fear of invisible risks, overspend and non-compliance.
AI’s most valuable role therefore is in making sense of this data - digging through enormous internal and external datasets to pre-empt and proactively solve these problems.
It’s less “help me do” and more “help me understand”.
Democratizing hierarchies
2025 View
We see AI adoption being driven bottom-up, primarily by sourcing specialists and category managers looking for efficiency gains in their daily tasks.
The Reality
Our data instead shows a powerful top-down and cross-functional adoption trend.
AI is releasing the shackles of team siloes, historical role definitions and efficiency blockers to democratize work.
The most potent sign of this is that the senior leadership cohort shows significant amounts of AI usage - far more so than expected and, in fact, not much less than the expected so-called ‘super users’ in Management.
CTO
VP Finance
Procurement Director
Head of Procurement
Procurement Manager
Category Lead
Finance Manager
IT Manager
This becomes even more interesting when you investigate how these cohorts are using AI.
There has been a striking reversal of traditional expectations - pushing “standard” team hierarchies towards obsolescence.
- Managers, who deal with the operations of procurement and finance and see the real-world, day-to-day impact of strategic decisions, now have the ability to influence these strategy calls themselves.
- Senior leadership can now draw themselves closer to the action quickly and use their experience to influence key negotiations and narratives.
When procurement teams are equipped with AI tools that are able to perform both mechanical and insightful tasks, the result is a more agile, effective, and intelligent procurement function.
Strategic responsibility is shared, not siloed by seniority. Every user, regardless of title, is empowered to operate where they need - creating a flatter, more dynamic team structure.
“What’s the current status of our CRM purchase?”
“Review this contract for risks vs our policies.”
“When is our Microsoft renewal up?”
“How can we speed up our intake?”
“What leverage should I use to secure a higher discount for our NetSuite renewal?”
“Based on usage, renewal dates, and price benchmarks, how can we reduce our SaaS spend in the next 6 months?”
The proof
2025 View
AI-powered negotiation tools can deliver incremental savings, typically in the 5-10% range over traditional methods.
The Reality
This is a vast underestimation.
Our data shows that combining AI insights drawn from vast internal and external datasets with expert human negotiation skills delivers 3x savings versus human negotiation alone.
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This is transformational.
But how does it happen?
‘Human plus AI’ is only half the story.
The fact is, this multiplier is only possible if the AI element is capable of both:
- Delivering deep insights from internal and external data sources to create competitive advantage in the negotiation.
And…
- The purchasing process itself is efficient - it can be initiated quickly, while the workflow is built automatically, including approval paths with contingency routing, and contracts can be quickly reviewed for risks.
Not all AI platforms are equal
Vertice AI is the only procurement AI solution that spans the entire spectrum of AI use cases - search and summaries, process and mechanics, and intelligence and insights.
Backed by the most comprehensive collection of data sources, Vertice AI is trained and fine-tuned on:
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Vertice AI can complete over 70 procurement tasks - including initiating requests, benchmarking, negotiation tactics and risk reviews - to guide and support your team through every stage of the purchasing cycle.
And Verity, your dedicated agent team member, makes Vertice AI simple to work with - a single interface that recruits from over 50 specialist AI Agents to carry out your tasks.
