Art of Procurement

24 episodes scanned. 74% of ad slots promote the show's own products.

Recent Episodes

1. 890: AI Meets Manufacturing Reality: Lessons From Catalyst Detroit W/ Jim Cahalan

   Nov 2, 2026

   Art of Procurement's Director of Events, Jim Cahalan, joins host Philip Ideson to review the Catalyst Detroit event, the first AOP event focused on direct materials and manufacturing procurement under the theme "When AI Meets Manufacturing Reality." They discuss moving AI conversations from use cases to operating models, governance, and supplier behavior, and the role of human judgment and early-career talent development. The episode also covers lessons on curating small, practitioner-focused rooms and previews the upcoming New York Catalyst event and 2027 plans.

2. Ep 04: The Agentic Procurement Diaries: Teach the Agent Before You Trust It: Messer Americas' Guided Buying Story

   Oct 28, 2026

   Diana McCollough, Director of Strategic Sourcing at Messer Americas, describes how the company's first guided buying agent came out of undocumented processes and maverick spend. She covers the work of teaching the agent company policy, deciding where an agent can run without a human in the loop, and using short pilots with defined success measures to avoid scaling tools that underperform.

3. 889: Why Standing Still Is Procurement's Biggest Tech Risk W/ Cyril Wasem

   Oct 26, 2026

   Cyril Wasem, Chief Procurement Officer at The Vita Group and a judge in Art of Procurement's ProcureTech100 program, discusses how he approaches procurement technology. Topics include setting aside time for startup pitches, a Vita Group orchestration platform rollout completed in eight weeks, and launching in phases rather than waiting for a steady state. He also covers evaluating providers as long-term development partners, working with fragmented data, and using new technology to attract curious talent.

4. EP 019: Startup of the Week: Mandel AI

   Oct 21, 2026

   Nick Gospodinov, founder and CEO of Mandel AI, explains how the company built an AI supply chain coordinator that connects to buyers' email inboxes to manage supplier communication, detect disruptions, and automate direct procurement workflows. The conversation covers the origin of the product in conversations with a Fortune 500 executive, the "coordination tax" the company aims to address, and trust and IT concerns that slow adoption in manufacturing and distribution. Gospodinov also gives examples of escalation features that caught tariff-related surcharges and invoice discrepancies, and describes the company's rapid one-day deployment approach.

5. 888: Remove Friction, Build Trust: Prioritizing the Partnerships Behind the Data

   Oct 19, 2026

   Hiten Parmar, Chief Procurement Officer at Beazley, and Prerna Dhawan, Chief Product Officer at Beroe, discuss their working partnership, which began with market intelligence and expanded into risk. They cover how Parmar decides which capabilities to build in-house versus source externally, what makes a partner worth working with (cultural fit, trust, and willingness to iterate), and the shift from scarce data to a need for trustworthy, decision-grade data. Dhawan also describes a decision not to charge a customer more for a feature, and the question she wishes procurement teams would ask suppliers.

6. Ep 03: The Agentic Procurement Diaries: Boring Enough and Safe Enough: When AI Gets the Keys

   Oct 14, 2026

   Liza Tsimbal, Director of Supply Chain Management at TransAlta, describes how the Canadian power generator is approaching agentic AI, starting from an observed information-retrieval problem rather than from the technology itself. She explains why requisition-to-purchase-order automation and contract and PO leakage were chosen as first pilots, using criteria of high volume, rules-based work, disliked by the team, and reversibility. The conversation also covers which decisions she would keep with humans, how she avoids AI hype by tying use cases to business outcomes, and the risk that automating junior work erodes the training of future procurement talent.

7. 887: Sustainable Procurement: Where Policy Meets Practice W/ Nicole Darnall

   Oct 12, 2026

   Nicole Darnall, professor and Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability at American University's Kogod School of Business, discusses how procurement decisions shape an organization's environmental and social impact. The conversation covers the gap between sustainability policy and implementation, the burden of overlapping supplier sustainability surveys, and the need for standardized information. It also addresses total cost of ownership, the environmental and community impacts of AI data services, and where procurement teams can start.

8. EP 018: Provider of the Week: Candex

   Oct 7, 2026

   Jeremy Lappin, Co-founder and CEO of Candex, discusses how the company solves tail spend complexity for large multinational organizations through vendor onboarding, compliance management, and cross-border payments. Candex embeds directly into existing procurement stacks rather than adding another tool, with a focus on handling edge cases seamlessly across 55+ countries. Jeremy shares how the company evolved from its 2011 founding to finding product-market fit in 2018, and reflects on customer-driven development, implementation methodology, and the future of procurement technology in the context of AI and orchestration platforms.

9. 886: The AI Performance Gap: What Procurement Leaders Are Doing Differently W/ Christopher Sawchuk

   Oct 5, 2026

   Christopher Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group, discusses findings from The Hackett Group's AI World Class Procurement research on the performance gap between organizations redesigning procurement around AI versus those simply automating existing processes. Sawchuk explains why leading teams are reimagining workflows, operating models, staffing approaches, and performance measures around AI, while many organizations remain focused on incremental productivity improvements and isolated pilots. The conversation explores how procurement leaders can move beyond AI experimentation toward transformation by starting with business outcomes and work redesign rather than technology deployment.

10. Ep 02: The Agentic Procurement Diaries: The Work-Work Balance: Building an Agentic Supply Chain at SLB W/ Jeffrey Ostrander

    Sep 30, 2026

    Jeffrey Ostrander, Head of North America Basin Supply Chain for SLB (formerly Schlumberger), discusses the company's agentic AI journey across a nearly $5 billion business. He covers practical use cases in sourcing, contract analysis, tail procurement, and freight pay assurance, while addressing the critical question of human-in-the-loop decision-making and legal accountability. Ostrander emphasizes that SLB has moved beyond exploration into active experimentation, but remains pragmatic about how far automation should extend, particularly given the dispersed nature of their oil and gas supply base.