Art of Procurement

Dear Diary… I did a review with my team the other day as to where we are, and we have more than 50 active agents now.
The procurement team at DXC Technology tested its Supply Chain Advisor agent against more than 500 common questions, and the early answers weren't great. Much of the policy and process content the agent drew on was outdated. Fixing that shaped how the team builds every agent that followed, starting with the data underneath.
Anders R. Lange is the Chief Procurement Officer at DXC Technology, where he has led supply chain management for 18 months. His remit sits under the CFO and covers strategic sourcing, accounts payable, travel and expense, logistics, and real estate and facilities.
In this episode of The Agentic Procurement Diaries podcast, Philip Ideson and Anders discuss:
-Why DXC builds agents in-house inside its own firewall, and how that avoided the data privacy issues it hit in external pilots
-How a central agent library cut down on duplicate agents after internal competitions sparked a wave of new builds
-Where Anders lets agents run with no human involved, such as rule-based spend categorization that stays inside procurement
-Why he warns against five-year AI contracts when what you buy today could be worth a lot less in a few months
Links: 
-Anders R. Lange on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anders-r-lange-7a089511/ 
-Zycus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zycus/ 
-AOP Provider Directory | Zycus: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/zycusinc 
-Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
-Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

"In the end, I think the law is going to look at human systems."
Almost every software supplier now sells AI, and much of it is arriving inside contracts that were never written for it. A clause that once let a supplier use your data "to improve our systems" may now be the clause they rely on to train models. Meanwhile, the software you rent may soon be placing orders on your behalf, and the question of who carries the risk when it gets something wrong has moved from theory to your next renewal.
In this episode of the Art of Procurement podcast, Philip Ideson sits down with David Tollen, a technology contracts attorney, founder of Sycamore Legal, and author of The Tech Contracts Handbook, who joined one of our onstage panels at Catalyst San Francisco in May. David explains why 80 to 85 percent of what you already know about SaaS contracting still applies to AI, then walks through the new exposure around model training and infringing outputs. He also argues that the negotiation fights stakeholders complain about are some of the most useful work procurement does, because they settle problems before anyone is in dispute.
If you're renewing software agreements this year, this conversation gives you the questions to ask suppliers and the clauses to revisit first. David drafts these agreements for clients and testifies as an expert witness when they go wrong, so his advice comes from both ends of the contract.
In this episode, David covers:
-How to spot when suppliers add AI features to existing products without announcing them or changing contract terms.
-Clarifying whether "improve the system" language permits model training, since training can expose your inputs in other customers' outputs.
-Ways to plan governance on the assumption that you, as the customer, will be the first party sued when AI causes harm.
-How to prepare an AI addendum requiring notice, testing records, and performance-decline alerts before suppliers switch on new AI features.
Links: 
David Tollen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtollen/ 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

"What we've found is that enterprises are leaning on their most trusted providers and asking them to add capabilities." - Jack Andrews, M&A Director, Ciesco
AI disruption and shifting software valuations have left many procurement technology founders questioning what their businesses are worth and whether now is the right time to sell. But investor appetite for procurement technology may be stronger than the headlines suggest. 
In this episode of ProcureTech Insider, Philip Ideson speaks with Jack Andrews, M&A Director at Ciesco and an executive judge for the 2027 ProcureTech100, about the procurement technology market from an investor's perspective. 
Jack explains why procurement remains an attractive sector for investment, what differentiates valuable technology businesses, and how AI is changing acquisition strategies.
In this episode, Jack shares:
-Why procurement technology continues to attract investment despite uncertainty in the broader software market
-How investors distinguish between horizontal SaaS businesses and specialized procurement technology providers
-What proprietary data and customer retention reveal about a company's long-term value
-Why a focused market position can be more valuable than claiming to offer an end-to-end solution
-How founders can evaluate the right time to sell or bring in an investment partner
-What continued consolidation could mean for the future procurement technology landscape
 
Links:
Jack Andrews on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-andrews-775b16a4/ 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

Most AI conversations in procurement still stall at the use case. Direct materials teams can't afford that luxury when a botched implementation can shut down a customer's plant and rack up half a million dollars a day in penalties. 
Manufacturing leaders are asking harder questions about how AI runs inside complex supply chains, who owns the judgment calls, and what value procurement brings beyond another few points of savings.
In this week's episode, Philip Ideson is joined by Jim Cahalan, Director of Events at Art of Procurement, to look back at Catalyst Detroit. It was AOP's first event built around direct materials, under the theme "When AI Meets Manufacturing Reality." 
In this episode, Jim and Philip discuss how to:
-Move AI conversations beyond use cases and into the operating model, governance, and supplier behavior choices that make them work
-Define where human judgment begins and ends as automation grows, and protect the path for the next generation of talent
-Expand procurement's value beyond savings by helping product teams make decisions and bring products to market faster
-Learn from other industries, because data and early involvement challenges look much the same in pharma and automotive
Links:
Jim Cahalan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-cahalan-609601126/
Learn more about AOP Events: https://artofprocurement.com/calendar 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

Dear Diary… I think my advice would be: start sooner rather than later.
Most procurement teams expect the hard part of agentic AI to be the technology. Messer Americas found the hard part was everything they had never written down.
When the team began teaching its first guided buying agent how to behave, they discovered how much of their process lived in people's heads: how you handle case A, case B, and case C. The agent could only be as good as the house it was trained on.
Diana McCollough is Director of Strategic Sourcing at Messer Americas, part of the world's largest privately held industrial gas company. She leads the category managers and lead buyers responsible for the company's strategic spend.
In this episode of The Agentic Procurement Diaries podcast, Philip Ideson and Diana discuss:
- Why maverick spend and undocumented processes made guided buying the first place to deploy agents
- How Messer decides where an agent can run with no human in the loop, weighing testing depth against commercial, supplier, and regulatory risk
- Why peer stories drive adoption far more than emails or announcements
- How short pilots with specific measures of success stop the team from scaling tools that don't live up to the demo
Links:
-Diana McCollough on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-mccollough-b4874823/ 
-Zycus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zycus/ 
-AOP Provider Directory | Zycus: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/zycusinc 
-Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
-Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement