At the end of 2025, LinkedIn procurement influencer Joel Collin-Demers—who uses the social network as a platform to build visibility and reach potential customers—put forward a rather radical idea that sparked discussion across the procurement community (nearly 60 comments). You’ll find a link to the LinkedIn post at the end of this article.

Why is saving money no longer enough? Most of us who started out in purchasing in the last century remember the heroic tales of brilliant managers who managed to reduce costs by tens of percent through a combination of market power, toughness, and cunning. In this golden age of cost killers, purchasing was judged almost exclusively by parameters such as hard savings, acceleration of the purchasing process, reduction of administrative costs, and reducing the number of buyers. Unfortunately, hard savings cannot be made indefinitely.

Digital procurement is changing – flexibility, the cloud, and mobility are now key.

When people talk about the impact of AI, most companies think of sales, marketing, or internal business processes.