This article was first published in Harvard Business Review
Procurement stands to benefit from agentic AI more than almost any other business function because its work is structured, financially measurable, and filled with judgment-intensive tasks that have resisted traditional automation. Yet adoption remains low because the real barriers are organizational rather than technological. Companies that are succeeding are redesigning procurement around AI instead of simply layering new tools onto existing workflows. They are giving procurement ownership of AI initiatives, strengthening data foundations, building governance into deployments from the start, and measuring commercial outcomes rather than usage. Those that make these changes are already improving productivity, supplier management, and financial performance—and creating advantages that will become hard for competitors to match.