“If your only role is cost management and processes, that’s scary to me. The value of procurement is so much more than that.”
-Etosha Thurman, Chief Marketing Officer, Finance & Spend Management at SAP
Procurement is entering a new era… one where the expectations of the business are rising fast and the capabilities of technology are finally catching up.
While cost management will always be a core part of the job, leaders must now be able to support top-line growth, foster resilience, and drive innovation across the enterprise.
To help unpack what this looks like in day-to-day practice, I recently spoke with Etosha Thurman, Chief Marketing Officer, Finance and Spend Management at SAP. From her early sourcing days at P&G to her role today leading solution strategy at SAP, Etosha offers a rare blend of operational grounding and strategic foresight.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation, in her own words, with some thoughts from me on what it all means for procurement teams today.
Procurement’s Split Personality: Cost Managers vs. Business Drivers
“I really think there’s going to be the separation of the function into cost management... and then those who are really business drivers and are finding ways to drive, because what they’re doing is phenomenal – it’s so far-reaching and so different than the conversations that I have with people who are cost managers.”
I’ve seen this divide firsthand. There’s a growing gap between those who view procurement as a sourcing engine and those who are embedding procurement deeper into the business. The latter group is focusing on customer outcomes, working across silos, and tying their work directly to commercial performance. CPOs need to ask themselves: which side of that split are we really on?
Three Paths for AI: Assist, Augment, Autonomize
“Assist, Augment, and Autonomize are the three areas where I see the market really looking at leveraging AI to deliver value to procurement... for example, you don’t need to create a sourcing event... the technology can fully create and execute the sourcing event.”
Etosha breaks down AI into three categories that I think are incredibly useful for planning: assistive tools that support the day-to-day, augmentation that improves our strategic thinking, and automation that can run full processes. The key for leaders is to figure out where human input still creates the most value and design team structures and workflows accordingly.
Decentralization Is Back… But With a Twist
“AI will drive, if not a more decentralized model, it’ll strengthen that hybrid where your tools may be centralized, but the contextualization is super close to the business.”
This is one of the most important takeaways. The promise of centralized systems has always been efficiency, but in a world where speed and contextual decision-making are critical, local empowerment matters more than ever. AI will make it possible to deliver global insight while acting locally – provided teams are equipped with the skills and proximity to make smart decisions in the moment.
Want More Investment? Tell a Better Story
“We did a survey of skills for CPOs with The Economist, and storytelling was one of the things that they were most uncomfortable with... it speaks to why procurement gets 1% of budget or less.”
Procurement leaders often default to reporting savings. But that’s not what the business is looking for. Storytelling – grounded in real business language, outcomes, and relevance – is what elevates the perception of procurement. It’s how you get funding, executive sponsorship, and influence. If your team is doing meaningful work, but no one knows about it, it’s time to fix the narrative.
What Data Correlation Could Unlock
“I don’t know that we can even imagine the type of insights we’re going to have in a year’s time... we’ve never been able to correlate data the way we’ll be able to in the future.”
This statement stuck with me. As AI evolves, the real game-changer may not be better dashboards but the emergence of patterns we couldn’t see before. When procurement can link supply decisions to customer behavior, product demand, or even employee satisfaction, we’ll have a new kind of influence entirely. But it will require curiosity, openness, and a willingness to let go of some of our traditional ways of working.
Etosha’s perspective reminds me that the future of procurement won’t be defined by tools alone. It will be shaped by the leaders who know how to wield them in the service of real business value.
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