13 Popular Procurement Trends in 2025 & Beyond

As the old saying goes: “Time flies when Procurement is evolving at breakneck speeds in the face of unprecedented challenges and opportunities.” That’s right, it’s already 2025 – another year in this disruptive decade that continues to redefine the roles and value of Procurement & Sourcing.

From the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical conflicts to new regulations, the 2020s has been a non-stop gauntlet of new challenges for Procurement. But it’s also been an era of opportunities, particularly due to new innovative technologies that are transforming and reimagining Procurement & Sourcing.

That’s why staying ahead of the curve and understanding the trends shaping the future of Procurement is more essential than ever to navigate these turbulent times and unlock sustainable & strategic value. So just as did for 2023 and 2024, it’s time for another look at the popular Procurement trends for 2025 that will continue to redefine Procurement & Sourcing this year and beyond…

What Are the Trends in Procurement in 2025?

1. AI & GenAI

Okay, let’s just get this one out of the way. As we predicted in last year’s 13 Procurement Trends, the trend of AI & GenAI has been inescapable in 2024 – not only in Procurement, but everywhere we turn. From GenAI art, videos, and music flooding the internet, to AI being used for medical diagnoses and legal decisions, to ChatGPT being integrated into many of our everyday lives – it’s debatable whether AI & GenAI are even still a “trend” rather than a force of nature.

As we can see from Google Trends, the hype around AI has been steadily growing over the past few years and shows no signs of slowing down.

Beyond its popularity and cultural impact, the trend line looks the same when it comes to the value of the Artificial Intelligence industry, which has nearly doubled in the past two years and is expected to be worth $2.75 Trillion by 2032.

Before exploring the trend of AI & GenAI in Procurement, let’s first define the difference between these two exciting new technologies. In short, Traditional AI is used for analyzing data and making predictions, while GenAI is capable of analyzing data and creating new data – or Traditional AI takes your data and tells you what it sees, while GenAI uses your data to create something entirely new.

When it comes to Procurement & Sourcing, the hype around AI & GenAI has also been ubiquitous – with seemingly every event, webinar, blog, or LinkedIn post being about how this new, mysterious technology will transform the function. And it’s not just all talk. According to a 2024 survey by WNS Procurement, 49% of Procurement organizations have already implemented AI solutions into select processes.

And if nearly half of the industry already adopting AI technology isn’t impressive enough, this year’s Proxima Supply Chain Barometer found that a whopping 99% of global CEOs are actively or considering using AI across supply chains, while 82% are planning to continue or launch a form of AI in the next year. Now, if you’re one of the organizations who hasn’t implemented AI yet, don’t panic – only 22% of AI-adopters expect it to greatly impact in the same time frame. So there’s still time to catch up in the AI Arms Wars.

Though the industry is still exploring the full potential of AI and GenAI, there are already some areas where Procurement & Sourcing are expecting these innovative solutions to drive the most impact. According to a recent survey, the top 3 use cases for AI in Procurement are Supplier Management, Process Automation, and Demand Forecasting (WNS Procurement, 2024).

But before Procurement gets too excited about the potential of artificial intelligence, we need to have a little bit of a reality check:

Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that it’s given.

In computer science, this is called GIGO – “Garbage in, garbage out” – which is the concept that flawed, biased or poor quality ("garbage") information or input produces a result or output of similar ("garbage") quality. 

Artificial Intelligence is not some big red button that magically fixes all your problems. It needs data – and quality data – to analyze in order to do anything valuable.

And let’s face it, when it comes to data quality and management, there’s a lot of room for improvement in Procurement and Sourcing.

Which brings us to our next trend…

2. Supplier Information Management

Besides being the foundation for any AI technology, data is also the cornerstone of Procurement & Sourcing. At Kodiak Hub, we view Supplier Relationship Management through our SRM Pyramid, which all starts with Supplier Information Management:

But unfortunately, much of Procurement is still stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to Supplier Information Management. In 2023, our survey found that 76% of Procurement teams were still managing suppliers with Excel or homegrown solutions. This may explain why only 11% of Procurement pros feel that they have established, clear, and accurate spend and supplier insights (ArcBlue, 2024).

