Monthly Top 5 - January 2025

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Hi Readers,

Late last year, the market promised that 2025 would be the “year of AI agents”.

At the very least, content teams have been delivering on the promise bright and early 😅

In this month’s Top 5, I share a number of articles that will help you conceptualize the theory behind what an AI agent is and how it works.

This will be important as you start hearing software vendor claims that AI agents can magically accomplish all your work! 🧝‍♀️🪄

I’ve started seeing presentations with org charts containing AI agents alongside people so… I want you to be able to sniff out fishy claims from real ones… 🎣

Onwards!

Every month, I comb through 1000+ articles across 40+ sources to bring you the best free procurement articles published that month.

I sort through the noise so you don’t have to.

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 📄 2025 Procurement Outlook Report (sponsored)

• 🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup: Episode 25-22

• 🔝 January 2025 Top 5

  • No. 1 - What Is a Procurement AI Agent?

  • No. 2 - How are AI Agents Built?

  • No. 3 - What AI Agents Are Not!

  • No. 4 - There Is No “One Size Fits All” ProcureTech Strategy

  • No. 5 - Complying with the EU’s New Sustainability Regulations

• 🎁 Get access to my links database

Let’s dive in!

Note: Some of the content above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.

🏆 Road to the ProcureTech Cup

The Journey Continues…

Join me this Friday, February 14^th at 12pm ET as Axiom comes on show to demo their Marketplace / Catalog Management Platform.

Axiom is revolutionizing the catalog management space with their approach. If you have pain points with catalog management, you need to tune in to this episode.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun:

Last Week’s Episode

ConvergentIS was on the show last Friday to demo their AI-powered business/vendor data platform.

If you missed it, I’ve made ALL the replays available for you on YouTube:

What is the ProcureTech Cup? Start Here.

No. 1 🥇

What Is a Procurement AI Agent?

Kavida.ai recently released a whitepaper that does a great job of defining AI agents and illustrating how they can be used in the context of procurement.

This is a great starting point if you’re starting out fresh.

TL;DR? An AI agent is a software program that can perform tasks or make decisions on behalf of a user or another program. These aren’t new… Siri is an AI agent… However, we are getting to a point where these are sophisticated enough to be used in your supply chain.

Discover How AI Agents Are Reshaping the Manufacturing Operating Model
by Kavida.ai

No. 2 🥈

How are AI Agents Built?

To be useful in a business setting, an AI agent needs access to the business applications relevant for the work you want it to accomplish…

AI agent “wizardry” is therefore only possible with open applications (unless you’re using it withing a single application but that severely limits the potential value).

I thought Sligo’s recent whitepaper did a great job of breaking this down along with how you should be thinking about different type of AI agents and the overarching architecture.

TL;DR? There need to be different types of agents for different types of tasks. Coordination of agents is also required to get the most value to the human operating these agents. Understanding and organizing how work gets done is essential to be successful (read: my continuous holler to business process management!)

Humans + GenAI Agents: The Collaborative Future of Procurement and Supply Chain
by Sligo.ai

No. 3 🥉

What AI Agents Are Not!

While he may use more exclamation points than are advisable (😅), I like keeping up with Michael Lamoureux’s writing to ensure I don’t get swept up in a fad.

In a recent article, he reminds us that while generative AI makes powerful AI agents possible, it also introduces additional risk into the equation… Why?

Gen AI hallucinates… At it’s core, it’s not math… It’s statistics!

What does that mean?

That’s there are non-negligeable chances that what a Gen AI agent spits out contains mistakes, falsehoods and errors.

Does this mean they are useless? No. I just needs that you need to be VERY CLEAR on this baseline assumption.

A good question to help you gauge how to use any given AI functionality?

Is it doing hard math (definite answer with demonstratable proof) or statistics (generating answers based on probabilistic theory)?

I don’t know about you but Siri gets things wrong all the time.

It’s Human Intelligence (HI!) That Matters!
by Michael Lamoureux at Sourcing Innovation

No. 4 🏅

There Is No “One Size Fits All” ProcureTech Strategy

This figure from the latest CPO report to hit the airwaves caught my attention.

Readers of this newsletter will know that I won’t shut up about the fact that your organizational context is the most important factor in determining the best digitalization roadmap for you… 😅

I think that was one of the main points of my Is SAP Ariba Still "King of the Hill"? article from a few weeks ago…

The response to this survey question illustrates that point exactly…

In fact, there’s an additional option (which is sort of hidden in the second one…). “You are maximizing the usage of a S2P Suite and supplementing with Best-of-Breed modules where needed to execute on your strategy”… But you get my point.

You must do the hard work of exploring the “art of the possible” and adapting it to your context if you want to drink the sweet juices from the chalise of digital procurement… 😅

The 2025 Annual ProcureCon CPO Report
by ProcureCon & ProcureAbility

No. 5 🎖

Complying with the EU’s New Sustainability Standards

Arjan just dropped a masterclass of an article on LinkedIn…

The European Union fairly recently enacted new sustainability standards:

• Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

• European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)

• Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)

One of the challenges is that these standards are not written for procurement… Yet they have a sizeable impact on procurement organizations operating in the EU.

Arjan’s article translates these standards, answering two key questions:

• What procurement must deliver to comply with CSRD, ESRS, and CSDDD

• How it can embed sustainability into the procurement operating model to meet these requirements

This is a GREAT place to start for anyone wrestling with these questions. Well done.

Embedding Sustainability in Procurement: A Path to CSRD, ESRS & CSDDD Compliance and Front-Runner Status
by Arjan Berntsen

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