Procurement: from bottleneck to business partner

The pressure on businesses to modernise isn’t letting up, which puts procurement teams right in the firing line. Now more than ever, procurement leaders need to prove their strategic value to the business, and not just their ability to cut costs.  

 

In the UK, the business landscape keeps shifting. Technology is changing how organisations manage risk, and that directly impacts how and when they spend. According to recent research, operational spend was up 26% year-on-year in 2025. This shows how businesses aren’t cutting blanket costs, but spending more strategically. And this puts procurement under real pressure.   

 

Procurement needs to deliver efficient operations without losing control. But most are still working with reactive processes, limited visibility, and manual reconciliation. As a function, procurement should provide insights that drive strategic decisions, but only after it has the right structure and systems in place.  

 

 

Reactive processes are holding procurement back  

Most procurement teams have built effective P2P processes for strategic purchases that effectively deliver governance, standardisation, and cost control. But tail spend doesn’t fit into this process. These typically small, everyday purchases end up disproportionately consuming procurement’s time and become a bottleneck for the department.  

 

The problem with tail spend is that it’s usually managed reactively. Procurement teams only get involved after the money’s been spent. They’re chasing receipts, coding transactions and reviewing spend after the fact. So this decentralised, everyday spend remains a blind spot. With fragmented data that arrives too late to influence decisions.  

 

Eventually, this spending appears in reports, which feels like control. But in reality, reacting to what has already been spent doesn’t reduce risk, prevent policy breaches or support business resilience.  

 

This isn’t about capability. It’s about outdated tools and systems that don’t properly account for tail spend. Procurement teams spend their time reporting on last month’s numbers instead of guiding the business on what happens next.  

 

 

The role has evolved. The operating model hasn’t

Legacy processes worked for years, so why are they a problem now? Because businesses have changed. They’re adopting new technology, growing faster and operating in more complex, distributed environments.  

 

Procurement’s remit has expanded beyond cost control. Today, teams must strengthen and diversify supply chains, ensure compliance and anticipate risk. Meeting these expectations requires continuous monitoring and real-time insight. Without it, early intervention is impossible.  

 

The shift is already underway. Intelligent spend insights accounted for 48% of procurement analytics market revenue in 2025. That reflects how critical visibility has become.  

 

Modern spend analytics meet this demand by capturing transactions at the point of purchase. They enrich them instantly with receipts, categories and match against policy rules. You get a clear, usable view of spend across the business. Not weeks later. Immediately.  

 

 

From reporting on spend to controlling it  

AI plays a central role in this shift. Spend analytics aren’t just about point-in-time reporting anymore. They’re becoming a control mechanism. AI can automatically categorise large volumes of tail spend, removing manual reconciliation. It can flag unusual or out-of-policy transactions as they happen.  

 

The benefits go beyond efficiency. Real-time visibility strengthens governance at a time when AI is raising the stakes in financial fraud. With threats like AI-generated fake receipts, modern tail spend solutions provide real-time visibility of the transaction, which greatly reduces the risk of fraud . Finance leaders recognise the risk, with nearly three-quarters (74%) being concerned about AI-generated fake receipts.  

 

Crucially, this isn’t about replacing human judgment, but removing low-value admin. With more time, procurement teams can focus on higher-value activities and make more informed decisions. That’s how procurement moves from operational bottleneck to strategic partner.  

 

 

Procurement’s future depends on structural change  

The real challenge is structure. Many procurement teams are restricted by outdated systems that are no longer fit for purpose.  

 

Reactive, post-spend control simply does not scale. Real-time, trusted spend analytics (supported by AI) is now essential.  

 

With the right foundations in place, procurement can move beyond firefighting. It can balance speed with control in a way that supports resilience and delivers long-term value. 

 

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Brandon Till is Head of Transformation at Soldo  

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and champpixs