While Kodiak Hub has certainly empowered many teams master their Supplier Information Management in 2024 with our end-to-end SRM platform, Procurement nevertheless still has a data problems and needs to embrace more advanced and innovative technology that Excel and legacy solutions to navigate the future.

“Procurement must establish a single source of truth for data, with a single supplier record that S2P activity, third-party data and supplier-provided information is mapped to.” (CPO Compass, 2025).

In our 2024 whitepaper in collaboration with ProcureTech on elevating supplier performance, we explored how Procurement teams are leveraging data to unlock insights and intelligence, strengthen supplier relationships, and drive performance. Our surveys found that high-performing teams use a broad variety of solutions and data sources to manage supplier performance.

To give some inspiration, here’s an overview of all the data that can be leveraged and transformed into intelligence with Kodiak Hub’s end-to-end SRM system:

Circling back to the trend of AI & GenAI – for Procurement to truly embrace and unlock value from Artificial Intelligence, it will first require control over supply chain data as a prerequisite – from consolidating and managing existing data to capturing new untapped data sources through seamless integrations into a single source of truth with advanced analytics.

And as Procurement organizations start to get past the hype of AI and explore it’s reality, they’re realizing that smarter Supplier Information Management is essential if they don’t want to miss the AI train. That’s why we believe that 2025 will be the year of the Excel Exodus – when teams finally ditch those spreadsheets and scattered data siloes and begin leveraging new technology to embrace the power of Big Data and lay the foundation for the future.

But we’re not the only ones who see this Excel Exodus coming. According to PwC’s 2024 Digital Procurement Survey, Procurement has a targeted digitalization rate of 70% by 2027, and Procurement’s average annual investment in digitalization for 2024 will be around €1.2 Million. So after years of struggling to get the budget for new solutions, it seems that 2025 will be the year that adopting of new ProcureTech will skyrocket, with Supplier Information Management being the launchpad.

With that said, the growing pains of Procurement are far from over…

3. Building Procurement’s Case

Though that last few years have been painful for Procurement, its challenges and disruptions do have a silver lining as they have increased the importance and influence of Procurement & Supply Chain within organizations – a trend that is steadily increasing.

This year, Proxima’s Supply Chain Barometer shared that “A striking 96% of CEOs are set to spend the same (41%) or more (55%) time on supply chain-related topics this year.” WNS Procurement’s industry survey also found that “CPO’s influence on C-suite decision-making has increased in 91% of organizations,” with no respondents reporting a decrease.

But despite seeing elevated influence and increases in digitalization investment, Procurement leaders still feel that they lack the weight to make real impact in broader business decisions. “Despite the increased influence of CPOs over the past two years, 46% of respondents identified a lack of internal influence as the biggest challenge to achieving their procurement goals” (WNS Procurement, 2024).

This may be a crisis of confidence, but it could also be related to a misalignment in many procurement team’s ambitions vs. reality. Procurement may have promising ambitions and targets for digitalization, as shown from PWC’s 2024 Digital Procurement Survey:

But as we step into 2025, it’s clear that Procurement isn’t going to meet these target rates of digitalization for 76% of Transactional Processes and 69% of Strategic Processes – especially considering that Procurement teams only get 17% of the tech that they ask for (Gartner, 2024).

So why is Procurement still struggling to get the technology that they need?

Well, it’s not an easy task building the case for new technology. Your CFO doesn’t feel the pain, but they want to see the gain (ROI, COI). And it’s clear that a lot of teams struggle to develop business cases for even very foundational elements of their day-to-day operations, such as Supplier Management – where it was recently reported that only 23% of Procurement organization have been able to develop a business case for Supplier Management (State of Flux, 2024).

