How Agentic AI is Reshaping Procurement Talent Strategies

In recent years, procurement has shifted from a transactional function to a driver of resilience, growth and sustainability, but organisations are straining under volatility, inflation and data overload.

With the rise of AI in the workforce, the skills gap is widening – particularly as legacy systems slow sourcing and negotiations for employees in procurement teams. 

According to estimates from McKinsey, most procurement functions are using less than 20% of their available data for key decision making. To combat this, more organisations are implementing agentic AI – leading to a rethink of skills, roles and team culture across the procurement function.

A people shift to agentic AI

Agentic AI can ingest data, explore options and generate recommendations, then act across opportunity identification, sourcing and post‑contract value tracking. 

Research from McKinsey saw procurement staff efficiency rise 20–30%, with 1–3% extra value capture.

As more repeatable workflows are managed by agentic AI, procurement employees are turning their focus to other tasks, such as supplier partnerships and making complex judgements. 

This means new roles are emerging, with many employees in the procurement function needing to be suitably upskilled as their roles become more strategic and further integrated with AI. 

"Across hundreds of conversations with procurement leaders, and based on what we are seeing in live transformations, the pattern is consistent," says Roman Belotserkovskiy, Partner at McKinsey & Company.

Roman adds: "Leaders are moving beyond dashboards and insights toward agentic systems that deliver not just efficiency, but materially higher effectiveness.

"As sourcing, negotiations, contract compliance and value preservation are increasingly augmented by AI, the real question becomes: how do we deliberately transition humans to focus on judgment, orchestration and relationships?"

The rise of agentic AI

Outside of procurement, use cases for agentic AI are rising. In February 2026, Zoom announced that it was introducing new agentic AI capabilities called AI companion, which are designed to increase employee productivity through new capabilities that can streamline workflows and deliver autonomous insights. 

Lijuan Qin, Head of Product, AI at Zoom, says of the company’s new AI offerings “AI is no longer just a tool – it’s a trusted collaborator that helps users analyse, act and deliver with greater intent. 

“With AI Companion, people can move beyond managing work to truly accelerate their impact and shift from reactive productivity to proactive intelligence, where technology doesn’t just support work, it elevates it.”

Research from IBM has also shown that agentic AI can make a significant difference to the way the HR function operates. 

In an AI-powered productivity report, the firm found that 62% of CHROs are focusing on automation in recruitment, 61% are using the technology to improve employee-self service with digital assistants and 52% of HR executives have implemented AI in their talent acquisition strategy. 

Discussing how agentic AI can transform work, Jon Lester, VP of HR Technology at IBM, said: "It remembers what you told it yesterday and can apply that information to actions today.

“You can build use case after use case. It blows chatbots out of the water.”