"My team doesn't want to do RFQs anymore…"
That's what a head of procurement told me last week, {{FIRST_NAME|readers}}.
Not "can't keep up"… Not “too much volume”… Doesn't want to!
Her best analysts were getting frustrated with manual sourcing work when they know automation can handle most of it.
They want to focus on strategy, supplier relationships, and actually adding value.
The mundane stuff felt like a waste of their skills given the tech available on the market.
ProcureTech is increasingly becoming a retention issue…
This month’s top story illustrates why!
Are you also seeing this out in the field, {{FIRST_NAME|readers}}?
Reply to this email with your story. I want to hear it.
How the Monthly Top 5 Works…
Every month, I comb through 1000+ articles across 40+ sources to bring you the best free procurement articles on the web.
My picks are based on what I feel is the most concrete, actionable and useful content I came across that month.
I sort through the noise so you don’t have to.
📰 In this month’s edition:
No. 1 - The Autonomous Sourcing Revolution is Underway
No. 2 - We Need to Stop Tracking Savings in Excel…
No. 3 - CFO-CPO Alignment in 2025
No. 4 - IDP: Beyond Optical Character Recognition (OCR)…
No. 5 - The 5 Types of AI Agents
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.
No. 1 🥇
The Autonomous Sourcing Revolution is Underway
I love this ebook. It’s a delightful combination of the “What” and the “How” on Autonomous Sourcing. It’s gives statistics AND tangible workflows you can implement yourself to contribute to those statistics… I hope Keelvar keeps growing it. It’s useful for everyone, Keelvar customer or not.
The Bottom Line: 71% of sourcing events on the Keelvar platform are now agent-supported in some way. Since I think Keelvar's customers are probably skewed towards being market leaders, this isn’t indicative of the wider market (yet!) but certainly highlights an opportunity AND a trend.
In short, you should be working on automated sourcing as technology is ripe enough to correctly support it.
Action Item: Audit your categories. Do you have “high volume + standardized process” categories supported by lots of manual sourcing activities? These are ripe for automation.
The Autonomous Sourcing Cookbook
by Keelvar
👀 In Case You Missed It…
My Best Linkedin post of the month:
What’s the one role procurement can’t survive without?
Hint: It’s not who you think.
No. 2 🥈
We Need to Stop Tracking Savings in Excel…
This piece hits a nerve. Every procurement team I know has wrestled with Excel-based savings tracking at some point. But the real frustration isn't just the manual work… It's the endless justification cycles with finance and business stakeholders who question every number. You can spend more time defending your savings calculations than doing actual work!
The Bottom Line: Excel trackers create credibility gaps and effort sinks that hurt procurement's reputation. Modern procurement needs initiative-level tracking that speaks the same language as the business and creates buy-in. The shift isn't just about better software, it's about ending the justification treadmill… 🏃➡️
Action Item: Calculate how much time your team spends each month reconciling savings data manually (include all those "explanation meetings"). If it's more than a few hours, you're probably ready for a structured approach.
Bring stakeholders into the conversation to build trust and buy-in… (“Are you as tired of these conversations as we are? How can we do better?”)
👀 In Case You Missed It…
I recently released a free ebook on Intake and Orchestration use cases for your ERP:
The Transformational Benefits of Tonkean Intake & Orchestration for SAP
No. 3 🥉
CFO-CPO Alignment in 2025
This comprehensive guide from Spend Matters is exactly what procurement needs right now. Too many teams are still stuck in the "show us the cost savings" conversation when CFOs are dealing with much broader financial challenges. The KPI framework here is gold to help procurement shift how it approaches the conversation with the CFO’s office.
The Bottom Line: CFO-CPO alignment isn't about procurement proving its worth anymore… It's about procurement becoming integral to financial strategy. Cash flow optimization, ESG reporting, and risk management are now procurement's responsibility. The teams that get this partnership right will drive real business impact.
Action Item: Review your current reporting to your CFO. If you're only talking about cost savings, schedule a conversation with your CFO about the other seven strategic areas where procurement can add value.
👀 In Case You Missed It…
I was recently a guest on the Art of Procurement podcast:
Listen to Ep. 747 - Continuous Improvement as the Cure for Transformation Fatigue
No. 4 🏅
IDP: Beyond Optical Character Recognition (OCR)…
Convergentis cuts through the hype here. I've seen too many "OCR" solutions that are just fancy scanning tools that top off at 50% “one touch” processing rates. True Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) is different… It actually “understands” what it's reading and can make decisions based on that “understanding”. You don’t have to “train” it on every supplier’s invoice format…
Check out these benchmark stats from The State of ePayables 2024 (n=212):
The invoice processing use case is definitely compelling, but the broader applications of IDP are what truly get me excited…
The Bottom Line: If your team is still manually entering data from documents, you're fighting yesterday's war. IDP doesn't just digitize… It automates entire workflows from document intake to action. The technology has matured to the point where implementation is more about process design than technical capability (as is becoming the case with most ProcureTech tbh…).
Action Item: Track how much time your team spends on document processing this week. Include everything: invoices, contracts, vendor communications. If it's significant, IDP deserves a serious look.
👀 In Case You Missed It…
The Last 3 Sunday Night Notes:
1/ 10 AI Subdomains That Actually Matter in Procurement
2/ The 2025 Pure Procurement Annual Report
3/ The 1,006-Day Decision That Changed Everything
No. 5 🎖
The 5 Types of AI Agents
This guide is thorough without being overwhelming. But here's what caught my attention: not all agents are created equal. As usual, the power lies in understanding and correctly applying the details. Too many teams are jumping into "AI agents" without understanding what type they actually need. Will there be more than 5 types? Probably… But this is a good starting point.
The Bottom Line: The difference between AI agents and traditional software isn't incremental, it's fundamental. But the real insight is in the five types of agents framework. A simple reflex agent that auto-approves POs is vastly different from a learning agent that gets smarter over time. Most organizations need to start simple and build complexity as they gain confidence and data quality improves.
Action Item: Before you pilot any AI agent, define exactly what type you need. Supplier risk monitoring works well with model-based agents, but spend optimization might require utility-based or learning agents. Match the tool to the job, not the other way around.
AI Agents in Procurement: The Ultimate Guide
by Vishal Patel at Ivalua
What was your favorite story this month? Why?
🌯 That’s a Wrap…
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