Unfortunately, this is the ProcureTech Catch-22: Procurement teams can’t get budget for new technology without showing ROI, but Procurement teams can’t show ROI on new technology without the budget to adopt new technology. And round and round it goes…

But 2025 will be the year that more Procurement teams finally escape this vicious cycle by finally being able to build the case for investment and digitalization. Although, it won’t be Procurement on its own. High-performing Procurement teams always create value with three things as their primary levels: People, Process, and Technology.

And it’s no different when it comes to building Procurement’s case for transformation. Showing the benefits, value, and ROI of new ProcureTech is a team effort that requires support from internal stakeholders and solution providers alike.

However, if building the case for Procurement isn’t already challenging enough, there’s also the challenge of choosing the right technology in a sea of solutions once that investment has been secured. Which brings us to our next trend for 2025…

4. User Centricity

Besides being the year of the Excel Exodus, 2025 will also be a new era of User-Centricity in Procurement – where we will see the expectations and demands of the User grow as hyper-functionality continues to be a constant in our day-to-day (personal & professional), especially from free applications. Amongst the noise of the ProcureTech market, pioneering new solutions with a focus on UX/UI will steer the future of Procurement, while the sleepy, legacy titans of the ProcureTech industry will fall behind.

Beyond intuitive User Experience, the seamless integration of systems and data sets is key for which ProcureTech solutions deliver value or don’t. In a landscape where best-of-breed solutions are pushing the boundaries, smooth integration is essential for unlocking value across the entire lifecycle. Our recent whitepaper found that 100% of high-performing Procurement teams use a minimum of three tools to integrate performance data across the supplier lifecycle (Kodiak Hub x ProcureTech, 2024). However, that’s only the high-performers. An ArcBlue survey from this year discovered that 72% of Procurement organizations don’t have a full suite of solutions across the S2P process.

This might seem rather surprising, as there are no shortage of ProcureTech on the market. But perhaps that abundance of solutions is where the problem lies…

The ProcureTech landscape is a jungle which can be hard to navigate. Comparatively to more older and mature industries such as MarTech, FinTech or SalesTech, ProcureTech is rather young and immature – which means there are a lot of emerging providers and new solutions that don’t seamlessly integrate into your tech stack.

Further, with startups and scale-ups driving the most innovation in the industry compared to legacy solutions, things can get noisy in the market – and defining a position in the market can sometimes be more difficult for new vendors, which can result in confusion for ProcureTech buyers.

This doesn’t only make the search for new ProcureTech difficult, but can also lead to problems once new technology has been adopted – for example, only 34% of Procurement pros are happy with their current Supplier Management systems (State of Flux, 2024).

But thankfully, as new Procurement solutions grow in prominence, so do knowledge and clarity. In the past few years, ProcureTech has risen as an industry thought-leader as they help organizations navigate this dense jungle of technology with their annual ProcureTech100 list, which evaluates over 5,000 solutions each year to identify the top 100 most pioneering procurement technology in the world – a recognition that Kodiak Hub is proud to have received for its third year in a row.

With that said, we also expect the ProcureTech Jungle to become easier to navigate over the next few years, as user-centric ProcureTech solutions rise in prominence, technology that doesn’t deliver value goes away, and the market consolidates. But that doesn’t mean you should sit around waiting for the perfect solution to fall into your lap. There are plenty of groundbreaking, user-centric solutions just waiting to transform your procurement.

So if you’re currently getting value out of procurement technology, but it’s not integrated into your broader ERP/S2P/Master Data Lake, we’d strongly suggest to invest in integration during the upcoming year :) 

5. Human Connections

There’s one thing that isn’t going anywhere in 2025 – Us!

With all the talk of AI transforming Procurement, many have been wondering if they’ll be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Well, rest assured, you won’t. Indeed, the role will change and many Procurement tasks will go away as they become automated. But AI will never fully replace Procurement because it’s not human, and Procurement depend on human connections, relationships, and intelligence that no Artificial Intelligence can every replicate.

