Frustration with a broken system is a great motivator, and Spencer Penn, CEO and Co-Founder of LightSource, can attest to that
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LightSource is a business which, in its own words, gives the user ‘superpowers’ – an ambitious statement with plenty of evidence to confirm it. LightSource, based out of San Francisco, functions as a direct materials operating system, but provides so much more with its ‘Spec to Scale’ philosophy.
Spencer Penn, its CEO and Co-Founder, spent most of his career at Tesla prior to this role. He helped lead a program there called the Model Three, which was Tesla’s first mass market electric car. That was his first real exposure to the world of procurement and supply chain, and sparked a love and passion for that side of the business that led him to help create LightSource.
“I got exposed to a lot of challenges and insights, and some of those insights now underlie the product we’ve built at LightSource,” he explains. That love for procurement was inspired, in part, by the former CFO of Tesla, Deepak Ahuja, who Penn reported to and describes as “legendary”. Additionally, the rush to create the Model Three exposed Penn to the sourcing world for the first time.
Addressing a wider problem
After around three years of ideation, LightSource was launched officially in 2021. Penn never really planned to do this professionally; he thought he’d continue working in the tech field as an employee. But several things changed his mind.
“One, I realised the sourcing issues at Tesla weren’t just a Tesla problem,” he explains. “If you look at the income statements of any big manufacturing business, direct materials is the biggest area of spend, and it’s also the least innovative and underserved in terms of technology. So there’s a big market opportunity there. Many of us see it, but it doesn’t mean we quit our jobs like I did.
“The real thing that made the difference, for me, was meeting my Co-Founder, Idan Mintz. He’s my business partner and a brilliant technologist. He’s an engineer, our CTO, and he came from Google X and Google Research. Meeting him showed me I had a real counterpart on the technology side, and made me feel like we could go and pursue the change we wanted to see.”
And so, Penn and Mintz began to bring together the right elements to create a team and draw investor and customer interest. At that point, the risk wasn’t in following through with the idea – the risk was that if they waited any longer, someone else would fill the gap LightSource wanted to fill.
BeNeering’s MD and CRO dig into the company’s history with AI, and the necessity of seeing beyond the hype of new technologies
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A privately-owned company with over 20 years of procurement digitalisation experience fueling it, BeNeering is at the forefront of the AI-powered revolution in its sector. BeNeering was founded in 2007. At the time, Christoph Moll, BeNeering founder and Managing Director, was busy implementing SAP SRM systems for large European multinationals. While this provided great experience, Moll could see the limitations – and he wanted to move beyond them. He wanted to do something more.
“That’s how BeNeering was founded,” he says. “We focused on consulting until 2013, at which point we transitioned to being a solutions provider. I cherry-picked a great development team, and I’m happy to say that the same strong team is with us still today. Stability is our value.”
Natalia Parmenova, Chief Revenue Officer, is an example of one such strong team member, who has enormous faith in the business. “From my perspective, BeNeering is a super special solution provider for a few reasons,” she states. “First of all, we believe in co-innovation. Everything we develop is built together with very large and advanced customers. We try to stay close to those customers, to people who are forward-thinking and developing their procurement functions, so we can develop solutions for them with them. We are not just inventing things we think are useful – we are basing our development on customer needs. That’s really important.”
Simplify and optimise
Many people fall into procurement accidentally. It’s a common story among procurement professionals, and a source of amusement considering how passionate many of them become about it. For Parmenova and Moll, however, it was a case of seeing the way the wind was blowing and following the scent of change.
“In 2001, when I was employed by SAP, I wanted to do things better to help users in procurement,” says Moll. “That was how it started for me. My vision was really to simplify and optimise steps and processes for both requestors and buyers.”
Dafydd Llewellyn digs into why businesses need to be deliberate about how they use AI
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Taking on a new leadership role can be both exciting and daunting. Dafydd Llewellyn is the CEO of HICX, having taken up the mantle in September. In fact, by the time we spoke with him, he’d only been at his post for five weeks – but he was buzzing with nothing but pure enthusiasm about it. At this crucial juncture, when the pace of change is faster than ever before, strong leadership is vital. As such, Llewellyn has his hand on the tiller as he guides HICX on the next part of its journey.
