Proxima’s three top trends for procurement in 2026

As chief procurement officers weigh up how to ensure their firm is resilient ahead of another challenging year, technology remains top of the agenda. However, a new report from Proxima suggests transformations will not yield top results if organisations neglect the key ingredient of human leadership in 2026.

Founded in 1994, Proxima provides procurement advisory services and procurement transformation solutions to a client list ranging from some of the world’s largest businesses to fast-growing, high-potential small and medium-sized enterprises across a wide range of supply categories, and in sectors from aviation to government, from manufacturing to banking. Recognising that legacy, in 2022, it became part of Bain & Company, one of the world’s largest strategy consultancies.

With the world of procurement facing a year of rapid change, Proxima has sought to outline the most prominent trends which chief procurement officers will need to adapt to. The 2026 CPO Report contains reflections from CPOs at some of the world’s biggest brands across a range of sector, having convened leading chief procurement officers to get their take on the opportunities and challenges in the year ahead. While this takes in a wide range of themes, three in particular emerged as the leading issues on the minds of CPOs this year.

Simon Geale, executive vice president for procurement at Proxima, explained, “AI topped the charts, appearing in every CPO interview, and the contexts were not too dissimilar; our CPOs were primarily rolling out a small number of defined use cases, while also encouraging their teams to capitalise on personal productivity uplifts within defined guardrails… Closely following AI in popularity were conversations about resilience and how to evolve procurement models, the people and partners who comprise them, and how to excel in a different economic context amid a generational shift in technology. In 2026, we transition from a disruption-led to a design-led approach.”

Reframing resilience

The signs are already clear that 2026 will see a continuation of the US-led geopolitical disruption of last year. At the same time, other supply chain disruption resulting from extreme weather events and rising prices are also likely to ramp up. As procurement is the main point of control for what businesses can influence directly when it comes to their resilience, many firms will be working to manage costs, protect performance and keep supplies flowing as conditions change.

But while on paper, the answer may seem straightforward: building additional layers of resilience into the supply chain means identifying alternatives, diversifying suppliers, exploring dual or multi-sourcing models, and understanding the trade-offs; in practice, it represents a significant strategic shift in how we have historically purchased, and is likely to result in increased cost to the business.

Ensuring board-level buy-in when it comes to resilience upgrades is therefore key. To do this, CPOs intend to push forward with an important message: that boards can see the value in the investment, flipping the KPI on procurement from cost to risk as a primary driver of business value.

Stefan Grunwald, CPO with Henry Schein, told Proxima’s study, “In my experience, risk mitigation, the roots of resilience, is a core priority, and the exec is prepared to accept that there is a premium to be paid for building a new strategic capability. Continuity of supply is not a burden; it’s a competitive advantage.”

AI answers

CPOs speaking to Proxima insisted that AI “is the answer”, but 2026 sees an important moment where they must define “what was the question?” To see returns on hefty AI investment in 2026, it finally needs to be integrated across the whole procurement process, linking together demand forecasting, cost estimating, negotiations, coordinating with suppliers and refining product specifications.

If this is the case, the experts contend that AI can “truly facilitate guided buying”, including centrally controlling what people can see and do – allowing a decentralisation of the procurement process. While procuring something to respond quickly to a changing business factor might have traditionally faced a departmental maze, now it could become a simple conversation: What are you buying?” “Here’s how to do it.” “It’s done.”
Nina Bomberg, CPO at Hamburger Energiewerk, believes this could transform how procurement is viewed in a company for the better, arguing, “I believe that people often bypass procurement due to friction. If AI can remove that friction and save everybody in the company just 10 minutes a day when they are trying to buy something, they will be forever grateful… At the same time, well-trained AI agents and well-designed prompts not only deliver consistent outcomes but also enable us to position ourselves as a modern, attractive, and forward-looking function. In this way, we can keep our top talent because their work is more meaningful, and attract new talent who want to work in a more modern environment.”

Clean your data

A famous idiom in data analytics is “garbage in, garbage out”. Even with the supposedly revolutionary capabilities of AI, this rule of thumb still applies: however powerful your analytics engine is, how expensive the GenAI you are expecting to help propel your company’s productivity to new heights, if you feed it bad data, it’s only going to be able to generate substandard results.

A practical truth for many is that fixing the core – including remedying technical debt, and imposing stronger data governance policies, could unlock more productivity than just rolling out enterprise AI in the short term. In particular, the experts noted that clean data, clear processes, intentional decisions, and organisational readiness were all essential to making the most of these changes.

Mitzi Campbell, CPO of International Paper, explained, “IP had some technical debt upon my arrival, in the form of a heavily customized twenty-year-old SAP environment. We have evolved over that period, as have SAP and other solutions, and our systems haven’t kept pace. What worked back then doesn’t work now. Our processes were okay, but cumbersome and inflexible, and the data output was inconsistent and difficult to work with, requiring historical knowledge and context… While the market is hot on AI, our core is going to deliver significant initial benefits for IP updating. Yes, I want to walk into my room and ‘talk to my data bot,’ but right now we are catching up so that we can build for the future, pushing digital hard. We do use AI for everyday personal productivity, but IP is unlikely to be a leading-edge adopter at the enterprise level.”

Overall, then, the possibilities of AI remain a leading factor for CPOs in 2026. But Proxima’s study ultimately suggests the underlying message isn’t about technology at all. Instead, it boils down to a matter of leadership.

Geale concluded, “It’s about leadership, through a period of disruption and into one of design. The next 12 months in procurement will be exciting, as concepts and changes that have long been discussed begin to be implemented at scale. So, for current and aspiring leaders, the challenge is no longer whether change is coming, but how they choose to lead it.”