ProcureTech Unpacked

You're evaluating procurement software, and every vendor sounds identical. AI-powered, agentic, end-to-end, one platform for all your spend. Four demos in, you still can't say what makes any of them different.

James Meads has spent years on both sides of this market, fixing positioning and go-to-market for the vendors and helping buyers choose the right tech.

He explains why the whole procurement software market blurs together, and what to do about it when the marketing can't help you. We get into:

This one is for heads of procurement, CPOs, and finance leaders who have to choose procurement software and keep running into a wall of identical pitches.

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Your stakeholders route around procurement because following the process is harder than getting around it.

Procurement intake and orchestration is the software category built to fix that, and almost every vendor now claims it.

Joël breaks down what procurement intake and orchestration does, and where it fits:

For procurement and finance leaders whose stakeholders keep bypassing the process, or who hear "procurement intake and orchestration" in every pitch and need to know if it applies to them.

Based on the following edition of The Pure Procurement Newsletter: https://newsletter.pureprocurement.ca/p/procurement-intake-orchestration-complete-guide

Your autonomous sourcing pilot worked in the sandbox. Getting it into production is a different problem, and the technology is the smaller part of it.

In this episode, Joël sits down with Tiago Melo, VP of Solutions Consulting at Fairmarkit, for a practitioner's read on the 2026 state of autonomous sourcing. You'll come away with:

For digital procurement leads and sourcing managers with autonomous sourcing ambitions.

Recorded at SOAR 2026, Fairmarkit's annual conference. Fairmarkit is a content sponsor of Pure Procurement though this episode was not sponsored.

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You can buy the most advanced agentic AI on the market and still crash it into a wall if your procurement function isn't built for autonomy.

This minisode is a readiness check to run before you sign a contract or hand your team a build mandate. It walks the five system design concepts that decide whether an agent becomes a force multiplier or an expensive mistake:

For CPOs and procurement leaders weighing an agentic AI investments, whether build or buy.

Based on the following edition of The Pure Procurement Newsletter: https://newsletter.pureprocurement.ca/p/agentic-procurement-team-playbook

You're not just licensing software. You're deciding what kind of relationship you'll have with the company behind it, and most procurement teams find that out too late.

This deep dive lays out seven dimensions that separate a real ProcureTech partner from a plain software provider, and makes the case that your expectations should rise, not relax, now that AI is in the stack:

It's also a first and a last: Matthew's final deep dive episode as co-host, and the introduction of the one taking over.

For procurement and finance leaders sizing up a new software vendor, renewing a contract, or being sold an AI roadmap they can't yet verify.

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Spend orchestration and source-to-pay started as separate purchases. They're converging, and that shift changes the technology decision sitting in front of you.

IDC's Patrick Reymann, Research Director for Procurement Applications and Agents, joins the show to break down his 2026 Spend Orchestration MarketScape.

You'll get:

If you own procurement technology decisions and you're trying to separate real capability from the noise, start here.

Patrick's study, the IDC MarketScape on AI-enabled spend orchestration: https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US54663526

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Your best procurement technology idea keeps stalling, and by now you've probably decided your colleagues are the problem. They're not. You are.

This episode makes the case that the people who follow ProcureTech closely are, almost by definition, the ones most comfortable with change.

This makes them badly calibrated to lead it.

We get into:

If you're a procurement or finance leader with a great idea that's not landing or keeps dying in committee, this one's for you.

Based on the following edition of The Pure Procurement Newsletter: https://newsletter.pureprocurement.ca/p/your-colleagues-are-not-the-problem

It's business case season, which means most procurement teams are about to build next year's case from a blank page... That's the slowest way to do it, and rarely the most convincing.

This episode tells the story of an experienced procurement team that skipped the blank page entirely.

Instead of inventing new value, they went back to their original Source-to-Pay business case, measured the gap between what it promised and what it actually delivered, isolated the shortfall caused by low user adoption, and used that number to fund their next project.

Four steps, one honest premise: reclaim the value you already paid for.

If you're an experienced procurement or finance leader heading into budget season with a new investment to justify, this is the fastest (and most credible) case you can make.

Based on this edition of the Pure Procurement Newsletter: https://newsletter.pureprocurement.ca/p/a-new-way-to-business-case

Waiting for your S/4HANA migration before you touch procurement technology feels like the responsible call. But, it's quietly the most destructive thing on your roadmap.

In this minisode, Joël Collin-Demers lays out three reasons the waiting posture backfires:

Then Joël walks through the two architecture moves that let you invest now without disrupting the S/4 program, and the budget reframe that turns ProcureTech into the line item that helps pay for the migration instead of competing with it.

If you're a procurement or finance leader with an S/4HANA migration on the horizon and a digitalization plan parked behind it, this one's for you.

Sources:

Most build-vs-buy decisions in procurement technology get evaluated on sticker price... And by the time the integration bill shows up, you're already in production.

This week, Joël and Matt break down why the real question isn't build vs. buy, it's how many integrations you're willing to own.

They walk through the five cost drivers that actually determine total cost of ownership (TCO), and the three-question heuristic for knowing when a capability belongs in your core system versus when it's safe to bolt on.

For procurement and IT leaders staring down a best-of-breed pitch, evaluating an internal build, or trying to figure out why last year's "quick integration" still isn't reconciling cleanly.

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