Art of Procurement

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

Procurement technology is changing so fast that the tool you buy today will look different in two months. Many CPOs are tempted to wait for the market to settle, but a steady state may not arrive any time soon. Teams that hold back also risk missing the window where they can shape how these solutions develop.
In this episode, Philip Ideson is joined by Cyril Wasem, Chief Procurement Officer at The Vita Group and a judge in Art of Procurement's ProcureTech100 program. 
Cyril shares how he blocks out time for startup pitches, why his team went live with an orchestration platform in just eight weeks, and how he decides which providers are true partners rather than one-time implementations.
If you've been holding off on a technology decision until things calm down, Cyril's experience makes a strong case for starting now and course-correcting as you go. It's a practical, honest conversation with a CPO who is doing the work.
In this episode, Cyril covers:
- Selecting providers for their people and culture, treating each implementation as the start of a joint development
- Launching fast with a phase one that captures most of the benefits, then integrates and adds features over time
- Enriching and connecting fragmented data rather than waiting for it to be perfectly structured
- Showing management what new technology makes possible, and using that investment to attract and keep curious talent
Links:
Cyril Wasem on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cyril-wasem-cpo/ 
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

"Supply chains are going to get more complex. As we adopt more agents, there's going to be more coordination, not just between humans but between bots and humans and bots themselves." Nick Gospodinov, Founder and CEO, Mandel AI
Today's procurement organizations live in two worlds: ERP platforms and mountains of emails and spreadsheets. That disconnect can (and all too often does) lead to missed quotes, lapsed deadlines, and significant hidden costs… especially in direct procurement, where stakes are high. 
With AI finally mature enough to process natural language, the opportunity to bridge these worlds is here.
In this Startup of the Week episode of the ProcureTech Insider podcast, Mandel AI founder Nick Gospodinov shares how his team built an "AI supply chain coordinator" focused on the true communication backbone of procurement. Mandel AI doesn't just automate ERP tasks, it reads buyers' inboxes, detects disruption, and escalates real business risk before procurement even knows there's a problem. 
Listen in to hear why fast, scenario-based deployments can drive immediate value, how escalation features find money others miss, and what CPOs need to ask before introducing new tech.
In this episode, Nick covers:
- Connect real-time communication to procurement action  
- Tackle the "coordination tax" that slows supply chains  
- Overcome trust and adoption hurdles for AI in manufacturing  
- Find deeper ROI beyond time saved, like preventing quote expiration  
- Deploy AI automation with speed and flexibilit
 
Links:
Nick Gospodinov on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-gospodinov/ 
Visit the Mandel AI Profile in the AOP Provider Directory: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/mandelai 
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

Procurement teams are under steady pressure to do more with less, and AI has made boards impatient for faster, smarter answers. Most teams can't build every capability they need in-house, so the CPOs pulling ahead are redesigning their operating models around the right external partners. Getting that right depends on removing friction from the process and building trust with stakeholders and suppliers alike.
In this episode, I'm joined by Hiten Parmar, Chief Procurement Officer at Beazley, and Prerna Dhawan, Chief Product Officer at Beroe, for a candid look at how their partnership actually works. Hiten explains how he decides what to build and what to bring in, and why he looks for partners who iterate and learn rather than chase perfection. Prerna shares the moment she chose not to charge a customer more, and why that decision protected a relationship that has since grown from market intelligence into risk.
We also talk about the shift from too little data to too much, why provenance is now scarce, and the one question Prerna wishes procurement teams would ask their suppliers. 
In this episode, Hiten and Prerna cover how to:
- Test every capability against your core business, then find who is best in the world to deliver it.
- Judge partners on cultural fit, trust, and willingness to iterate, not only on price.
- Pair a partner's decision-grade data with your own context on supplier criticality and exposure.
- Ask suppliers where you rank on their priority list, not just how risky they are to you.
- Push your team to speak in business terms and bring supplier ideas to stakeholders.
Links:
Hiten Parmar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiten-parmar-033b421?originalSubdomain=uk 
Prerna Dhawan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prerna-dhawan31/?isSelfProfile=false Join AOP and Beroe at ProcureTEX in Amsterdam, November 3rd: https://hubs.li/Q04lR_Xg0