“We’re a supplier management platform,” he says. “Companies work with us because they want to transform their supplier management to become more unified, more strategic, and more intelligent. Ultimately, what that means is our customers’ businesses are really able to make the most and harness the power of the suppliers.”
AI in the real world
Being competitive in the modern day means being not just au fait with artificial intelligence, but having a deeper understanding of it. The theme of DPW Amsterdam this year, as with the New York event in June, was ‘Put AI to work’. While AI has been a topic of discussion for several years now, planning (and bracing) for its impact is a different matter. But HICX, led by Llewellyn, is ready.
“It’s great that DPW is focusing on AI,” he says. “At HICX, we are being very deliberate about the way we approach AI. The way we’re looking at it is really about using AI to allow procurement professionals to be more value-added in the tasks they do, and remove all the repetitive tasks that they really don’t want to be doing. They can drive more value for the business that way.
“So, we are looking at things around business processes and automation, right through to document capture, through to compliance checks; using AI agents enables us to do that,” Llewellyn continues. “I can give you a real-life example. If you think about the workflow for a new supplier in the old days, you’d have to have them involved to create that workflow. Now, we can use AI to create that workflow just by writing it in natural language.”
Richard Hogg and Michael Van Keulen discuss what the business stands for and how it is shining a spotlight on tomorrow’s procurement department
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Green Cabbage is more than just a memorable name; it’s a procurement intelligence company that promises to deliver. A company that lives and breathes its win-win business model. Richard Hogg is the Managing Director. He is, in his own words, responsible for “planting and growing the cabbage across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa”. Michael Van Keulen, Chief Procurement and Customer Officer, is new to the business. However, he’s brought with him over 20 years of supply chain experience, and calls himself a procurement “enthusiast”.
The aim of Green Cabbage’s unique name is to keep money at the forefront of people’s minds. “Plant the cabbage, grow the cabbage; green cabbage is a colloquialism for money in some places,” explains Hogg. “Just like how, in the UK, we’d say ‘dough’. We’re trying to save our customers green cabbage.”
Forging relationships
Green Cabbage’s Founder and CEO, Eric Cunningham, created the business with a goal to try to rebalance the relationship between buyers and suppliers. “Effectively, Eric and his colleagues were looking at supporting the procurement community in preparation for negotiations, whether that meant pricing, non-price terms, or negotiation strategies,” says Van Keulen. “After three or four years, in 2019, they had amassed enough data to launch Green Cabbage. That’s how we were born. It was effectively a combination of really deep, broad data sets with subject matter expertise in core indirect categories.”
For Van Keulen, coming into a young company as a new recruit, he has the benefit of a fresh pair of eyes with plenty of expertise. “The challenge as a practitioner has always been that, on one side of the table, you’ve got a buyer; on the other side, you’ve got a seller. But how much information do I have as a buyer, and how can I ensure that I’ve optimised that contract, no matter my decision?” says Van Keulen.
“It’s not even just about price, but also terms, conditions, limitation of liability, indemnification, and other elements of that contract. That’s why I decided to join this organisation. I’ve always been passionate about procurement and supply chain. I love this profession, the community, and I really feel like Green Cabbage has the ability to take procurement to the next level of maturity.”
AI’s rapid evolution is creating both opportunity and urgency. AlixPartners lays out what needs to change — and why risk-takers will lead the way.
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The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in procurement is gaining traction with many organisations already looking at how the technology can improve processes. However, there’s scope to go beyond efficiency and instead focus on transforming value delivery.
At DPW New York, we spoke to Amit Mahajan and Aaron Addicoat from AlixPartners, a management consultancy firm doing things a little differently. The organisation is advising its clients on how to implement AI to drive value, but it’s also using AI internally, too.
“AlixPartners has a unique business model,” explains Addicoat. “We have a very senior model, very few junior resources. So now you imagine taking people with 10 or 15 years experience and now you equip them with AI… for us, it’s a huge unlock.”
This is about more than just productivity gains. AlixPartners focuses on using AI to transform the way procurement teams work, while crucially, maintaining the human touch.
