2 min read
Stop Buying Technology. Start Changing the Operating Model
Art of Procurement : September 23, 2026
“AI makes the answers cheaper, so the good questions and good judgment really become the coin of the realm.” - Mason Morgan, Managing Director, Managing Director at CrossCountry Consulting focusing on AI and innovation in S2P
Procurement has invested heavily in technology over the last decade, but the results haven’t always lived up to expectations. New platforms and AI-powered tools can improve processes, automate work, and make information easier to access, but they can’t fix unclear ownership, outdated policies, or processes that were never designed for the way the business works today.
I recently spoke with Mason Morgan, Managing Director at CrossCountry Consulting focusing on AI and innovation in S2P and a judge for the 2027 ProcureTech100, about where procurement technology transformations tend to go wrong, what successful AI adoption looks like, and how procurement’s role and skills may change as technology takes on more of the work.
Why do organizations still struggle to realize value from procurement technology?
“I think a lot of failed technology ROI is because companies still approach technology programs as tech-only implementations. To get the highest ROI and sustain it over time, companies really need to treat programs as operating model changes that have tech as a component, albeit an important one.”
What separates organizations creating value with AI from those still experimenting?
“The first difference is organizations that have created demonstrable value, they're starting with a business outcome, not with AI. There's still a lot of companies that I think are too focused on AI for the sake of AI. So the companies that have success have that discipline around identifying which value levers they care about, quantifying the baseline, and then defining some use cases that they can deploy against them and measuring the outcome.”
How will AI change the skills procurement professionals need?
“AI makes the much larger body of accumulated knowledge obviously easier to access. So the differentiator is more around nuance, contextual judgment, being able to connect procurement decisions to business outcomes. Everyone needs to have some base level of AI fluency in terms of understanding how these systems work.”
How can teams tell when a process needs to be redesigned rather than automated?
“A simple test is: if we were creating the company, or at least our function, today with today's technology, would we want this process? Would we need this process?
And if the answer is ‘no,’ then you want to take a hard look at avoiding falling into that trap of just trying to automate or digitize something as is, and really ask some fundamental questions around: can we scrap this process entirely, or does it fundamentally need to be changed?”
Does procurement need to give up some process ownership as technology evolves?
“To me, there's a distinction between ownership and influence. I think procurement actually has to probably give up some ownership to gain more influence and actually have more of a tangible impact. The goal shouldn't be to touch more transactions. It's to have more spend that's well governed with less procurement intervention.”
If a CPO has limited transformation budget, where should they start?
“I know the premise of your question is if you had to pick one, but my answer would be don't pick one. Take whatever budget you have allocated to you over that 18-month window, and you can treat it as one macro initiative or effort that is broken up into phases.
I would first run, over the first 60 to 90 days, a small number of targeted AI pilots tied to measurable value. These shouldn't be random demos, ones that are going to deliver or have a high probability of delivering tangible value.
Then you set a baseline, measure the results. If they don't work, then you move on quickly. If they do, track the results so that you have a fact-based story to tell to justify the next one.”