“While Generative AI can also assist with negotiation by role-playing as the other party, and procurement software can streamline supplier communications online, human connections will remain critical in procurement, particularly in building trust and innovation in supplier relationships. These areas involve emotions, empathy, cultural awareness, and human judgment, which AI cannot and will never replace” (Procurement Tactics, 2024).

As Procurement becomes increasingly streamlined and automated with new technology, the importance of human connections will grow exponentially in 2025, with a focus on soft skills such as:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Critical Thinking
• Empathy & Emotional Intelligence
• Negotiation Skills
• Strategic Thinking

So don’t worry – technology will undoubtedly continue to transform Procurement & Sourcing, but it will also empower you to be more human and unlock value with more time to focus on forging stronger supplier relationships and improving internal collaboration.

6. Legislative Tsunami

New supply chain legislation and regulations – or as we call it, the “Legislative Tsunami” – is another trend that we covered last year but will continue to shape the future of Procurement in 2025.

By now, we’re (hopefully) all aware of the ESG legislation of recent years in the EU, such as CSRD, CSDDD, LkSG, Modern Slavery Act, and so on. And besides ESG regulations, other forms of new regulation that Procurement must comply with continue are emerging, such as the Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA) which aims to strengthen the IT security of financial entities such as banks, insurance companies and investment firms.

And though the EU has thus far been the most ambitious with ESG regulations, Procurement pros outside of Europe shouldn’t get too comfortable as similar legislation is inevitability coming to other regions like the USA.

With that said, there may be some good news coming in 2025 regarding the Legislative Tsunami. The EU is expected to release simplified sustainability reporting law in February 2025 called the “Omnibus Simplification Package,” which would combine CSRD & CSDDD into one simplified regulation. Just like with the noisy ProcureTech market, consolidation and clarity may be coming to ESG compliance.

But no matter how the Legislative Tsunami develops over the next few years, new and evolving supply chain regulations (along with changing consumer and stakeholder expectations) will continue to shape the future of Procurement & Sourcing far beyond 2025.

7. Geopolitics Driving De-Globalization

The 2020s have been a decade of global disruption – from the COVID-19 pandemic, to inflation and economic turmoil, to geopolitical conflicts, wars, and supply chain disruptions, and more. And as we discussed in last year’s Procurement Trends, 2024 was a very pivotal year for the world, being that it was the biggest political year in global history, with elections in over 60 countries including the U.S..

And unfortunately, 2025 won’t be any more stable, as the changes from these elections around the world come into effect. For example, President Trump’s announced plans for tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada would be a major disruption to global trade, supply chains, and the economy.

“These tariffs will inevitably increase costs which we already know, as they act as a tax on imported goods, and very likely will disrupt the flow of trade by adding complexity to customs processes and extending lead times that are already quite long. Ultimately, the tariffs underscore the critical need for supply chains to be both resilient and adaptable,” says Amanda Russo, CEO at Cornerstone Paradigm Consulting. “Organizations that fail to evolve risk severe disruptions and escalating costs. By addressing vulnerabilities such as supplier dependency and reliance on manual processes, companies can better position themselves to thrive in an unpredictable trade landscape.”

Amidst Trump’s proposed tariffs and the tragic geopolitic conflicts that the world is facing, businesses and Procurement teams are already taking proactive measures to prepare for global trade disruptions, such as:

• Seeking Supply Chain Alternatives
• Stockpiling Inventory
• Diversifying Supply
• Managing Financial Impact
• Proactively Planning Ahead

But businesses and Procurement teams are also taking much bolder initiatives to mitigate global risk and build more resilient supply chains by redesigning their supply chains with Rightshoring – or the strategy of locating a business's manufacturing operations in localities and countries that provide the best combination of cost and efficiency.

Popular Rightshoring strategies include:

• Nearshoring: a form of offshoring in which an organization recruits employees from a neighboring country to complete services.
• Friendshoring: the act of manufacturing and sourcing from countries that are geopolitical allies, such as members of the same trade bloc or military alliance.
• Onshoring: the practice of transferring a business operation that was moved overseas back to the country from which it was originally relocated.