How procurement professionals are using AI
With the support of technology, it’s possible to shift procurement from a cost-saving exercise to a potential revenue driver. Procurement teams are already looking for these opportunities, as Mahajan explains. “They’re starting to think about new ways of doing things,” he says. “It’s not just automation, but asking how do I leapfrog and do something differently?”
There are plenty of use cases where AI is helping with automation. This is a great place to start as it frees up human workers to do more valuable jobs that need a personal touch. “I have a client who’s using AI every day,” says Addicoat. “This allows them to review documents and contracts rapidly, to find key clauses and termination dates. They’re also using it in spend control processes to identify which things need to be reviewed more thoroughly.”
Many organisations are also using AI agentically to create their own bots. This gives teams a more accessible way to review information. “One example is a client who’s using AI for their business to help with acronyms,” says Addicoat. “They built it as an acronym tool to help break down the language barrier between different functions using different terms. This led to better engagement.”
This empowers employees across an organisation to be more autonomous while still getting the full picture. Agentic AI, especially, allows them to interact with information in a way that previously would’ve required specialist technical knowledge. Now, it’s possible to query information within a contract directly.
“It’s about using agents and AI to look at anomalies within your procurement contracts,” explains Mahajan, “and be able to help the category analysts, the category specialists, and others to get more of those insights.”
While generative AI might be a hot topic, it’s not the only way to use the technology. In combining several sources of data and using AI to spot trends, it’s possible to create workflows tailored to the current environment. Addicoat explains: “We take a series of data inputs, such as weather patterns, lead times, contractual terms, inventory, and forecast. Then the AI generates the purchase order, queues it for review, and upon approval, places the order.”
This can help an organisation to place orders with the right supplier in the most timely fashion to avoid delays, and optimise for cost, for example. This fully automates the end-to-end process, using AI to interpret those important data signals.
While this is useful for procurement teams, it’s only the start. “Using AI in this way is really cool,” says Addicoat, “but what I found most fascinating is that you’re building a data model, and with AI layered into it, that over time can tell you how to optimise itself.”
This has huge implications for procurement teams looking to save money and drive revenue. “For example, it could tell us the commodity price at a certain point in time was low,” says Addicoat, “but because inventory capacity to hold resin was maxed out the client could only buy so much at that low price. So now investing in a new storage unit at a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars could, under the same scenario in the future, save millions of dollars..Data quality challenges
A roadblock that can stop procurement teams from fully embracing AI is a lack of quality data. With so many sources of information, often including paper-based documents, some might think it’s difficult to get the data AI needs to be truly useful.
“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you get started,” says Addicoat.
This is a sentiment echoed by Mahajan: “Use AI to solve your data problem before solving your business problems.”
This requires a mindset shift. While AI can help cleanse, enrich, and structure existing unstructured data, it’s important to take the right approach. Shift from asking ‘what can we do with our data?’ to ‘what value do we need to create?’ and work backwards from there.
With this approach, the questions are less about the data and more about the business problem. This then allows you to use AI to work with the information you have to help answer those questions.
“Start with the value proposition in mind and work backwards,” explains Addicoat. “You can get data from anywhere — it has to serve a purpose.”
Bringing back the human touch
AI can free up procurement teams to focus on tasks that need more nuance and expertise. Using technology to automate workflows and make information more accessible has a huge impact on employee productivity. “It’s fundamentally transforming the way they work, the amount of work they can do, and the type of work they’re able to do,” says Addicoat.
There’s always the worry that with any new technology, the human element will be forgotten. “With every new advancement that comes in,” says Mahajan, “whether that was a steam engine or when computers came along, everybody wondered what they were going to do. But as humans, we always find ways to start doing higher-level work.”
This means that many professionals will find new ways of doing things. “Imagine all the mundane tasks you have to do in your daily job now,” Addicoat continues. “With these new ways of working, imagine the speed with which you can turn an idea into something real. All that time you free up allows you to go talk to people and build relationships that mean something.”
