2026 Insights Summit:
AI Edition

AI promises to transform procurement, but only if you’ve laid the right foundation. Join Pierre Laprée, Chief Product Officer at SpendHQ, as he unveils our 2026 Product Roadmap and explains why getting back to the basics of data optimization and categorization is critical to realizing AI’s full potential. Built on years of data investment, SpendHQ’s agentic ecosystem turns clean, structured spend data into actionable intelligence, delivering speed, accuracy, and strategic impact at scale. 

Discover how our 2026 roadmap will help procurement teams unlock even more strategic value with: 

• Frictionless, high-speed processing for near real-time efficiency and dramatically reduced cycle times 

• Context-aware insights that turn complexity into clarity for smarter decisions 

• AI-augmented productivity, where humans and AI agents work together to multiply impact 

• Proactive risk and compliance controls to stay ahead of disruption 

The result? Exponential improvements in efficiency, cost savings, and adaptability—empowering your team to do more with less and create new levels of value. Start with strong data foundations, and unlock the promise of AI to influence outcomes across your organization. 

SpendHQ’s State of Corporate Spend report will debut at this year’s Insights Summit, delivering an unprecedented view into the state of corporate spend. Built from insights pulled from our $10 trillion data set, this report reveals how companies are buying, where category trends are shifting, and how these patterns impact business performance overall. Join data benchmarking expert, Ken Male for an exclusive first look at aggregated benchmarks and vendor performance intelligence designed to help procurement leaders negotiate with confidence, align stakeholders, and make data-driven decisions. You’ll learn how factual, peer-based spend data can replace assumptions with actionable insights, enabling smarter strategies and stronger outcomes. This session will also explore how the indices will evolve and invite your feedback on shaping this powerful resource for benchmarking and collaboration.

Agentic AI is reshaping procurement, but successful adoption starts with preparation, not just technology. In this session, Blessen Kurian from Thermo Fisher and Blake Roberson from SiriusXM will share practical steps for building the right foundation across culture, people, process, and data. They’ll discuss where AI has delivered value—and where it hasn’t—along with strategies to manage skepticism and over-trust. Learn how to identify high-impact use cases, integrate additional AI layers for spend classification, and foster collaboration between procurement and IT to drive innovation. Whether you’re starting your AI journey or scaling existing initiatives, this session will help you move from hype to measurable results.

2026 off to the races—and it’s guaranteed to be a year of disruption, new technologies, and rising expectations. Procurement can’t afford to stay reactive. Michael Wang, Vice President of Procurement at Link Logistics, reveals how his team transformed from tactical to strategic by leveraging spend intelligence and performance management to eliminate manual processes, boost credibility, and deliver year-over-year growth in savings and project volume. Discover why a strong data foundation is the key to unlocking AI’s potential and driving smarter decisions with fewer resources. Learn how to align with ESG goals, strengthen supplier relationships, and future-proof your procurement function to thrive in an era of uncertainty.

Aligning procurement and finance on savings and strategy isn’t optional, it’s a game-changer for enterprise value. This session reveals why trusted spend data is the foundation for smarter decisions and how procurement leaders can partner with CFOs to amplify impact. Jerome Arfeli, Head of Indirect Procurement at Waymo, shares insights from 20+ years of experience and proven performance management implementations, including best practices for savings classification, reporting, and governance. Learn how global organizations can showcase data across dimensions to tell a compelling value story. Through real-world examples, discover how alignment builds credibility and creates a win/win for the entire business.

Procurement leaders are navigating rapid change amid economic uncertainty and technological acceleration. While AI is a powerful enabler, it is just one of several priorities shaping Procurement’s 2026 roadmap. As workloads rise and budgets tighten, success will depend on effective technology deployment and talent management. Accessing actionable insights on adapting, innovating, and sustaining competitive advantage is critical in today’s dynamic, AI-driven business environment. Join Elizabeth Zucker of The Hackett Group as she shares the 2026 outlook, focusing on leveraging AI-enabled technology, redesigning operating models, and upskilling teams to deliver greater value with fewer resources.

