AI BY THE NUMBERS
By SABIH ROZALES , Architect, ORO Labs Procurement is entering a new operating era. After years of incremental automation, recent results from the first wave of large-scale AI deployments show promise. Teams are seeing faster cycles, fewer errors, and compliance that’s built across everyday workflows. This acceleration is happening because leaders are moving past experimentation and building governed, workflow-embedded AI that standardizes decisions and removes friction. OpenAI crossed one million business customers in 2025, reflecting this broader shift toward mature, governed adoption instead of small-scale pilots. In procurement specifically, 59% of organizations plan to innovate through technology. Three recent deployments show how this new operating era is taking shape. 16 MINUTES Requisition review times at Novartis, down from 5 days 1. Speeding cycle Times Cycle time has long constrained procurement capacity. Novartis, a multinational life sciences company managing thousands of purchase requests each month, faced chronic bottlenecks. Reviews took up to five days, required extensive manual oversight, and frequently delayed downstream work. To address this, Novartis deployed an AI-powered review agent that automatically checks requisitions for accuracy, identifies risk, flags duplicates, and routes requests to the right approvers. Review times dropped from five days to 16 minutes, accuracy improved 325%, and the team now manages 10 times the volume. Fortifying Procurement
Scoring AI in 2026 10/10
“Artificial intelligence—especially agentic AI and decision intelligence—won’t just be useful in supply chain management; it will be a 10/10 transformational differentiator. Organizations using decision intelligence to automate decisions, predict disruptions, and act in real time are already outpacing peers by 17% in customer satisfaction and 34% in operational efficiency. Falling behind isn’t an option.” GONZALO BENEDIT , Chief Revenue Officer, Aera Technology 8/10 “For the auto transport supply chain. Not for explosive breakthroughs, but for clearing the daily paper cuts that slow carriers and their teams down. Think fewer status checks, less manual data entry, and smoother, automatic updates. The real impact is quiet but meaningful, giving people time back and making auto transport operations faster, easier, and far less chaotic.” DAVE MENDELSON , Chief Product Officer, Super Dispatch 5/10 “In routing. AI in logistics routing (scheduling, routing, load planning) will bring incremental gains over existing software. The real breakthroughs will come from robots that can safely handle human-level loading and sorting tasks, and from vehicles using AI to cut collisions by up to 90% through advanced safety and autonomous systems. That is possible over the next
2. Uncovering Value GSK, a global biopharma company, reimagined its procurement model, focusing on speed, efficiency, and compliance. Using a platform branded
internally as “GSK I Need to Buy,” the company deployed intelligent AI agents to automate purchasing decisions for 25,000+ users. When employees upload supplier quotes, an opportunity agent analyzes
pricing, vendor history, and market data to identify savings or trigger competitive sourcing events. If a purchase is sole-sourced, a negotiation agent steps in to improve payment terms or lead times. This agent-driven model captures value from below- threshold spend categories that traditional teams lacked the capacity to address. The result: faster cycle times, stronger compliance, and increased savings without adding headcount. 3. Boosting Compliance Pfizer, a global biopharmaceutical company, faced high manual effort in compliance reviews, supplier onboarding, and payment verification. To streamline operations, Pfizer implemented a governed orchestration layer that automates its 26-point checklist and creates a single “front door” for all procurement intake. The company launched this system in three weeks, increasing oversight while reducing operational drag.
few years and scores a 9.” DR. STEFAN HECK , CEO, Nauto
150 Inbound Logistics • January 2026
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