On the other side of things, the sheer volume of AI-generated content out there is going to drive people towards those more meaningful interactions. “You don’t know what to trust and what to believe anymore,” Addicoat says. “That’s going to lead to a resurgence in face-to-face content, being at the office, and being at events.”
AI’s impact on procurement talent
The talent landscape is changing. With technology playing a larger part than ever before, organisations don’t just need procurement professionals, they need adaptable, tech-savvy people. The nature of the job means that those in procurement need a wide range of skills.
“We do everything,” says Addicoat, “legal, operations, supply chain, negotiation, analytics. Procurement professionals are generalists.”
Tech plays into every element of that skillset, which means tech skills are becoming even more important for candidates applying for procurement roles. “Nobody goes to college thinking they’ll be a procurement professional,” says Mahajan, “but with AI and tech, that’s changing.”
With procurement often seen as a proving ground for leadership, embedding these tech-minded generalists could have a huge impact on the future. “We have a shortage of talent,” explains Addicoat. “But with more and more CEOs and COOs coming from procurement, that speaks volumes to what procurement does and the value it brings, as well as what the future holds.”
At AlixPartners, the passion for procurement is very clear with Addicoat saying: “There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who love procurement and those who don’t know it yet.”
Change is coming
With AI of all forms steadily gaining traction, procurement could change dramatically in the coming years. It’s the organisations that are willing to take risks and embrace change that will come out on top.
“AI has the potential to disrupt the whole management consulting world,” says Mahajan. “Firms focused on transformation will thrive.”
With AI’s capabilities increasing rapidly, it’s difficult to predict what comes next. However, adaptability is key. “Hold onto your hat. In a year and a half, the world’s going to look very different,” concludes Addicoat.
We spoke to Chief Product Officer Prerna Dhawan about what it takes to move from experimentation to execution.
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As AI continues to dominate conference stages and boardroom discussions, the pressure to use it is everywhere. As this technology becomes further embedded in enterprise strategy, many organisations are still grappling with how to apply it in a way that delivers real, measurable value.
Rather than focusing on AI for the sake of innovation, the question is how to align new tools with real business problems. That means looking beyond dashboards and pilots to deploy AI where it can simplify decision-making and improve processes.
At Beroe, this principle is central to how AI solutions are developed, deployed, and scaled. As the company behind the world’s leading procurement intelligence platform, Beroe provides real-time market data, cost analysis, and supplier risk assessments, empowering thousands of organisations globally to streamline operations and mitigate risks. Its latest advances in autonomous negotiation, supplier discovery, and predictive analytics show what it means to align AI with business objectives.
We spoke with Prerna Dhawan, Chief Product Officer at Beroe, during this year’s DPW New York conference. The discussion explored how procurement leaders can move beyond hype and start unlocking the full potential of AI.
Misalignment with business needs
There are plenty of real-world examples of how AI can improve efficiency within a business, from automating manual tasks like invoice processing to identifying new suppliers based on complex sourcing criteria. Accessing this technology is easier than ever with a wide range of tools available to procurement professionals. It can be tempting to jump on the bandwagon and integrate AI across every area of an organisation, but success requires a more nuanced approach.
The key is to ask the right questions, Dhawan explains: “We talk about all the latest and greatest technology out there, but what does it mean in practical terms? We need to ask, ‘How can I apply it today in the work I am doing as a head of product or as a procurement professional?’”
The allure of generative AI is especially strong, but business leaders should ask whether that’s the right solution for their needs. As with any decision, it’s important to consider the business problem. “It starts with a little bit of knowledge about what you’re looking for,” says Dhawan. “What are some of your biggest challenges, and which of those challenges could AI technology solve?”
Matching the right tool to the job
Once an organisation has identified a specific problem, it’s possible to find the AI solution that fits. While generative AI gets a lot of attention, other AI technologies and machine learning based systems might be more appropriate.
In some cases, prescriptive, rule-based, or predictive AI could be a better choice to solve a problem without the need for a large language model. For example, forecasting commodity prices doesn’t require generative AI, just strong, contextual machine learning.
“We are looking at AI across two dimensions,” says Dhawan. “Firstly, what is our offering to customers, in terms of procurement intelligence and autonomous negotiation technology. Second, we are looking at AI internally. Let’s say in product development, how do we use the latest AI solutions to accelerate our product development cycles so we can release new modules and capabilities more quickly.”
