The five biggest procurement trends and transformations of 2025

How did procurement transform in 2025?

2025 was another year of widespread economic and supply chain disruption. Yet for many, it didn’t feel as chaotic as others in recent memory.

That’s not because fewer incidents and changes happened — far from it in fact. It’s largely due to the fact procurement leaders and their teams have finally adapted to “disruption as the default” and transformed how they operate to thrive in the face of sharp, continuous change.

Here are the five biggest ways that procurement teams evolved throughout 2025:

#1) CPOs unlocked the true value of AI for procurement

Hype around AI has been high since the turn of the decade. But 2025 was the year when thousands of procurement organizations finally harnessed its potential and started applying it in ways that delivered real, measurable business value.

Overly ambitious POCs gave way to far more practical AI use cases. Many of them were rooted in automation of manual Procure-to-Pay tasks, risk monitoring, and category insight and intelligence delivery.

Rather than replacing human intelligence and expertise, these use cases augment and amplify it. By striking the perfect balance of AI and Human Intelligence (HI), leading procurement organizations have achieved huge cost savings today and set themselves up for many successful years to come.

#2) Automation expanded everywhere

Procurement automation isn’t a new concept. But throughout 2025, we saw more tasks and elements across the source-to-pay process become automated than ever before. Manual administrative tasks such as document generation and management presented clear opportunities for automation. But numerous novel use cases appeared this year too.

By embedding automation at the data platform level, teams effectively outsourced some of procurement’s most complex category and risk monitoring tasks. Using AI, teams can now continuously and autonomously scan multiple horizons, and understand what’s happening across their supplier base, markets, and key procurement categories at all times.

Automatic alerts linked to those data points help ensure that human teams always know where their attention and intervention is needed most. So, not only is automation now giving humans more time to focus on strategic, value-adding tasks, it’s helping them keep a continuous eye on what those tasks should be.

#3) Procurement leaders refocussed on risk and resilience

Procurement’s evolution from a reactive cost-saving function into a proactive value creator took some big leaps forward in 2025. Equipped with the kind of proactive insight mentioned above, leaders have shifted their focus toward mitigating risk and building more resilient supplier strategies.

With AI-powered platforms and capabilities providing continuous insight into emerging risks across teams’ supplier bases and beyond, procurement decision-makers have been empowered to tackle that risk earlier, before it ever threatens their operations.

This seemingly small change has triggered a major cultural evolution for procurement. It’s no longer the team that helps the organization respond quickly when a crisis happens. It’s the team that spots threats first, and takes proactive steps to steer clear of them.

#4) Sustainability became a key factor in supplier and sourcing strategy

Deep supplier intelligence and insights aren’t just good for helping teams detect hidden risks across their supplier base. They’ve also proven extremely useful in procurement teams’ mission to meet crucial sustainability and ESG goals.

When it comes to factors like supply chain emissions and packaging and materials choices, the footprint of your operations is in the hands of your suppliers and partners. In the past, procurement teams have had to take partners at their word that they really do uphold the sustainability standards they claim to. Contracts helped enforce that somewhat, but limited visibility meant that ultimately, teams had very little control over the choices their suppliers made.

Now, with deeper supplier insight, procurement teams can make informed decisions about who to work with, and better understand which partners can truly help them achieve their sustainability goals. There’s no more guesswork — just hard data, supported by continuous monitoring that stops teams from relying on fixed snapshots of supplier performance.

#5) Thousands made the leap to real-time data and insight delivery

This is the technological thread that ties most of the year’s other key changes together. Supported by AI and real-time data flows, procurement leaders have enabled their teams to understand more of what’s really happening — both internally and externally — right now.

For decades, the procurement function has depended on historical snapshots of data. Even the best insights were extrapolated from trends which weren’t certain to continue. But with the growth in availability of real-time data and intelligence solutions, that’s now changed forever.

It means fewer “best guesses” and far more objective, data-driven decisions for experts at all levels of the function.

Stay ahead of what 2026 has in store for procurement

As you can see, a lot can change in a year. Follow the WNS Procurement blog to keep up with the latest trends and developments throughout 2026. And if you’d like to learn how we could help your procurement function prepare for an uncertain future today, visit here.