I’m sure USAA CPO Russ Major (pictured above) won’t mind me sharing how excited he is about the future. We were speaking at Procurement Leaders’ Tomorrow’s Procurement Leader event in Austin, Texas, following his speech about the impact of his ongoing transformation at the $42bn-revenue insurance and banking group that serves current and former members of the US armed forces.
It was an excellent and insightful session, with three of his leadership team joining to share how they had delivered increased speed, productivity, savings, and customer satisfaction through their new approach. There’s lots to learn about the transformation, which will be the subject of our first CPO Connect call in the new year.
Russ and I spoke about Procurement Leaders’ 2025 research methodology, which continues our Horizon 2030 goal but doubles down on productivity, data architectures, the regulatory environment, social procurement, and internal alliances. It didn’t take long for Russ to highlight data as a fundamental building block of future value that we need to get right as a function.
“It’s almost like you cannot invest enough in data,” he said. “We’ve been on a multiyear journey of investing in our data and our capabilities, because we know that if you don’t have that core level of data quality, you really can’t take advantage of the tools.”
The tools that Russ refers to are the plethora of AI technologies that are being released seemingly every week, which are fuelling a tech boom not seen since the likes of the dotcom era.
To what extent this is hype versus reality is still a question worth asking. With billions upon billions of dollars of venture capital flowing into the development of AI, the confidence in the technology’s potential to deliver a strong return is clearly being bought into, but questions remain as to what exactly the functional – or real-world – impact might be.
Yes, it’s a disruptive technology that will transform myriad traditional processes. But in procurement, specifically, there are still more questions than answers over where exactly it fits in. That’s why it’s important to focus on the foundations – solve the data issue before moving on to implementing AI-based solutions.
So, hearing CPOs like Russ excited for the future, but cognisant of getting the fundamentals right is music to the ears.
“I’ve been in procurement now for 25 years, and I’ve never been more excited about the future of procurement and what’s in front of us for the next three to five years,” he said. “For those people that really embrace it and really see the power of what we’re going to be able to do, the next five years are going to be a blast.”
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