Regardless of the type of tool chosen, it should cover a high-impact use case. Integrating AI to solve a problem that only surfaces for a small group of people a couple of times a year won’t have a great return on investment. Instead, look for regularly occurring problems that, if fixed, could have a huge impact on productivity or quality.
Reducing the cognitive load
We’re already bombarded by information, and the use of AI to add to this doesn’t make sense. “I don’t need another dashboard in my life,” says Dhawan.
When implemented correctly, AI can make data more accessible while reducing cognitive load for users. The result is increased productivity and faster decision-making.
“I think the power of AI is to simplify access to data. This is why ChatGPT has been a success: it democratises access to information. That’s what our B2B technology world is waiting for. It gives me something simple that allows me to talk to my data. Then I can focus on what insights I need to make a decision or take action.”
For most B2B users, the key is intelligent simplification. Look for ways to simplify access to data through agent AI tools and conversational interfaces. This brings the focus back to action rather than dashboards.
Inside Beroe
While many procurement teams are still exploring AI’s potential, Beroe has already embedded it across both its platform and internal operations. The company, founded in 2006, provides procurement intelligence to thousands of organisations worldwide. Its platform delivers the critical data that professionals need to make informed sourcing decisions, from commodity prices and risk indicators to ESG scores and supplier intelligence.
“We provide all data that procurement needs for decision making, whether it’s cost data, risk data, ESG data or price data,” says Dhawan. “Our reimagination of the future is not just giving access to more data but creating that layer of recommendations that help you make decisions at speed and scale.”
One of the clearest examples of this in action is Beroe’s new ‘autonomous negotiations’ platform resulting from its recent acquisition of negotiation technology business, nnamu. Delivering a significant evolution in the procurement technology landscape the platform enhances the foundational elements of AI and game theory with Beroe’s industry-leading market intelligence and, according to Dhawan, it’s being deployed successfully in live sourcing scenarios.
“This is a technology that is being used for multilateral negotiations,” Dhawan explained. “It’s no longer just a POC or prototype, it’s live and being used at scale.” These new tools reflect Beroe’s core mission: to help procurement professionals minimise surprises and maximise margins.
Crucially, Beroe isn’t waiting for perfect data to apply these technologies. Instead, the company is using AI to work with what’s available — cleansing, interpreting, and extracting value from both structured and unstructured sources.
“You can use AI for cleansing data – even paper contracts,” Dhawan says. “Historically, we thought data had to be structured. But now, with vision models and image analytics, that’s no longer the case.”
Rather than striving for 100% accuracy before taking action, Beroe embraces a more agile mindset that balances speed and precision.
Is mindset holding procurement back?
The technology is ready. The use cases are proven. So why do so many procurement teams still hesitate to embrace AI? “There’s this subconscious fear that I think is a barrier to adoption,” she said. “And to some extent, it’s to do with our friends in Hollywood.”
There’s the myth that AI is a job-threatening black box, especially in industries where trust and experience are the backbone of good decision-making. For procurement, where professional judgement and business context are critical, the idea of handing over tasks to AI can feel risky.
But Dhawan believes this fear is misplaced. At Beroe, AI isn’t replacing procurement professionals, it’s augmenting them. Whether it’s surfacing new suppliers, automating elements of negotiation, or flagging risks earlier in the sourcing cycle, the aim is to enhance human decision-making. She says: “I think with the new kinds of AI technology that’s available to us, it is an opportunity for us in B2B tech to embrace more human-centred design with higher focus on UX.”
Looking ahead
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Dhawan sees procurement evolving into a more personalised and responsive function – one where AI plays a critical role in both strategy and execution.
“We see hyper-personalisation coming, both in supplier relationships and internal stakeholder engagement,” she explains. “AI will be at the centre of that.”
Rather than one-size-fits-all sourcing strategies, AI will enable procurement teams to tailor their approaches to specific business units, categories, or even individual suppliers. This means smarter segmentation, more relevant insights, and stronger commercial outcomes.
