Fueled by a combination of geopolitical tension, economic instability, and significant supply chain shifts, procurement has taken on increasing importance. Procurement has evolved from a function focused primarily on cost-cutting to one that drives value creation and manages global risk. As a result, today’s organizations are forced to reevaluate how they operate, transforming procurement from a back-office function into a vital strategic partner.

In a broad study sponsored by SAP, Economist Impact highlights this continuing shift in perception and performance, revealing a rising confidence in procurement’s ability to make business impact. This is the fourth consecutive year that SAP and Economist Impact have partnered on a study, and the survey includes responses from more than 2,000 C-suite leaders globally.

The report, titled “The Resilient Edge: Procurement in an Era of Polycrisis,” also underscores procurement’s growing influence in advancing AI adoption and sustainability performance. However, the field still faces obstacles in assuming this larger role, including readiness for technology and building a future-proof workforce.

Still, the overall trend is clear: procurement’s fundamental transformation is putting it in a position to play an important role in business strategy.

Growing confidence in procurement to drive strategic value

Businesses today face a convergence of crises—a “polycrisis”—which includes environmental shocks, shipping delays, and growing regulatory restrictions. Tariffs are the latest disruption, prompting businesses across sectors to seek quick solutions to avoid price hikes.  

Weathering this storm requires procurement leaders to take on higher risk as they navigate this uncertainty. The Economist Impact report finds that geopolitical risk has emerged as the top concern for procurement leaders, with 64% listing it as their top focus over the next 12 to 18 months, up from just 30% in 2024. This surge reflects both the growing complexity of global operations and procurement’s expanding influence.

As risk becomes more multifaceted and severe, procurement professionals have a role beyond sourcing supplies at the lowest cost. Instead, they are developing robust strategies to identify, assess, and mitigate risk. This strategic pivot is also reflected in growing cross-departmental trust. In fact, 78% of respondents expressed confidence in procurement’s ability to manage external risk—a 37% increase from last year—signaling procurement’s growing value as a strategic partner.

AI has a central role in procurement

From detecting demand signals and enabling scenario planning to automating routine workflows, AI is dramatically expanding procurement’s capabilities.

The Economist Impact report notes that organizations are prioritizing AI proficiency more than any other skill over the next 12 to 18 months, including predictive analytics, demand forecasting, and managing data bias and privacy concerns. These skills are essential for procurement teams that need to pivot quickly in response to unexpected disruptions.

Most importantly, AI will be at the center of procurement’s continued transformation. An overwhelming 89% of respondents in the study said they are confident in their ability to adopt and apply AI to improve efficiency and productivity. This confidence is grounded in tangible benefits that AI can provide, including identifying early demand signals, optimizing supplier performance, and simulating risk scenarios to support better decision-making

Simply put, AI is no longer optional—it is essential to procurement success and relevance.

Improved environmental results

Sustainability has climbed to the top of corporate agendas, and procurement is now on the front lines of this effort, managing supplier emissions and ensuring ethical labor practices. Over half (53%) of survey respondents named sustainability as their top strategic priority for the next 12 to 18 months.

Cross-departmental collaboration is central to these efforts and has enabled procurement to align with key financial and environmental goals. Tools like ESG scorecards and supplier decarbonization plans are now standard practice for measuring environmental impact. These innovations are helping companies meet rising expectations from customers, regulators, and shareholders alike, while also reducing long-term operational risks.

These developments show that procurement isn’t just supporting sustainability—it’s driving it.

Procurement’s inflection point between strategy and cost-cutting

While cost control remains a key part of procurement’s mandate, the balance for today’s procurement teams is shifting—from tactical cost-saving measures to strategic contributions that enhance agility, foster innovation, and safeguard reputation.

To manage these dual demands, companies are turning to procurement technology, like SAP Ariba Procurement solutions, to address key priorities and reduce siloes across the organization.