Among these Rightshoring tactics, Proxima’s 2024 Supply Chain Barometer found that 42.1% of organizations have already embraced Nearshoring, 42.4% have adopted Friendshoring, and 45.2% have utilized Onshoring to build supply chain resilience.

As the world continues to face geopolitical conflicts and global disruptions, this trend of Rightshoring will only increase in 2025 – meaning we may be entering The Age of De-Globalization where supply chains are more regionalized and redesigned to be more resilient in this unfortunately chaotic world. 

8. Cost Reductions

A major transformation in Procurement during the past few years has been the new challenges and responsibilities that the function faces on top of their traditional ones. Besides Risk Management and Cost Reduction, which will always be a foundation for Procurement, teams must now also drive Transparency & Traceability in the face of new ESG regulations and demands, improve Supply Chain Resilience to mitigate global disruptions, and accelerate Innovation & Impact for more sustainable trade.

But while these new challenges may be more daunting than Procurement’s traditional responsibilities, that doesn’t mean that Risk Management and Cost Reduction have gotten any easier to manage.

A recent industry survey found that Procurement’s Most Challenging Disruptions of 2024 were:

• Supply Chain Disruptions (26%)
• Inflation (19%)
• Geopolitical Instability (16%)
• Rising Cost of Living (12%)
• Interest Rate Fluctuations (10%)
• Currency Fluctuations (8%)

For those who are counting, that means that 4 out of 6 of Procurement’s most challenging disruptions in 2024 were cost-related.

As economic turmoil and inflation continue to pose major challenges for businesses, it’s up to Procurement to solve these challenges and save the day – together with their suppliers, of course. “Fortune 500 companies’ external supplier costs accounts for (on average) 75% of their total spending and 65% of their revenue,” according to Proxima’s Supply Chain Barometer. Which has compelled at least half of Procurement organizations to work on collaborative initiatives to reduce costs together with their suppliers.

In 2025, the winners in Procurement will be those that crack the code and work with collaborative cost-cutting with suppliers. High-value supplier-buyer relationships are those that can make in the good times and in the bad.

9. Shift to Strategic Procurement

As we all know, cutting POs is not the main value that Procurement has to deliver. And as new technology boosts efficiency and enhances decision-making, and as new challenges force Procurement to think long-term, we’re continually seeing Procurement embracing and focusing on the strategic value that it has to offer – a trend that will only increase in 2025 and beyond considering that 41% of Procurement organizations said that Lack of Strategic Planning was a top challenge when trying to achieve Procurement Goals (WNS Procurement, 2024).

And while responsibilities like Cost & Risk Minimizing will always be an important area for Procurement, more organizations are making the shift from Operational and Bottom-Line to more Strategic Top-Line Growth & Stakeholder Value – which we see as the SRM Value Journey at Kodiak Hub.

The winners of tomorrow will be determined by those who embrace value beyond savings today and make this crucial shift to more strategic procurement, going from reactive to proactive and unlocking top-line sustainable value.

So what is Proactive SRM? Here’s some of the key areas that Procurement teams are looking to get more proactive with:

• Risk Mitigation
• Strategic Cost Savings
• Carbon Footprint
• Supplier-Led Innovation
• Supplier Diversity
• Automated Purchasing
• Collaborative Development

But of all the areas that Procurement could benefit from embracing more strategic sourcing, a few stand out from the rest. WNS Procurement’s recent study found that Procurement’s top priorities for the next two years are:

• Supplier Risk Management (54%)
• Strategic Sourcing & Supplier Selection (50%)
• Contract Negotiations & Management (47%)

As an SRM solution provider, we know how crucial strong and proactive Supplier Relationship Management is in order to drive strategic excellence. And encouragingly, more businesses and Procurement leaders are finally embracing the potential of Procurement beyond cost savings.

In order to make this strategic shift, businesses need to start looking beyond dollars and cents and shift their perspective to value things like RoR – or Return on Relationships. According to State of Flux, “71% of Procurement Leaders would define Return on Relationships as generating value beyond financial transactions.”