Another key shift is the growing ability to connect macro events, such as geopolitical shocks or regulatory changes, with micro actions inside the business. AI can help procurement teams identify these signals earlier, respond faster, and still align with long-term goals such as cost efficiency or sustainability.
“It’s about balancing your fire-fighting reactions to market events with your long term goals and strategy,” says Dhawan. “Procurement needs visibility and flexibility at the same time.”
Beroe is already moving in this direction. Alongside its growing AI capabilities, the company is refining how it delivers intelligence, building agents and recommendation layers. These not only inform decisions, but also help teams take action on them. Whether that means automating routine negotiations or proactively flagging supply risks, Beroe is evolving to meet the needs of a procurement function that’s more dynamic than ever.
As Dhawan points out, the goal isn’t to overwhelm teams with more tools, it’s to make their lives easier. “It’s about reducing complexity and giving procurement professionals confidence in what to do next,” she concludes.
For many procurement leaders, AI still feels like a long-term ambition. But the solutions are already here, and through companies like Beroe, they’re already in use. The challenge now is not whether AI can deliver value. It’s whether teams are ready to adopt the mindset and cultural shift that will allow them to unlock that value.
We caught up with Valdera’s Co-Founders to find out why chemical procurement comes with its own challenges.
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Chemical procurement is one of the most complex and overlooked categories in the supply chain. Between navigating regulatory constraints, aligning on technical specifications, and finding qualified suppliers, even the most experienced procurement teams face major hurdles. That’s exactly the gap Valdera was built to solve.
Founded by sister-brother duo Sruti Arulmani (CEO) and Dheev Arulmani (COO), Valdera is an AI-native sourcing platform purpose-built for chemicals and raw materials. Rather than applying generic technology to a specialised industry, the team set out to reimagine chemical procurement from the ground up.
“Chemicals are one of the most complex sourcing categories,” says Dheev. “In order for a company to gain leverage from AI in this space, it must build the data infrastructure and the AI specific to this industry. That was the inspiration behind Valdera. Our vision was to partner directly with procurement organisations and help digitise that entire sourcing workflow all the way from supplier discovery to market intelligence to qualification.”
“Direct procurement is really at the core of your product’s margin,” adds Sruti. “In today’s economy, business leaders are focused on staying profitable, and that starts with ensuring the materials behind your products deliver on both margin and performance. Most of the physical products we touch and interact with every day come down to what they’re made of. That’s why we’re so passionate about chemicals and raw materials.”
The power of vertical AI models
While general-purpose LLMs are powerful, they fall short when it comes to industries like chemical procurement where context, precision, and deep domain expertise are crucial. Valdera has taken a different approach: building vertical AI specifically trained to understand the language, data, and complexity of chemicals and raw materials.
“In procurement, especially for chemicals, one-size-fits-all AI doesn’t cut it,” says Sruti. “You need models that can interpret highly technical specifications, normalize data across formats and suppliers, and understand the nuances that determine whether a supplier can actually meet a request.”
That’s exactly what Valdera has built. “We will continue to layer the specificity of the chemical industry on top of an LLM that’s already good at structuring information and returning information in a useful way,” Sruti adds.
Dheev continues: “If you look at the generic LLMs available today, the challenge with these is that they fundamentally don’t work in this industry. The reason for that is that there are no LLMs that are trained on chemical specs. So what we’ve done is take those models and fine-tune them using our own proprietary dataset of chemical specs and properties, built over the last five years. That’s what positions us to drive real value for our users.”
Prioritising privacy
In the chemicals industry, data is sensitive. Trust is everything. Buyers are protective of their proprietary formulations, and understandably do not want their data used to train models that could benefit competitors. On the other side, suppliers are cautious about publicly listing their full product catalogs, especially when it comes to custom or high-value materials. Valdera was built with these realities in mind, and its platform is designed to protect both sides.
“In chemicals, suppliers are very protective of their proprietary catalogs,” Dheev adds. “And buyers are equally cautious about sharing proprietary formulations that go into their products. So there needs to be an independent third party that both sides can trust—someone who can facilitate discovery and sourcing without compromising confidentiality.”