Procurement leaders face growing pressure to deliver strategic impact quickly. Agentic AI introduces a new paradigm where systems act autonomously, learn continuously, and accelerate decision-making. In this session, Tom Walsh, Sligo AI’s head of engineering, will demonstrate how human-centered AI can automate workflows, surface actionable insights, and free teams to focus on value creation. Unlike generic models, Sligo AI builds company-specific intelligence, avoids hallucinations, and uses a bottom-up approach with vetted procurement knowledge. Their agents tackle small, precise tasks for better accuracy and efficiency, ensuring humans remain in control. Discover how this approach makes procurement faster, smarter, and more reliable—without replacing people.

Procurement leaders are moving beyond AI theory into full-scale execution, harnessing agentic AI to accelerate decision-making, optimize negotiations, and redefine the talent model. In this session, Tony Brita, Director of Strategic Sourcing at Compass, shares how his team operationalizes Sligo AI and SpendHQ to drive strategic impact. From rapid supplier analysis and negotiation readiness to empowering category managers with instant insights, AI is eliminating low-value tasks and enabling faster, data-driven outcomes. Tony will reveal practical AI prompts his team to free up time for more strategic priorities, explore how AI is embedded in everyday workflows, and highlight its role in major M&A initiatives.

Most procurement teams today have better data than they’ve ever had. Tools like SpendHQ clearly show where the savings are, which categories matter, and where demand is fragmented. And yet, year after year, much of that value never makes it to the P&L.
In this session, RiseNow’s CEO Matt Stewart and SVP Sheena Smith will walk you through why. It’s not because the analytics are wrong, but because most organizations were never designed to act on them at scale.Using Cal State University as a real example, we’ll walk through what happens between “we see the opportunity” and “we actually captured it,” and why that gap keeps growing as tools get smarter. We’ll unpack how CSU redesigned its procurement operating model across 22 autonomous campuses, used AI and managed services to take work off people’s plates, and shifted procurement leaders out of the tactical and into defined strategic work.If you already know where the savings are, are being pushed to do more with less, and are frustrated with a lack of resources to realize them, then this session will feel uncomfortably familiar and very practical.

Procurement can’t drive impact without trusted data—but most organizations are dealing with fragmented ERPs, inconsistent supplier names, and GL codes that tell only part of the story. In this hands‑on session, we’ll show how SpendHQ transforms raw, unreliable spend into a single, credible source of truth through AI‑driven classification, supplier normalization, and transparent rules management. Attendees will see how cleaner data unlocks faster insights, better decisions, and more confident conversations with Finance, category leaders, and the C‑suite.

Savings are non-negotiable. Every Procurement decision has a financial consequence.But the organizations that win don’t just save more – they act smarter and faster.Procurement sits at the intersection of spend, suppliers, risk, and operations, uniquely positioned to see the full picture and challenge the business with better questions and better data. When Procurement owns that position, it moves beyond cost control to shaping decisions around resilience, cash flow, compliance, ESG, and enterprise performance.This session reframes Procurement’s value through key pillars and shows how SpendHQ enables teams to turn spend intelligence into clarity, credibility, and influence. Learn how to quantify impact beyond savings, align with Finance, and use data to challenge stakeholders and guide smarter decisions.

Procurement teams are facing growing expectations without proportional increases in headcount. This session focuses on how Performance Management brings structure, prioritization, and visibility to every initiative. Learn how leaders can balance workloads, avoid burnout, and make data‑driven decisions about which projects deserve focus. We’ll demonstrate how to manage approval workflows, track progress against milestones, compare performance across teams or regions, and forecast resource capacity. Attendees will leave with a practical playbook for achieving more impact—even when operating under constrained resources.

Agentic AI represents a step‑change in how Procurement teams work—moving beyond dashboards and queries to autonomous, context‑aware actions. In this session, you’ll see how Sligo‑powered Agentic AI can reason over complex data sets, identify opportunities, explain anomalies, generate executive‑ready narratives, and orchestrate procurement workflows automatically. Real use cases will show AI acting as a true team member: drafting sourcing strategies, surfacing risks before they escalate, cleaning data proactively, and accelerating decision‑making. This is the future of procurement productivity—intelligent, proactive, and deeply embedded in day‑to‑day execution.