Which leads us to our next trend, which is one of the most essential levers to accelerating the shift to strategic sourcing…

10. End-to-End SRM

At Kodiak Hub, we may be slightly biased on this trend, but it’s clear that the focus on Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) is only continuing to grow in significance for businesses and their Procurement teams.

Why? Well, for starters – there’s a clear cost associated with poor supplier management, which even the world outside Procurement was discussing in 2024 with the global news stories around Boeing and McDonald’s. The tragic 737 Max accidents and groundings led to $20 billion in fines and $60 billion in indirect losses for Boeing, and McDonald’s e. Coli outbreak caused a $10 billion valuation drop and 6.4% decrease in national customer visits – two major supply chain disasters and PR nightmares that could have been averted with stronger Supplier Management.

But these aren’t the only businesses struggling with SRM. According to WNS Procurement’s 2024 survey, 41% of Procurement organizations say that Supplier Relationship Management is a top 3 challenge when trying to achieve Procurement goals.

But beyond Supplier Relationship Management rising in importance, the real trend is the re-imagining of SRM as a truly end-to-end process.

Traditionally, SRM has been perceived and practiced as a subset of the Source-to-Contract process.

But today, we’re seeing a shift in the models where SRM is now being understood as an ongoing process, closely linked to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), that unlocks strategic value throughout the entire Source-to-Pay process and supplier lifecycle. Or in other words, End-to-End SRM.

This is not a strange or illogical shift, but rather a long overdue epiphany for Procurement about the true nature and value of SRM. Supplier relationships do not start and end following the Source-to-Contract process. A supplier relationship is exactly what it says – a relationship, a lifecycle, which is cyclical rather than a snapshot in time.

For example, traditional SRM primarily focused on risk, compliance, and cost. But advances in SRM technology (such as Kodiak Hub’s platform) are discovering how end-to-end SRM can drive supplier performance, foster collaboration & innovation, and unlock strategic, sustainable top-line value. Sure enough, our whitepaper found this year that 100% of high-performing organizations state that supplier performance data has unlocked improvements in supply resilience, while 78% say that it has had a high or extreme impact on supplier experience and collaboration (Kodiak Hub x ProcureTech, 2024).

In 2025, End-to-End SRM will continue to rise in prominence throughout Procurement, as more organizations understand the plethora of benefits that it can deliver such as faster supplier onboarding, clearer transparency & traceability, improve resilience, and accelerated sustainable innovation.

Or to put the value of End-to-End SRM into more quantifiable terms, these are some of the ROI value levers that we’ve delivered to businesses with our end-to-end Supplier Relationship Management system:

11. Supplier Collaboration

This new focus on End-to-End SRM is also bringing with it a revitalized focus on Supplier Collaboration – as businesses shift their supplier relationships from transactional to transformational with more collaborative partnerships.

As we like to remind folks at Kodiak Hub: Suppliers are friends, not food.

Traditionally, buyers and suppliers have been mostly been combative, with each side of the table trying to get what’s best for their party. But with the challenges and disruptions of recent years, Procurement and suppliers alike have realized the value of stronger collaboration and mutually-beneficial strategic partnerships. “Since 2022, Supplier Collaboration has skyrocketed in priority for 88% of procurement leaders” (Gartner, 2024).

And beyond mitigating risk and failures, Procurement is also embracing the proactive and top-line value that improved Supplier Collaboration can deliver. For example, research suggests that 55-65% of innovations are sourced through external suppliers and partners (ISM). This makes supplier and partner contributions to a business’s profitability and market competitiveness very important.

Our research on supplier performance also found that 56% of high-performing Procurement teams are engaging in collaborative problem-solving with their suppliers, a trend which is only set to grow (Kodiak Hub x ProcureTech, 2024).

The benefits of stronger Supplier Collaboration are endless and driving a true paradigm shift in Supplier Management and Procurement itself, shifting from a focus on making the best short-term transactions to a long-term perspective where buyers and suppliers can forge strategic partnerships and win together.

