There was a huge amount of insight shared at Procurement Leaders’ World Procurement Congress, which took place in London just over a week ago, but one thing that I’ve been thinking quite a lot about is the issue of judgement.
It came up on multiple occasions across the three days, as CPOs wrestled with the question of what role humans will play in the procurement operating model of the future. A quote shared by Mauricio Odovaine, global head of strategic sourcing at Meta, during the AI Forum made the point particularly succinctly.
“We are not automating the old organisation. We are designing a new one where AI does the work and humans provide the judgement.”
It was something that continued to crop up in conversation and presentations, how data models can bring knowledge, speed and scale but they wouldn’t be able to provide that crucial element of judgement.
Of course, we could debate whether this is a safe assumption. If we agree judgement is about the application of knowledge, experience and values to make a reasoned decision, then it’s feasible that technology could indeed do a good job here. Much like AI models have been shown to provide greater empathy than humans in recent studies by Nature, judgement seems also to be within grasp.
The issue, perhaps, isn’t the act of providing judgement, but the deeply human interactions, the trust and relationship capital that surround it.
Speaking on the final day of the Congress, Flex SVP and CPO Vincent Cellard (pictured above) provided a strong overview of how the world is changing and what this means for the function –increased regionalisation, reduced margins for error and new measures of success.
But two things he said resonated strongly. The first was his concept of procurement needing to “move to the left”; or, in other words, get involved and bring suppliers into strategic business discussions earlier. The second, was that “agents can’t have dinner”.
The latter was an important nod to the reality that relationships matter when it comes to building long-term, trusted business partnerships. In time, the application of AI has the potential to level the playing field as every organisation has access to similar tools and technologies.
What will differentiate, therefore, will be the application of relationship capital, understanding and being mindful of the needs of others and explaining and, in some cases, justifying why certain judgements have been arrived at.
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