“Sometimes you just need to recognize that getting from the baseline, whatever your baseline, to the next step… that's really significant.”- Jyothi Hartley, Director of Digital Enablement, AOP
Over the past few years, I’ve watched the procurement technology market evolve at a pace that few organizations are truly prepared for. New platforms are launching constantly. AI capabilities are expanding faster than it seems we can keep up. Promises of exponential transformation are everywhere.
And yet, when I speak with procurement leaders, the conversations are often far more grounded. They’re not asking about the next shiny object. Instead, they’re asking what will actually work in their unique environment, with their culture, and at their current level of maturity.
That tension is exactly why we’ve launched the ProcureTech Insider, a brand-new podcast series from Art of Procurement.
Through our work with ProcureTech100, we’ve had a front-row seat to the innovation happening across the solution provider community. There is no shortage of creativity or ambition in this space.
At the same time, we’ve also seen how overwhelming the landscape can feel for procurement teams trying to make confident, well-informed decisions. Technology alone doesn’t create transformation. It never has. What makes the difference is how well solutions are implemented, how clearly tradeoffs are understood, and how effectively teams are supported through change.
I’ve had countless conversations over the last few years with CPOs and digital leaders who feel the pressure to modernize quickly while still delivering results today. Many are balancing legacy systems, evolving stakeholder expectations, and resource constraints.
These procurement leaders don’t need more hype or more options. They need clarity. They need insight from people who have been through implementation, who understand the friction points, and who can speak honestly about what worked and what didn’t.
The ProcureTech Insider exists to bring those conversations to the surface.
In this new podcast series, we’ll talk to practitioners implementing technology inside their organizations, solution providers building next-generation capabilities, and experts who evaluate what truly delivers impact in practice. We’ll explore the real tradeoffs behind technology decisions and the lessons learned (good and bad) when plans don’t unfold exactly as expected. The goal isn’t to showcase perfection. It’s to share reality.
This inaugural episode sets the tone for what you can expect. Jyothi Harley, our Director of Digital Enablement, and I talk about what digital transformation actually looks like inside procurement teams.
Jyothi brings more than 25 years of experience across practitioner, transformation, and advisory roles. Her perspective reinforces something I’ve come to believe deeply over the course of my procurement career: there is no universal playbook for procurement transformation. Context matters. Culture matters. Timing matters. Often, the most significant progress comes not from sweeping change, but from thoughtful, incremental steps that align with where an organization truly is.
Launching the ProcureTech Insider also reflects a broader evolution in how we support the procurement community. As the technology landscape becomes more complex, our responsibility is not just to highlight innovation but to help leaders interpret it. That means separating signal from noise by asking better questions and creating space for honest dialogue about what digital enablement asks of us.
The future of procurement will undoubtedly be shaped by technology; we can’t get around that. But the success of that future depends on the decisions leaders make today. With the ProcureTech Insider, our intention is simple: to create a forum where those decisions can be informed by real-world experience rather than marketing promises.
This first episode is just the beginning of that conversation.
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