Why Partnerships Win: Practitioners, AI Providers & Domain Experts

AgileOne's Beyond the Horizon executive forum in London wasn't just another procurement event. It raised the bar, exploring how procurement, workforce strategy, and technology are fundamentally reshaping how work is sourced and delivered. Discussions highlighted how procurement is at the center of it all, not just managing suppliers, but shaping how work and the workforce come together. Every procurement decision is now a workforce decision, balancing cost, speed, and quality across flexible delivery models.

Our CEO, Kevin Frechette, took the stage and delivered a powerful keynote, sharing a clear message to the room: the anxiety surrounding AI is legit. It's just misplaced. Instead of reacting with fear, procurement professionals need to realize that AI doesn't replace their best people; it multiplies them.

Here's a recap of Kevin's insights on how to harness this "Multiplier Effect" to scale speed and rigor in modern procurement.

The Multiplier Effect: Scaling Speed and Rigor in Modern Procurement

Sourcing and procurement professionals are currently operating under immense pressure from all directions. Finance teams are demanding more proactive strategies, end-users are expecting a frictionless experience, enterprise data remains siloed, and "build vs. buy" conversations are becoming increasingly complex. Adding to this challenge is the need to evaluate AI solutions themselves, where balancing speed and risk is exceptionally difficult.

However, AI also presents the ultimate solution to these pressures. Far from being just another software tool, AI acts as a catalyst for capacity and capabilities. Consider the historical parallel of the spreadsheet: when Microsoft Excel launched, it didn't eliminate the accounting profession, it supercharged it. Since Excel's introduction, the number of U.S. CPAs actually increased by 40%, growing from 1 million to 1.4 million.

We call this the Multiplier Effect. In procurement, this effect is fundamentally reshaping how teams operate, delivering unprecedented advantages in two critical areas: speed and rigor.

Multiplier 1: Unprecedented Speed

For procurement teams, the ability to execute complex sourcing events quickly is a significant competitive advantage. Leading enterprises are currently leveraging AI to compress their evaluation cycles dramatically.

These are not simple, off-the-shelf software purchases; enterprises are evaluating highly complex AI agents and supply chain optimization tools in incredibly short windows. Recent examples include:

• 7 days: A top 10 global pharma company evaluated an AI calling/voice agent platform.
• 11 days: A leading digital financial services institution evaluated AI strategy and governance tools.
• 14 days: A global e-commerce leader sourced an AI-powered candidate screening platform.
• 26 days: A global telecommunications leader evaluated a procurement workflow orchestration platform.
• 32 days: A building materials leader sourced AI video telematics for fleet safety.

Multiplier 2: Uncompromised Rigor

In traditional procurement, speed without rigor creates significant risk. However, leading enterprises are using AI to achieve both simultaneously.

The organizations adopting technology the fastest are not skipping their due diligence; they're using AI assistance and automation to complete it faster and more thoroughly. Enterprise teams are executing real AI evaluations, analyzing complex criteria like security, architecture, governance, integration, scalability, support, and implementation, with AI assisting in generating more detail, securing better responses, and enabling faster decisions.

Real AI Transformation in the Procurement Workflow

The theoretical benefits of AI are impressive, but the practical, day-to-day impact on procurement workflows is truly transformative.

1. SOW Drafting‍

Before AI, writing Statements of Work (SOWs) typically took days, suffered from inconsistent quality or missed requirements, and required endless back-and-forth.

After AI: procurement professionals can take a draft to a stakeholder-ready document in a fraction of the time, with far greater specificity. The average SOW creation time has now plummeted to just 8 minutes.

2. Supplier Evaluations

‍Historically, supplier evaluations stalled because the main bottleneck wasn't the effort itself, but internal alignment and data synthesis.

After AI: by using AI to structure inputs and pull the right signals from the right stakeholders, teams are seeing an 85% reduction in cycle time.

The Blueprint for Autonomous Sourcing

This evolution is driving the industry toward Autonomous Sourcing, a seamless experience powered by AI and specialized agents. This interconnected workflow optimizes every step of the process:

• Demand Capture & Clarifying Requests: GenAI intake and scope agents lower cycle times and reduce the effort required to align with business users.
• Setting up RFx: GenAI and agentic RFx builders lower organizational risk.
• Evaluating: Scenario and analysis agents significantly increase the effectiveness of the final vendor selection.

Ultimately, this allows procurement teams to transition from limited capabilities (managing guided, reactive intakes from business users) to an unlimited paradigm, where AI proactively reviews, surfaces, sources, and optimizes organizational spend.

The 5 Stages of Total Agentic Sourcing

Organizations looking to benchmark their progress can reference the five stages of sourcing maturity, moving from fragmented processes to total sourcing:

1. Reactive Purchasing – Manual processes with virtually no competitive events (<5% competitive).
2. Digitized Sourcing – E-sourcing tools are utilized, but typically only for strategic spend (10–30% competitive).
3. Intelligent Tail Spend – Progressive enterprises use AI to scale sourcing specifically for tail spend (40–60% competitive).
4. Unified RFx – Market leaders run all spend through a unified, AI-enhanced workflow (70–85% competitive).
5. Agentic Workforce – Industry pioneers deploy specialized agents for comprehensive evaluation and beyond (90%+ competitive).

By embracing the Multiplier Effect, procurement leaders can shift from simply managing processes to strategically building the future of their organization's spend.

The way work gets done is shifting, and Fairmarkit and AgileOne prove that when we connect intelligent workforce strategy with the Multiplier Effect, we can bring structure, visibility, and control to the full enterprise ecosystem.

Stop reacting with fear. Start moving with intention.

Want to learn how your team can move from fragmented processes to total autonomous sourcing? Get in touch with us to talk about real AI transformation in the procurement workflow.

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