Monthly Top 5 - October 2025

Hi {{FIRST_NAME|readers}},

Are you confident your P2P system would catch this?

That's the question everyone in procurement should be asking after an Intel employee allegedly stole $800K by exploiting a shockingly simple vulnerability.

The method was almost embarrassingly simple: change purchase classifications from "hardware" to "services" after approval, then watch invoices flow through with zero verification.

Services procurement has become the easiest place to commit fraud because unlike physical goods, there's no natural audit trail. No receiving. No inspection. Just invoices flowing through on trust.

Reply to this email with how your organization handles services verification. I want to hear what's actually working out there.

As for the rest of this month’s top stories, the takeaways are below!

Onwards!

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:

Let’s dive in!

An Intel fraud case just validated what procurement experts have been saying quietly for years: services spend is the easiest place to steal money. Former Intel employee Natalia Avtsin and supplier Yafim Tsibolevsky allegedly stole over $800K by exploiting a simple vulnerability, changing purchase classifications from hardware to "services" after approval, then bypassing verification entirely.

The method was simple: get quotes approved for hardware, flip the classification to services in the P2P system, then approve invoices up to $20K with zero checks. Over one year, 42 transactions went through before an internal audit caught the pattern. The intangible nature of services makes fraud nearly impossible to detect in real-time.

Want to Commit Procurement Fraud - Services Is the Way to Go
by Peter Smith at Bad Buying

Instead of logging into massive ERP systems to complete simple tasks, procurement teams are turning to microapps. These are lightweight, single-function (and sometimes disposable) applications that do one small thing very well. Submit an emergency PO. Start new supplier creation. Trigger an approval workflow. All without navigating multiple systems or waiting for IT.

What makes modern microapps different is the "Convert" function: upload an Excel sheet, PDF, or CSV, and LLMs automatically parse it into structured data fit for your backend system. No manual mapping, no tickets, no waiting. The result is faster deployment and modular systems that evolve without rebuilding everything.

What Is a Microapp? The Small but Mighty Elements of Digital Workflows
by ConvergentIS Blog

Most procurement teams run basic supplier risk checks during onboarding, then never look again. This "set it and forget it" approach leaves organizations exposed to supplier insolvency, sub-tier failures, and ESG violations that happen after contracts are signed.

The gap is stark. Low maturity means one-time vendor surveys and spreadsheet tracking. High maturity means continuous monitoring with predictive scoring and automated escalation.

Procurement Risk Management: Tools, Frameworks & AI Strategies for Resilience
by Jarrod McAdoo at Ivalua

The term "orchestration" is flooding LinkedIn feeds and vendor marketing decks. Everyone's slapping the label on their products. The problem? Nobody agrees on what it means, and most use cases center on transactional efficiency rather than strategic coordination.

Supply Chain Shaman's article challenges the rush toward "AI-augmented orchestrators" that let managers spin up agent-based models without governance. Imagine 250 material planners at global plants all using AI to generate different plans without shared definitions of supply chain excellence.

The Orchestration Shuffle
by Supply Chain Shaman

When market leading legacy platforms announce "innovation," it usually means incremental updates peppered with buzzwords. But SAP's recent announcement is different, they're essentially admitting Ariba hasn't kept pace with innovation and are rebuilding it from the ground up on their Business Technology Platform (BTP).

What's striking is the upfront honesty. Baber Farooq from SAP admitted most AI in procurement feels like "an afterthought" and their approach wasn't designed for how work will happen in five years. The new direction: systems that autonomously recommend actions like "Run a sourcing event, recontract, diversify suppliers" built on a “next gen” platform.

Inside Next-Gen SAP Ariba: Rebuilding Procurement for the AI Era
by Philip Ideson at Art of Procurement