On June 26, Etosha Thurman, SAP’s Chief Marketing Officer for Finance and Spend, will join Economist Impact’s webinar “Measuring up: Balancing risks and goals for strategic procurement” to explore how organizations can build procurement strategies that drive measurable outcomes. This event will explore how procurement can balance immediate pressures with long-term objectives—a topic that is more relevant now than ever. If interested, register here.

Gordon Donovan is global vice president of Research, Procurement, and External Workforce at SAP.

Serax, a Belgian design brand with an international presence, crafts contemporary homeware. Collaborating with renowned designers and artisans worldwide, Serax creates distinctive collections of tableware, furniture, lighting, and other home accessories. The company designs pieces in Europe and manufactures them globally.

Serax is a customer-centric company that prioritizes excellent service for its B2B and B2C customers. It was precisely this customer focus that led Serax to implement SAP Business AI solutions to help automate its order-to-cash process.

The challenge

The order process is straightforward for most customers, including B2C. Customers order what they want on the web shop, and the order is directly entered into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

However, Serax’s B2B customers often still place orders by generating a PDF in their ERP system and automatically sending it to Serax’s customer service mailbox. These B2B manual orders amount to 30% of all orders coming into Serax.

Serax’s strong commitment to customer service means the company is happy to facilitate this, but it strains the customer service team. Once Serax receives the order, the customer service team must manually download the PDF, double-check dates and quantities, and then enter the order details into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to create the sales order. This entire process is time-consuming and error-prone.

“Providing excellent service is one of our core priorities, and this can be enabled by gaining efficiencies in certain processes,” says Sara Goris, SAP product manager at Serax. “That’s basically what led us to this use case. Our customer service team was still entering 30% of all orders manually into the system. We wanted to streamline that process from our side, especially since many of our customers will continue to send sales orders in PDF format.”

The solution

Serax needed a solution to automatically create sales orders from PDFs. It achieved this by activating and fine-tuning an app called Create Sales Orders—Automatic Extraction. This app was built with SAP solutions for quote-to-cash management using SAP Fiori, which allows businesses to create web and mobile applications.

With the app, Serax can drag and drop the PDF from the customer’s e-mail into the app before it orchestrates the entire process. First, it sends the PDF to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), where document information extraction extracts the data. The document API uses pre-trained AI to take PDF files as inputs and return structured data. The second step is data matching. The application maps the extracted data to the master data, such as sold-to party, ship-to party, and product. This helps ensure the extracted data from the PDFs makes sense in the context of Serax’s business.

A sales order request is created, and the customer service employee is notified to review it and convert it into an actual sales order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Results

The application has cut the number of manual B2B orders by 33%.

The time saved lets Serax invest back into better customer service. “Time savings mean our customer service employees can spend more time on real customer service instead of putting in an order,” says Ragna Qvick, digital business manager and HR performance manager at Serax. Serax’s employees also have more time for value-adding activities like upselling or cross-selling.

This jump in efficiency enables Serax to grow its business by adding more capacity for the team. “We either needed more resources or for our existing people to become more efficient so that they can focus on more value-adding tasks for our customers,” Goris says.

Another benefit of automation is reduced errors, as customer service employees no longer need to enter precise values from the PDF when creating sales orders. Instead, they can rely on document extraction to populate the order; they only need to confirm the values. “It reduces the risk of errors because when it’s a human action, there’s always a chance of errors in quantities or other details,” Qvick says.

Future

Serax and its partner Flexso are already looking at additional capabilities to automate the flow fully. This way, customer service employees will no longer need to open the emails and drag and drop the PDF. “We have a proof of concept running to automate the process fully. It will pick up the attachment from the mailbox directly into SAP S/4HANA,” Goris says. “It will also inform the customer service rep if anything is missing. They get a notification via Situation Handling to know when to intervene.”

Learn more about how SAP Business AI can help transform your organization’s efficiency and help drive success:

• SAP Business AI
• SAP Business Technology Platform
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition