AI, Risk and Productivity Pressures Are Reshaping Procurement Priorities

Procurement and supply chain leaders began the year under mounting pressure to manage growing workloads, mitigate escalating geopolitical and cybersecurity risks, and shift from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale — all without additional staff or budget.

Those findings emerged from The Hackett Group’s 2026 Procurement Agenda and Key Priorities report. The findings were presented during a recent Institute for Supply Management^® (ISM^®) webinar with Chris Sawchuk, principal and global procurement advisory practice leader at The Hackett Group, the Miami-based advisory and consultancy.

He described 2026 as a year of volatility and opportunity, shaped by economic uncertainty and rapid technological change.

“Procurement organizations must determine (1) how to support business stakeholders, (2) achieve enterprise goals, such as doing more with less, and (3) enable AI within their environments,” Sawchuk said during the webinar.

Ensuring supply continuity emerged as the top procurement priority for 2026, reflecting lessons learned since the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing concerns about tariffs and disruptions. Spend cost reduction ranked second, consistent with its long-standing role among procurement’s core responsibilities.

Deploying AI-enabled technology placed third, a significant shift from previous years when AI was viewed primarily as experimental. “It’s not that AI was not important in 2025,” Sawchuk said. “But I truly believe that 2026 is a turning point for us in procurement.”

Transforming the operating model ranked fourth, driven largely by AI’s potential to reshape workflows, organizational structures and decision-making.

“This is a full rethinking of this operating model,” Sawchuk said. “It’s the re-architecting of your human capital, your processes, your technology, your data infrastructure.”

Other top priorities included acting as a strategic advisor to the business, improving agility, strengthening analytics, managing third-party risk and increasing operational speed. Sawchuk noted that speed is gaining prominence as organizations adopt orchestration technologies that better connect data, systems and people.

“Orchestration drives not only an improved experience, but also a speed and improved velocity,” he said.

Companywide-level objectives are increasingly focused on growth and customer outcomes, a shift that continues to redefine procurement’s role beyond traditional cost containment.

Customer satisfaction ranked as the top organizational priority in the study — called a high priority by 72 percent of businesses surveyed — particularly as it relates to retention and long-term relationships. Product innovation and increased market penetration also scored highly, signaling heightened expectations for procurement to enable growth and differentiation.

“The focus on customer satisfaction is No. 1,” Sawchuk said. “This is the external customer and the experience that we’re creating with those customers.”

Cybersecurity Tops Risk Concerns

On the risk side, cybersecurity once again emerged as the leading enterprise concern for 2026, with 50 percent of respondents identifying it as a major concern, and an additional 37 percent saying it’s a moderate concern.

Trade wars, geopolitical instability and broader economic uncertainty also ranked high, reflecting continued unease around tariffs and global supply disruptions.

AI also appeared prominently on the enterprise risk list — not because of its lack of promise, but because of the competitive consequences of lagging behind peers in adoption.

“The concern we have as organizations is that we may not move as fast,” Sawchuk said. “AI has the ability to leapfrog our competitors.”

That dual nature — AI as both opportunity and threat — is a recurring theme in the research. While executives see unprecedented potential to re-architect processes and operating models, they are also wary of data security, governance and uneven adoption across organizations.

AI Becomes the Dominant Transformational Force

Among long-term trends expected to have a transformational or disruptive impact on procurement, AI ranked first by a wide margin. Eighty percent of survey respondents identified AI-enabled technology as a critical trend, up sharply from the prior year.

While roughly half of organizations remain in early exploration or pilot stages, momentum is building toward broader deployment. Early value, Sawchuk said, is most visible in productivity, speed and faster decision-making, with broader returns expected as adoption expands.

“AI is No. 1; last year, AI was No. 2,” he said. “And what’s more solidified this year is the (certainty) of organizations see this as a critical trend, having a long-term, transformational and potentially even disruptive impact on our organizations.”

Digital procurement and automation (66 percent) followed. Deep real-time data and insights visibility — though ranked outside the top five trends, at 37 percent — was described as a critical enabler of AI success. “AI and digital are enabled significantly, and we won’t be as successful without the data foundation,” Sawchuk said.

The study also flagged supply chain resilience and innovation as high-impact trends for which many organizations feel underprepared, creating capability gaps procurement leaders will need to address.

Rising Workloads Collide With Flat Resources

Asked their top improvement initiatives for procurement, organizations most frequently cited data analytics and reporting, followed by AI-enabled technology. Strategic sourcing, category management and talent development rounded out the top five.

One of the most acute challenges facing procurement organizations in 2026 is a widening productivity gap. Survey respondents expect workloads to increase by roughly 10 percent compared with 2025, driven by higher transaction volumes and growing complexity across sourcing, compliance and risk management.

Meanwhile, staffing levels and operating budgets are expected to remain flat or slightly decline — a reversal from modest increases seen in previous years.

“We’re not going to hire more staff to take on this additional workload,” Sawchuk said. “And we’re not necessarily increasing our operating budgets.”

The result, he said, is greater reliance on technology to absorb demand, continuing a long-term “labor-for-technology swap” seen across enterprises. Technology investment is expected to rise by about 6 percent in 2026, outpacing spending on personnel, with much of that growth directed toward AI-enabled solutions.

(Image credit: Getty Images/Narvo Vexar)