In our final joint webinar of the year, CASME and WNS Procurement looked back at the trends and challenges that shaped the procurement landscape throughout 2024, reflected on key lessons learned, and shared insight into what 2025 has in store for procurement leaders and their teams.
When we hosted our end-of-year wrap up webinar with CASME at the end of 2023, our panellists and audience were heading into 2024 hopeful that we’d finally see a return to stability across the procurement landscape — or at the very least, less disruption.
As we now know, that isn’t how things panned out. 2024 has been another year of widespread market and supply chain turbulence. Geopolitical tensions have escalated into conflicts, climate events continue, and major government and policy changes now herald further big swings for commodity markets.
To make sure procurement leaders and their teams go into 2025 prepared, we recently hosted a panel webinar looking back at the biggest procurement trends of 2024, and what 2025 may have in store for us.
Our panel comprised:
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Terri Roscowski of Intel Corporation
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Alejandra Garcia of Flint Group
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Mita Gupta of WNS Procurement
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Chairperson: Graham Crawshaw of CASME
You can watch the full session on-demand in the 2025 Procurement Agenda Webinar.
Looking back at a turbulent 2024
Right from the off, the panel all agreed that the biggest theme of 2024 for procurement has been disruption — with some members candidly exploring the financial and operational impact that’s had on their organisations.
“The only constant for us at Intel has been change,” said Terri. “That change has caused a lot of turbulence, which has in turn made it very difficult for us to build both a resilient supply chain and a resilient workforce. So, for us, the biggest lessons have been around the need for robust execution and cost cutting.”
Those twin pressures of maintaining short-term stability and profitability while also driving progress towards long-term goals were echoed by Alejandra. “On the one hand we have seen a lot of demand for greater cost efficiency, but there’s also been a lot of pressure to drive long-term priorities like sustainability and regulatory compliance,” she explained. “With so much to take care of, a lot of procurement KPIs have been falling through the cracks. So, looking ahead we need to refocus and make sure our teams are equipped to continuously deliver value in core ways.”
Mita then reflected on what organisations need if they want to continuously deliver value during times like these. “As we saw in 2024, whether it’s geopolitical tensions, climate events, or economic instability, we’re not going to stop being disrupted. So, you need to build the resilience and agility to deal with those things and keep moving forward.”
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Key trend #1: The rise of AI
After giving an overview of the year, the panel then started to dive into some of the specific trends that have had a transformational impact on how procurement teams operate in 2024. The first was the sharp growth we’ve seen in adoption of AI tools to support procurement processes.
“Procurement teams are highly motivated to adopt AI, but not always for the right reasons,” said Alejandra. “Many want to reduce headcount, but this really shouldn’t be the focus. They must use it to augment their teams and improve their capabilities, rather than looking to replace people.”
That sentiment was echoed by Mita who explained, “To get the maximum value from AI, you need four things; the right resources, data, technology, and training. This isn’t about replacing people, it’s about enabling them to get the most from new capabilities that can help them achieve more in less time. That’s how you build agility and resilience — by empowering people to respond faster and more effectively to trends using emerging technology like AI.”
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Key trend #2: Meeting shifting ESG aims
When asked about their ESG priorities this year in a live poll, the most common answer from our audience was working closely and collaborating with suppliers and all relevant stakeholders to make ESG and sustainability a focus across procurement.
Building on her thoughts from earlier in the session, Alejandra explained, “In 2025, the tension between short-term uncertainty and the long-term nature of ESG efforts will be a challenge. The only way we can overcome and address that is by enabling close collaboration between all stakeholders and giving procurement teams the insight they need to make informed decisions quickly and effectively.”
“At Intel, we have a function dedicated to ESG,” said Terri. “So, for us, all we need to do is ensure that function is able to consistently collaborate with procurement, and that procurement teams make decisions in line with those made in the ESG function.”
However, this collaboration could become more challenging in the near future, especially in regions like the US where a change in administration could impact organisations’ ESG priorities. “Our new administration could lead some companies to change their ESG focus,” said Mita. “But, some things won’t change. They’ll still need to find ways of building supplier diversity, tracking scope 3 emissions, and balancing cost-savings with ESG.”
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Key trend #3: Navigating tough economic conditions
Collaboration continued to be a key theme as the panel turned their attention towards the final major challenge from 2024 – the difficult economic conditions we’ve faced.
“To mitigate the impacts of economic downturn and market shrinkage, companies and their suppliers need to pull together” remarked Terri. “We had to make a few downsizing decisions, which had a knock-on impact on our suppliers. So, we had to work every closely with them to ensure that those cutbacks didn’t impact their own business continuity, and by extension their ability to deliver for us.”
Preparing for 2025 and beyond
In the final poll of the session, our audience reported that their top three priorities and challenges for the coming year are:
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Managing and optimising cost
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Maintaining business continuity
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Balancing cost with ESG priorities
That certainly didn’t come as a surprise to our panel. “It’s absolutely right to see that a lot of procurement’s future focus is on impacting profit and loss,” said Alejandra. “We need to be quick to react to all of these disruptive forces and make sure that we can keep up with an accelerated pace of change. This is where technology can help massively by creating and ingesting information and enabling us to focus on execution.”
Building on that thought, Mita explored how teams can build the capabilities they need to succeed in 2025 and beyond. “You need a data-first approach that enables you to respond to these things and understand their impacts at speed. But importantly, you don’t need to do all of this alone. You can work with someone that helps you understand the massive amount of tech out there and which are the right options to solve your challenges..”
Terri reminded us that throughout all of that change, it’s also important to spend a lot of time with your stakeholders and ensure that they’re empowered and supported to make the most of whatever technologies you deploy. That’s the key to turning technology and insight into real procurement impact, and ultimately, greater business agility and resilience.
If you’d like to hear more, the 2025 Procurement Agenda Webinar is available. Or if you’d like to discuss your own procurement challenges heading into 2025 and learn how WNS Procurement could help you overcome them, talk to us today.