Procurement has been evolving for decades but a new leap in technology is set to change the game again. Enter agentic AI: a form of artificial intelligence that doesn’t just analyze or automate, but acts.
It’s not just futuristic tech, it’s here and already a practical solution to the mounting pressure procurement teams face every day, from cutting costs and driving compliance to scaling operations without scaling headcount.
So what exactly is agentic AI, and why is it set to hit procurement KPIs in 2025 and beyond?
What Is Agentic AI?
Agentic AI refers to AI systems that act autonomously to achieve defined goals. These intelligent agents can reason, learn, adapt, and execute tasks without needing constant human instruction.
Think: not a chatbot waiting for a prompt, but an assistant who proactively kicks off a sourcing event, tracks vendor responses, and flags delays before you even realize there’s an issue.
In practice, agentic AI can:
- Initiate procurement workflows automatically
- Orchestrate multi-step processes like sourcing, approvals, or compliance checks
- Adapt to policy, pricing, or stakeholder changes in real-time
- Optimize decisions based on organizational goals and constraints
Agentic AI and the Procurement KPIs That Matter Most
Agentic AI is a practical solution, purpose-built to move the KPIs that matter most to procurement leaders. Here's how:
Cost savings & cost avoidance
Pain Point: Manual sourcing is slow, inconsistent, and often reactive, leading to missed opportunities and maverick spend.
Agentic Impact: Agents can proactively identify savings opportunities (e.g., alternate suppliers, bundling opportunities) and auto-launch sourcing events to capture value.
How Fairmarkit Helps: Our agents can bundle purchases for volume discounts and quickly analyze bids for cost, delivery, and quality—cutting sourcing time and surfacing the best-value options.
Cycle time reduction
Pain Point: Stakeholders complain about procurement delays. Teams spend days chasing approvals or supplier responses.
Agentic Impact: Agents track and escalate stalled workflows, auto-nudge stakeholders, and reduce back-and-forth. Shorter cycles mean faster time-to-value.
How Fairmarkit Helps: Our Demand Intake agent gathers the right info from requesters and auto-routes P2P or ERP requests to the right workflows. Our Scope of Work Builder cuts creation time to just minutes.
Compliance & policy adherence
Pain Point: Rogue spend and inconsistent process execution jeopardize compliance and create audit risk.
Agentic Impact: Agents enforce policy at the point of need (e.g., routing requests correctly, flagging out-of-policy vendors), all while learning and improving over time.
How Fairmarkit Helps: Demand Intake guides requesters toward compliant vendors, categories, and workflows, ensuring policy adherence from the first click.
Supplier diversity & risk mitigation
Pain Point: Limited visibility and capacity mean supplier diversity goals and risk thresholds often go unchecked.
Agentic Impact: Agents can continuously scan supplier data, recommend more inclusive or lower-risk options, and monitor vendor performance in real-time.
How Fairmarkit Helps: Our supplier recommendation engine (KIT) surfaces vendors based on company rules and vendor engagement to bring competitive and quality sourcing options to procurement teams.
Procurement team efficiency
Pain Point: High workload + low bandwidth = burnout and bottlenecks.
Agentic Impact: By handling repeatable tasks, agentic AI lets procurement focus on strategic work, like supplier collaboration and category innovation.
How Fairmarkit Helps: From auto-launching events to drafting SOWs and managing intake, Fairmarkit’s agentic workflows reduce manual effort across the board.
Why now? Why procurement?
Procurement is at a turning point.
For years, teams have chipped away at inefficiency with automation and analytics. But with rising stakeholder expectations, constrained budgets, and increasing complexity, incremental improvements aren’t enough. The next leap forward requires technology that doesn’t just assist, but acts.
That’s exactly what agentic AI delivers.
And leading procurement teams aren’t waiting.
- Forward-thinking organizations are already using agentic workflows to automate intake-to-sourcing, route requests based on business rules, and proactively surface new savings opportunities.
- High-performing CPOs are prioritizing AI that can scale with complexity without adding headcount.
- Market leaders are turning to agentic AI to meet aggressive KPIs and free up their teams for higher-value strategy and supplier innovation.
The message is clear: those who adopt early will outpace those who don’t.
Procurement teams that resist this shift risk falling behind not just in speed, but in relevance. Because as agentic AI becomes the new standard, traditional tools (and processes) won’t be enough to keep up.
Closing: The Future Belongs to the Proactive
Agentic AI isn’t science fiction, it’s already driving real change in procurement.
At Fairmarkit, we’re building agentic workflows that take the manual, repetitive work off your plate and put intelligent, goal-oriented AI to work across sourcing, intake, and supplier management. These agents don’t just automate steps, they understand context, adapt to change, and keep your procurement engine running at full speed.
The result? Smarter decisions, faster cycles, and more strategic impact with less strain on your team.
Agentic AI is the next evolution of procurement technology and Fairmarkit is at the forefront.
Because in procurement, standing still means falling behind.
