How do you safely implement AI into your procurement activities?
The many benefits AI can bring to procurement organizations are well publicized – from fast, accurate horizon-scanning to greater productivity and improved supplier management. But these promises can only be fulfilled if AI is implemented intentionally, in the right areas, and with the right supporting foundations.
If you don’t integrate AI correctly, for the right purposes, and with the right guardrails and governance, you can introduce huge risks to your operations, including data privacy and regulatory compliance concerns, reputational damage, and additional costs.
So how do you make sure you get the benefits without the drawbacks?
In this article, we explore the risks AI can present and provide five top tips for implementing it successfully.
What role can AI play in procurement?
Before we investigate how to introduce AI without introducing risk, let’s examine the various use cases for AI in procurement activities.
Procurement has traditionally been slow to adopt emerging technologies, and AI is no exception. But in recent years, we’ve seen the technology adopted at scale – and we’re now nearing a time when we expect AI to be rolled out across all elements of the procure-to-pay process.
AI will play various roles across the procurement function. Automation will bring new efficiencies to tasks like invoice matching, payments processing, handling routine exceptions, and automating helpdesk interactions. This will free procurement professionals from mundane tasks, giving them time to focus their expertise on more value-adding activities.
Elsewhere, more traditional AI and machine learning can help find hidden patterns in data to reduce risk, identify opportunities, and forecast developments. This ability can help move the needle for procurement organizations, enabling a shift from reactive processes to more strategic and proactive work.
Generative AI also has a key role to play in generating and summarizing vast amounts of unstructured text. For instance, drafting contracts or helping to expedite scenario planning. And finally, agentic AI sees autonomous agents work alongside procurement experts through natural language interactions, while automating and orchestrating key processes.
What risks can AI pose to procurement organizations?
The benefits of these capabilities are numerous, from lower costs and better visibility to more efficient processes and fewer repetitive, time-consuming activities. But what are the risks?
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Is your data AI-ready?
For AI to work, it requires large amounts of clean, well-governed data from your key activities. And this is one area where many procurement organizations fall short.
A 2025 CPO survey by Gartner found that 74% of procurement leaders say their data is not AI-ready. The results of AI are only as good as the information you feed it, so this can be a huge concern – especially given how eager organizations now are to adopt the latest technology. Without the right foundations in place, you risk inaccurate and biased outputs that can derail progress.
It’s also vital to implement robust governance. AI requires storing, processing, and sharing huge amounts of information, sometimes across geographies. When that data is sensitive or confidential, any slips in security, compliance, privacy, or ethics can result in fines, reputational damage, and other significant repercussions.
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Where should you use AI in your procurement processes?
One of the biggest risks of adopting new capabilities is deploying them in the wrong place or for the wrong reasons. Like all technology investments, AI should never be integrated purely for the sake of integrating AI and keeping up with the crowd. Any investment should be carefully considered and aligned with the goals of the wider organization.
This takes a thorough understanding of what AI’s strengths and weaknesses are. But you also have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your talent to create a synergy between people and technology. That’s where AI will perform best, when it’s combined with HI (human intelligence).
Establishing where the lines are drawn is vital. Ask too little of AI, and you may not achieve the ROI you expected. Ask it to do too much without human supervision, and you may experience inaccurate results that have significant consequences on your procurement activities.
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How do you prepare your people for AI in procurement?
One element that can’t be overlooked when introducing a new technology into a workplace is change management. A lot of time is spent thinking about technological integration, but it’s essential to ensure your people understand the role AI will play, don’t fear being replaced, and have the knowledge and skills to make the most of it.
If you miss this step, or fail to communicate intentions properly, you may lose significant procurement expertise as people look for other opportunities.
How can procurement balance risk and opportunity with AI?
These challenges and inherent risks are vital to consider if you wish to get the most from your AI investment. And, if you tackle them correctly, there are huge benefits to be had. With that in mind, here are five tips for balancing risk and opportunity.
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Lay the groundwork
Make sure the right foundations are in place before you implement AI. You can’t skip straight to the last stage of digital procurement transformation, so start with the essentials. That means ensuring your systems and data sources are integrated, consistent, and able to speak to each other before you begin to think about adding new capabilities. This is also the time to lay the groundwork for robust governance, data privacy, and cyber security processes that will mitigate risk as you add new layers of capability.
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Ensure organizational alignment
Invest in AI with clear goals in mind. Ensuring any investment is aligned with key organizational challenges and objectives will produce the best ROI, so identify the areas that are most valuable to you and start small-scale investments there. A step-by-step approach will result in the quickest wins and help you identify best practices for a wider rollout later down the line.
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Provide education – everywhere
You’ll get the most from AI by using it to augment the existing expertise within your organization. Your procurement experts must be clear about the role AI will play, but also how to get the most from the tools at their disposal. Digital literacy training should be widespread, so everyone who needs to can analyse and interpret AI results. This change management process may also involve the introduction of new roles as more routine tasks are no longer needed, and more strategic or AI-aligned positions are. Get this right, and you can achieve the perfect balance between artificial and human intelligence.
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Find the right use cases
Once you’ve aligned investment with your priorities, and found a solution that can provide what you need, it’s important to establish exactly where AI’s limits should be. When should it be allowed to make autonomous decisions, for instance? And when should human supervision be required? Finding this balance is important for gaining maximum benefit, but also for avoiding the introduction of error and risk.
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Seek the right advice
The AI landscape is fast-moving and can be complicated to navigate. By finding an expert provider in your field, you don’t have to make all of these decisions yourself. Instead, you can rely on proven best practice gained from previous implementations. The right technology partner should be able to guide you on every step of your AI journey so you can experience the benefits with full peace of mind.
Ready to take the next step on your AI journey?
Wherever you are on your AI journey, WNS Procurement has the expertise and experience to help you uncover hidden insights, accelerate workflows, and futureproof your operations in an uncertain landscape.
To read more of our insights, visit here. If you’d like to talk about your specific needs, get in touch.