State of Procurement 2026 Benchmark

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1.Which region best reflects your main role?*

2.Which best describes your current role?*

3.Approximately how many employees are in your organisation?*

4.Approximately how many people are in your procurement function?*

5.What are procurement's top objectives for the next 12 months? Choose up to 5.*

Deliver hard cost savings

Control inflation / deliver cost avoidance

Improve cash flow / working capital

Reduce supply and third-party risk

Improve supply resilience

Improve supplier performance

Increase spend under management

Strengthen compliance and governance

Speed up sourcing and contracting

Improve stakeholder experience

Improve data and visibility

Automate work / deploy AI

Support sustainability / ESG goals

Drive supplier innovation

Build procurement capability and talent

6.How would you describe procurement's current maturity?*

Reactive — mainly transactional and firefighting

Developing — basic processes, uneven adoption

Established — repeatable processes and reliable control

Strategic — aligned to business priorities and value

Leading — data-led, automated and improving

7.How is procurement primarily organised?*

Centralised

Centre-led / hub-and-spoke

Hybrid / federated

Decentralised

Outsourced or managed service

No formal procurement function

Other

8.Which measures do you use to judge procurement performance? Choose up to 5.*

Realised / finance-validated savings

Cost avoidance

Cash flow / working capital impact

Spend under management

Contract coverage / compliance

Sourcing or contracting cycle time

Supplier delivery, quality or service

Supplier / third-party risk

Stakeholder satisfaction

Sustainability / ESG outcomes

Technology or process adoption

Team productivity / capacity

No consistent set of measures

9.How do you track and review progress? Choose up to 5.*

Spreadsheets or manual trackers

Procurement suite reporting

BI dashboards (e.g. Power BI, Tableau)

Finance-validated benefits tracking

OKRs or formal scorecards

Monthly / quarterly business reviews

Project or transformation plans

Supplier scorecards / reviews

Mostly ad hoc reporting

We do not track progress consistently

10.Which technology capabilities are in active use today? Choose up to 5.*

Procure-to-pay / e-procurement

Source-to-contract / e-sourcing

Intake and procurement orchestration

Contract lifecycle management

Supplier management / performance

Third-party risk management

Spend analytics / classification

Market intelligence / should-cost data

Contract review or extraction AI

Workflow automation / RPA

Generative AI assistants / copilots

Autonomous or agentic AI

Spreadsheets and general BI only

No specialist procurement technology

11.Which specific tools or vendors do you actively use? Please list names and, if useful, what each is used for.

12.What outcomes are you trying to achieve with technology? Choose up to 5.*

Hard savings / cost control

Productivity / more output without more headcount

Faster cycle times

Better data and visibility

Compliance and process control

Risk reduction

Better supplier collaboration

Better stakeholder experience / adoption

AI readiness or automation

Replace or consolidate legacy tools

Meet an executive mandate

13.How real is the push for AI in your organisation today?*

Little or no discussion

General curiosity, but no plan

Executive pressure, but use cases or ownership are unclear

Active exploration or pilots

A few use cases are live in production

A funded programme is scaling across procurement

AI is already embedded in day-to-day procurement work

Activity has been paused or reduced

14.Where is procurement using or testing AI? Choose up to 5.*

Writing, summarising or meeting support

Market and supplier research

Spend classification / analytics

Contract review, extraction or drafting

Sourcing event creation / evaluation

Negotiation preparation or execution

Intake, triage or guided buying

Supplier / third-party risk monitoring

Supplier communications or performance

Workflow automation and approvals

Demand, price or supply forecasting

Agents executing multi-step procurement work

Not using or testing AI

15.Which areas most need improvement or transformation? Choose up to 5.*

Procurement operating model

Process standardisation / simplification

Data quality and governance

Stakeholder adoption and change

Intake and demand management

Strategic sourcing / category management

Contract lifecycle management

Supplier management and collaboration

Third-party risk and resilience

Technology integration / rationalisation

AI and automation

Skills, capacity and career development

Value measurement and reporting

Sustainability / responsible procurement

16.What is the expected procurement headcount direction over the next 12 months?*

Reducing significantly (more than 10%)

Reducing slightly

Staying flat, with limited or no backfill

Staying flat, with normal replacement hiring

Growing modestly

Growing significantly (more than 10%)

17.What is the single biggest barrier to procurement making progress?*

Insufficient budget

Limited team capacity

Skills or capability gaps

Poor or fragmented data

Fragmented / legacy technology

Stakeholder buy-in

Executive sponsorship or mandate

Change resistance / low adoption

Unclear business case or value measurement

AI, data or risk governance

Inconsistent processes / operating model

External market or supplier constraints

No major barrier

18.How do you expect procurement technology and transformation investment to change over the next 12 months?*

Decrease significantly

Decrease slightly

Remain broadly flat

Increase slightly

Increase significantly

Budget is shifting from existing tools into AI

19.What is the one question you most want the final report to answer?

Characters remaining: 400

State of Procurement 2026 Benchmark

World of Procurement

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