Procurement teams are being asked to deliver more value amid constant disruption, as they manage tariffs, geopolitical shifts, energy volatility, and talent shortages.Procurement teams are being asked to deliver more value amid constant disruption, as they manage tariffs, geopolitical shifts, energy volatility, and talent shortages.
Procurement teams are being asked to deliver more value amid constant disruption, as they manage tariffs, geopolitical shifts, energy volatility, and talent shortages. Chief purchasing officers are facing intense productivity pressure, with roughly 70 percent targeting annual cost reductions of 2 percent to 5 percent, while top-quartile procurement teams push for 5 percent to 6 percent savings.
This is the context in which agentic AI is entering procurement. It should be viewed as an answer to structural constraints on cost, speed, and talent, not as a futuristic add-on.
AI agents can now run key parts of the sourcing lifecycle independently. They can scan historical spend, build supplier long lists, launch RFQs, compare bids, and flag commercial or contractual anomalies in just minutes.
In fashion, where thousands of SKUs and seasonal resets compress decision timelines, this shift is particularly pronounced.
In the CPO Executive Insights survey, only about 5 percent of organizations report that AI is fully deployed across procurement, but 60 percent are in planning or pilot phases. Two-thirds already have a dedicated AI budget, often around 6 percent of total spend. Our experience suggests that organizations still running manual sourcing leave roughly 1 percent to 2 percent EBITDA on the table each year while competitors compound gains.
Leaders are using AI for higher-value levers such as market and risk analysis, while followers are still focusing on transactional efficiencies such as autonomous purchase order processing. The CPO Executive Insights survey indicates that the performance gaps are real. Organizations with more mature AI deployments are associated with an average EBITDA impact of 4.7 percentage points, compared with 3.6 for less mature peers.
The 2026 AlixPartners Disruption Index, polling executives across 11 countries and 10 industries confirms that disruption is now the operating baseline. Fifty-three percent of U.S. executives report high levels of disruption, and 61 percent say AI is already having a considerable impact on their business. Globally, CEOs expect 55 percent of job functions to be fully integrated with AI in the next five years. Leaders in AI adoption are significantly more likely to expect major business model change in the next year (52 percent versus 35 percent among laggards) and are more optimistic about AI’s potential (89 percent versus 64 percent).
Crucially, AI leaders also feel more disrupted. They are 11 points more likely to report being highly disrupted, precisely because they are moving faster and understand how quickly the goalposts are shifting. AI is becoming the dividing line between companies that adapt and those that fall behind.
Fashion and apparel make these pressures more visible than most sectors. Supply chains were built for speed and cost efficiency. Crossing multiple continents and running on tight seasonal timelines, they were never designed to absorb this level of volatility. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are global geopolitical events showing up in fabric costs, freight surcharges, and compressed margins. Tariffs, energy volatility, and shifting trade policy have become active inputs into sourcing decisions.
In apparel, procurement is no longer a sourcing function. The companies that manage this well have repositioned it as a strategic capability—one that actively reallocates production, manages exposure across geographies and defends margin. In today’s environment, geopolitical risk doesn’t sit above the line item. It’s embedded in every SKU.
For all the automation potential, CPOs still say their biggest barriers to hitting savings targets are fundamentally human, including poor forecasting, stakeholder misalignment, and change resistance. More than three-quarters of CPOs cite supply disruption risk as a top external concern, and cyber risk now outranks even tariffs and availability as the most concerning supplier-related risk.
AI is powerful at pattern recognition and workflow execution, but it cannot build trust with a strategic supplier in a politically sensitive market, navigate internal politics when a business unit resists standardization, or make ethical trade‑offs when a low‑cost source carries ESG or reputational risk.
These complex areas are best navigated by people with situational context and judgment.
Procurement “leaders” surveyed in the AlixPartners CPO study manage a higher share of spend, pull more advanced cost levers (like specification simplification and supplier innovation), and show stronger business alignment.
The professional who blends these skills may be considered the augmented procurement leader. They recognize the value of AI agents as digital workforce members, freeing them to spend more time on developing strategy, building influence, and creating resilience.
Examples include using AI to rapidly surface opportunities in tail spend, then leading the negotiation and stakeholder alignment to capture them; letting AI perform first-pass contract reviews, while procurement and legal jointly decide which risks are acceptable in context; and deploying multi‑tier risk analytics powered by AI but relying on human judgment to redesign the supply base and operating model.
Growth leaders across industries are already behaving this way. In the Disruption Index, 73 percent of growth leaders have switched suppliers or trading partners in response to tariffs, and 55 percent have increased capital expenditure to reposition their supply chain, using AI and analytics as core enablers.
Data from both surveys tell a consistent story. The greatest risk to procurement is not the replacement of humans but the structural outcompeting of organizations and professionals who fail to adopt and master AI. Only around 5 percent of CPOs say AI is fully deployed in procurement today. There is still a narrow window for fast followers to catch up, but it may be closing fast.
In the era of AI-driven productivity, manual, spreadsheet-driven sourcing will not be able to compete. The future belongs to procurement organizations that successfully pair AI agents with humans providing judgment and understanding.
AI adoption will change expectations for what procurement can deliver and shift the value it creates. Differentiated teams will move from running processes to shaping outcomes.
In increasingly complex environments, they will influence demand, redesign specifications, manage risk, and capture value. Embedding AI into the core of procurement will drive incremental savings while structurally improving margins, speed, and resilience. This directly impacts assortment decisions, pricing architecture, and promotional intensity, linking procurement and sourcing decisions to both the top line and margin.
Catherine Nekavand, partner at AlixPartners, and Abhi Goel, director at AlixPartners, work in the firm’s Sourcing and Procurement Transformation Practice. Catherine is an expert in luxury and beauty, specializing in helping brands navigate disruption, drive growth, and elevate desirability. Abhi has extensive experience in both Procurement and Technology and drives value for clients with S2P digitalization and efficiency engagements.
