AI in Procurement: Lessons from the FMCG Frontlines
Three years ago, our category management team at a major FMCG company faced a recurring nightmare: we were consistently overpaying for packaging materials while simultaneously experiencing stock-outs that delayed new product introductions by weeks. Our procurement process relied heavily on spreadsheets, manual vendor negotiations, and gut instinct. Despite having talented buyers, we simply couldn't process supplier data fast enough to make optimal decisions. That's when we decided to pilot artificial intelligence in our procurement operations—a decision that would fundamentally transform how we approached everything from trade spend analysis to supplier relationship management. The journey into AI in Procurement wasn't smooth, but the lessons we learned along the way proved invaluable—not just for our procurement function, but across our entire supply chain collaboration framework. What started as a narrow experiment in automating purchase order generation evolved into a c...