Change Management in the "Age of AI"

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Something's been bugging me, {{FIRST_NAME|readers}}…

Lately, everyone is obsessing over AI agents. Autonomous sourcing. Intelligent intake. Self-service procurement.

But nobody's talking about the Achilles heel of these “AI projects”…

Change Management.

In the past, ProcureTech required users to learn new screens and workflows. Painful, but predictable. You could write an SOP and train people on it.

AI-powered tools? They require something much harder to develop: trust.

You're asking stakeholders to let an AI algorithm run their sourcing events. To believe the recommendations are sound. To give up control they've held for decades.

That's not a training problem. That's a psychology problem.

Tonight's note breaks down what actually works when deploying procurement technology, AI-powered or otherwise.

Four pillars, concrete tactics, and a psychology framework that's shaped how I think about getting to success in every implementation.

Oh and there’s a little bonus for those who want to learn more…

Onwards!

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Last year, I spoke with a procurement team celebrating their new sourcing platform go-live. Confetti. Champagne. LinkedIn posts about "digital transformation."

Six weeks later, adoption was at 12%. The business units had quietly gone back to email and spreadsheets. My contact was furious.

Sound familiar?

Here's the unfortunate low down: somewhere between 50% and 90% of digital transformation initiatives fail to meet their original objectives.

That's not a typo.

Bain, EY, Gartner… They've all measured it. The range depends on how you define "failure," but the message is clear: most technology projects don't deliver what they promised.

And here's what makes it worse: we keep blaming the technology.

"The vendor oversold us."
"The platform wasn't ready."
"The integrations were harder than expected."

Sometimes that's true. But a 2024 meta-analysis of 120 papers on digital transformation failures tells a different story. When researchers catalogued the top 20 reasons projects fail, the vast majority were people problems:

The technology rarely breaks. We break the technology.

Change management is getting easier.

Remember those ERP implementations from 15 years ago? Fifteen days of training. Transaction codes to remember that looked like someone smashed their face on a keyboard. Certification requirements. Thick binders of standard operating procedures.

That's no longer today's world.

Modern procurement platforms are designed for humans. The gap between "technology capability" and "user readiness" has shrunk dramatically.

BUT it hasn't disappeared!

Even if your new tool works from a simple search bar, you still need to train people on why to use it, when to use it, and what success looks like. You can't just drop the keys on their desk and walk away…

They don’t know where the car is parked!

Best practices from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Prosci are clear: 10-15% of any project budget should be dedicated to change management.

That sounds like a lot until you realize what change management actually includes if you do it right:

When you map out all the activities needed to get every single user through an ADKAR change journey (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement), suddenly 10-15% doesn't seem like that much.

Here's a 4-pillar framework to consider that I've seen work across dozens of implementations:

This isn't just "getting buy-in." It's mapping every person being impacted by your project (executives, sponsors, users, skeptics… Yes, EVERY SINGLE ONE) and developing targeted strategies for each group.

Pro tip: Make an Excel file. List every stakeholder. Note whether they're positive, neutral, or a detractor. Then build specific tactics to move detractors to neutral, and neutral to champions. Track your progress.

When executives are visibly engaged and communicating the strategic rationale? You see dramatically higher adoption. When it's just "IT rolling out another system"? You're fighting an uphill battle. People are sick of system implementations.

This means having the infrastructure and agility to evolve quickly once adoption starts, spotting where things are failing fast and fixing them!

Don't aim for perfection on day one (It’s not possible). Aim for a minimum viable scope that lets you test, fail safely, and iterate. Build failure into the project plan. Give yourself permission to learn and adapt quickly.

Meet users where they are.

The best programs use peer-led training. When a colleague (someone who does the same job you do) invests their time to show you the ropes, you're 100% more likely to give the tool a fair chance.

Gamification works too. Competitions between teams. Leaderboards. Silly prizes for the group that adopts the best based on your metrics. It sounds simple because it is… But why is nobody doing this?

People respond to friendly competition.

This is where most organizations drop the ball.

We spend months preparing for go-live. We throw a launch party. Then we move on to the next project.

Meanwhile, the users we trained six months ago have forgotten ¾ of what they learned. New employees join without ever being trained. The feedback channels go silent.

Change management isn't a phase. It's a permanent function. Someone needs to wake up every day thinking about how to keep users engaged, share success stories, and continuously improve the experience.

Another resource I recommend that shaped how I think about Change Management: "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.

(First recommended to me by the wonderful Martin John)

Here's how his principles apply to your ProcureTech rollout:

Having these principles in mind as you build your plans will make you exponentially more successful.

So before signing any procurement technology contract, ask this:

"What change management support do you provide out of the box?"

Does the vendor you’re courting have training materials ready to customize? Do they run implementation workshops? Do they offer ongoing office hours for users?

If the answers are thin (e.g. if they're expecting you to figure it everything yourself for change management), factor that into your evaluation. The mountain to climb is much higher when you're starting from scratch and doing it yourself...

Technology alone never delivers ROI.

The best platforms in the world will fail if you don't bring people along for the journey. And "bringing people along" means dedicating real budget, real resources, and real ongoing attention to change management.

The organizations that get this right don't treat change management as an afterthought. They treat it as the main event.

P.S. If you want to go deeper on this topic, Jules Konjoian, Jenny Cothron and I recently hosted a webinar where we got into the weeds on battle-tested tactics, real implementation stories, and live Q&A.

👉 Watch the Replay Here