Why AI in Procurement Fails (And How to Actually Succeed)
The procurement technology landscape has witnessed a surge of AI announcements over the past three years, with virtually every established platform and emerging vendor touting machine learning capabilities. Yet beneath the marketing noise lies an uncomfortable reality: most AI in Procurement initiatives fail to deliver sustained business value. According to research across enterprise procurement organizations, fewer than 30% of AI pilots successfully transition to production deployment, and among those that do, many deliver returns well below initial projections. This failure rate isn't a technology problem—the algorithms work. It's a strategy problem rooted in fundamental misconceptions about how AI creates value in procurement contexts and where organizations should focus implementation efforts. The gap between AI in Procurement promise and reality stems from flawed implementation strategies that prioritize visible, impressive use cases over unglamorous but high-impact proce...