CPOs must unite enterprise processes, platforms, and people for AI-enabled outcomes

Our recent “Sourcing and Procurement (S2P) Services, 2025” Horizons report highlights that the future of autonomous procurement is not far off considering the accelerating pace of innovation. However, enterprises are not yet ready to realize its full potential due to the lack of structured data, siloed platforms and workflows, and limited knowledge of stakeholders. For meaningful outcomes, CPOs must work with people, processes, and platforms to enable AI-driven orchestration.

Improved orchestration is delivering new sources of value to enterprises

We evaluated 14 S2P service providers across three Horizons (see Exhibit 1) on how they help enterprises move beyond transactional procurement to AI-driven orchestration in generating higher-order value.

• Horizon 3 – Market Leaders showed their procurement prowess by utilizing AI-driven workflows and agents while fostering co-innovation with customers and partners, with a strong emphasis on responsible sourcing. They are ahead of peers in the race to generate new sources of value through IP innovation with OneEcosystem play, talent, and operating model transformation.
• Horizon 2 – Enterprise Innovators are focused on delivering business outcomes through the OneOffice model, integrating front, middle, and back-office procurement services to elevate stakeholder experience.
• Horizon 1 – Disruptors are driving digitized processes to improve cost, speed, and efficiency across the S2P value chain much earlier in enterprises’ transformation journey.

The S2P landscape leaders are already demonstrating what full-scale transformation looks like, while the innovators and disruptors are quickly maturing their capabilities to close the gap between ecosystem orchestration, collaboration, and the creation of new sources of value, along with opportunities to scale efficiency and provide cost takeout.

Exhibit 1: S2P providers are driving savings and compliance in different ways

Note: All service providers within a Horizon are listed alphabetically
Source: HFS Research, 2026

A stronger focus on intake and invoicing can close structural and capability gaps

Our analysis showed that enterprises are delivering measurable impacts: 3%–10% in cost savings, 90% compliance, increased spend under management, and real-time spend visibility through end-to-end S2P automation.

At the same time, organizations are struggling with fragmented data, limited budget, technology debt, operational firefighting across functions, compliance gaps, and talent shortages, hindering their automation progress. The challenges are rooted primarily in structural and capability gaps (see Exhibit 2). Budget constraints limit investment in technology and skills, while poor data quality, fragmented systems, and legacy tech debt reduce visibility and slow decision making. As a result, teams are stuck in operational firefighting, with limited capacity for strategic work.

Exhibit 2: Procurement outcomes are hindered by inadequate budgets and fragmented data

Sample: 27 procurement leaders in the S2P references survey
Source: HFS Research, 2026

In response, procurement objectives are extending beyond cost reduction to delivering broader business value. To achieve the future state of procurement orchestration, enterprises need a more well-rounded action plan that strengthens collaboration across functions and aligns technology strategies to optimize outcomes from existing processes. As the data being recorded is key to orchestration, procurement leaders should focus on collecting accurate intake data, invoicing, and payments until they are closed. It allows leaders to unify data for structured workflows and ease orchestration.

Only the right partner or platform can address challenges at scale and drive outcomes

S2P tasks and workflows are being codified and platformized with the advent of large language models (LLMs). With LLMs as key catalysts, S2P providers are aggressively mapping transactional work to their existing IP-driven platforms or partnering with platforms to solve enterprise challenges.

Moreover, the Horizon 3 market leaders are leaving no stone unturned in creating an agent-driven, human-in-the-loop procurement orchestration, starting from intake to accounts payable across the S2P value chain. Here are some key examples:

• Intake, demand, and guided buying: IBM resolved poor intake, user experience, and data issues for a chemical manufacturing company with an AI-enabled digital concierge orchestrator, achieving 90% compliance and cannibalizing its own FTE revenue through AI-enabled automation.
• Strategic sourcing and spend analytics: Accenture’s SynOps platform integrated sourcing and contracting workflows through a strategic sourcing transformation that utilized AI-enabled market intelligence with a global technology company, creating nearly $1 billion in value by capturing discounts, reducing sourcing operations, and optimizing days payable outstanding (DPO).
• Category strategy and market intelligence: WNS Procurement created a category sourcing strategy through its Smart Cube platform, enabling centralized category ownership, proactive sourcing, and a structured category project pipeline, delivering about $200 million in savings over 2.5 years for a Fortune 500 technology company.

The Bottom Line: CPOs must anchor S2P transformation by uniting enterprise stakeholders, platforms in use, and processes to drive solid outcomes through AI-driven orchestration.

AI-driven orchestration is no longer a future ambition for procurement. It is becoming the organizing principle for how S2P delivers value at scale. As data, workflows, and intelligence are unified across the S2P lifecycle, procurement leaders must move decisively beyond transactional execution toward orchestrated, insight-driven decision-making.