Building the Procurement Team of the Future in the AI Era

Procurement is scaling. Processes aren't keeping up. Most teams spend the majority of their time on follow-ups, approvals, and coordination - not strategy. As companies grow, that "coordination tax" quietly compounds until it becomes unsustainable. Rajiv Ramanan has a front-row view into how this plays out. As Co-Founder of Spendflo, he's worked closely with procurement and finance teams across high-growth companies seeing firsthand where coordination overload replaces strategy, and what it takes to fix it. In this session, he shares: Why procurement gets stuck in operational overload as companies scaleHow to identify which processes are actually AI-readyWhat to automate vs. deliberately keep humanHow forward-looking teams are restructuring for strategic impact You'll leave with a clear framework to identify your first 2–3 workflows to automate. The future of procurement isn't less human. It's more strategic.