Moving from transactional to transformational relationships is the goal. And while it’s no easy feat nor fit for every supplier relationship, we see that a focus on harvesting supplier relationships, co-development, and investment in supplier core competencies will continue to grow in 2025 and beyond.

12. Category Management

Exceptional Supplier Management and Collaboration is often led by awesome Category Strategy and Category Management. 

Category Management has always been a backbone of any great Procurement strategy and execution. But in 2025, there will be a rejuvenation of Category Management and a return to focusing on doing the basics really, really well.

Now, maybe you’ve heard otherwise – and we have too. On an upcoming episode of our podcast “The Way We Source,” we asked our guest Jonathan O’Brien (CEO at Positive Purchasing) if that rumor was true:

“Is Category Management dead?”

His response was a resounding no, but a recognition that the context that we apply Category Management is changing very quickly. “[Category Management] is not going anywhere. The context that we apply it in is changing very quickly. The way in which we’re using technology is applying very quickly. But Category Management is absolutely here to stay.”

With Cost remaining king, strong Category Management is a crucial lever that Procurement teams will be pulling in 2025 to manage spend with laser-focus. This year, 40% of Procurement pros said that Category Management and Spend Analysis are their top methods for controlling costs (WNS Procurement, 2024). And for good reason, as 10-15% of cost savings can be attributed to Category Management (EY, 2024).

In 2025, a return to doing the basics will be crucial since the maturity in Category Strategy and Category Management is lacking in the majority of teams. 58% don’t have a Category Management process that drives a fully standardized approach to category strategy develop and execution across all categories, and 56% feel that the roles and responsibilities related to Category Management are not clearly understood (ArcBlue, 2024).

But it’s not just a return to Category Management that we’ll see, but a re-imagination – as Procurement increasingly embraces modern Category Management that’s strategic and long-term, as opposed to traditional Category Management that’s tactical and project-based. And of course, all empowered by innovative ProcureTech solutions that boost efficiency, drive faster, smarter sourcing decisions, and unlock strategic value.

13. Community

Last, but certainly not least, in our trends for 2025 is… well, you! And the rest of the Procurement & Sourcing community that has been growing and flourishing and will only continue to do so.

In the past few years, we’ve seen Procurement professionals, thought-leaders, consultants, and solution providers coming together like never before.

We’ve seen a boom in exciting new Procurement events and conferences around the globe, such as DPW, BME, Procurement Summit, DI Inköp, and Procurement Strategies & Innovation – which our team at Kodiak Hub had the pleasure of attending to meet old and new friends, share knowledge, and shape the future of Procurement together.

On LinkedIn, we follow Procurement thought leaders such as Dr. Elouise Epstein, James Meads, Joël Collin-Demurs, Keith Wright, Peter Smith, Fabian Lampe, and so many more – and the industry at large is increasingly using social media, blogs, and newletters to share their knowledge will fellow professionals.

We listen to Procurement podcasts, such as Kodiak Hub’s own “The Way We Source” where Procurement practitioners and leaders openly share their war stories, discuss their successes and failures, and explore the new challenges and opportunities of these volatile times.

And we have resources like ProcureTech and SpendMatters to help the Procurement industry navigate the exciting yet daunting market of new procurement technology with their expert panels providing analysis of new ProcureTech tools and recognizing the most pioneering solutions. Kodiak Hub is proud to have been recognized by Spend Matters as the Customer Favorite in Supplier Management for 2024, and be featured on the 2024 ProcureTech100 list for the third year in a row.

It's exciting and inspiring to see the Procurement, Sourcing, and Supply Chain industry coming together to face new challenges and reshape the future of the industry together. And more importantly, it’s clear that Procurement isn’t in the basement anymore. The world is finally seeing Procurement for the invaluable role that it plays in businesses and the world at large. And Procurement now has the coveted seat at the table.

So – what will we do with it in 2025 and beyond?