“For us, it’s about protecting the interests of both buyers and suppliers,” Sruti explains. “We only use customer data to drive outcomes for that customer. We’re not here to train on anyone’s inputs or share information across the ecosystem. We’re here to help our customers get the best results for their business. That’s core to how we think about data privacy and partnership.”
The humanity of procurement
Even as AI becomes more powerful, procurement remains deeply human. Trust, context, and judgement are critical to strong buyer-supplier relationships, and no model can replace that. Instead, AI can enable teams to work faster, focus on strategy, and unlock new value across the supply chain.
“Procurement is a human business,” says Sruti. “At the end of the day, it’s two people coming together and making an agreement. We believe that’s never going to change.”
Rather than add complexity or replace roles, Valdera’s AI helps teams do more with the resources they already have. That means less time spent on manual tasks like gathering supplier documentation or comparing specs and more time spent on strategic decision-making, relationship-building, and growing the business.
“Our customers don’t want to be buried in paperwork. They want to focus on the work that actually drives outcomes,” Sruti adds. “We’re here to take the most repetitive parts of the job off their plate so they can do that.”
“The chemicals industry is inherently relationship-driven,” says Dheev. “But today’s procurement teams are stretched thin. With Valdera, one person can now manage a broader scope: sourcing faster, accessing a wider network of qualified suppliers, and making smarter decisions in less time. That’s what’s getting our customers excited.”
Driving impact beyond cost
In chemical procurement, cost will always matter but it’s only part of the equation. The organizations leading the way are the ones thinking strategically: securing supply, expanding their supplier base, improving agility, and driving long-term value. That’s why more teams are turning to Valdera not just to cut costs, but to unlock a new level of visibility, access, and control.
“Our vision is to enable procurement professionals to leverage this data in order to give them market intelligence, expand their supplier network, and enable margin expansion,” Dheev concludes. “If you ask any of our customers, they’ll tell you savings are just table stakes when using Valdera. The real impact comes from levers like security of supply, innovation and sustainability. Those levers are harder to quantify, but they’re critical to the long-term success of the business.”
Implementing an outcome-based approach
In a crowded and fast-evolving tech landscape, it’s easy to get distracted by the promise of sweeping, all-in-one solutions. But the most effective procurement teams stay focused, starting with a clear understanding of their business goals and choosing technology that’s purpose-built to achieve them.
“Success starts with knowing the outcomes you’re trying to drive,” says Sruti. “Whether it’s sourcing the right chemicals, improving security of supply, unlocking savings, or advancing sustainability and innovation. Being clear about those goals is what helps you identify the right tools and partners to get there.”
That kind of clarity leads to faster wins and less wasted effort. “We always encourage customers to start where the impact matters most,” Dheev adds. “Don’t spread yourself too thin. Be specific about the problem you’re solving, define the KPI that matters, and test any solution against that. Just because a tool is popular doesn’t mean it’s the right fit. The best results come from targeted solutions that align with your most pressing priorities.”
Candex exists to solve tail spend by removing friction and giving procurement leaders time to focus on what truly drives value.
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Candex isn’t chasing trends for the sake of innovation. Instead, the company is focused on solving one of the oldest and most persistent challenges in enterprise procurement: getting rid of the noise.
Most in procurement will be familiar with Candex. Co-founded by Shani Vaza, Chief R&D Officer, and Jeremy Lappin, CEO, Candex is a technology-based master vendor that simplifies onboarding and payments to small and one-time vendors. It delivers a fast, compliant, and easy buying experience for requisitioners, while procurement gains automation, visibility, and control, reducing the vendor master by up to 80%.
For years, procurement teams have battled fragmented data, manual onboarding processes, and administrative bottlenecks. This results in time and resources spent on tasks that add little value, while strategic initiatives suffer from a lack of focus.
For many organisations, 70% of vendors account for just 5% of spend. With Candex, procurement can manage that long tail of spend without adding operational burden. This frees up teams to focus on strategic priorities, redirect spend to preferred suppliers, and drive more value across the business. At this year’s DPW New York conference, Jeremy Lappin and Chief Customer Officer Danielle McQuiston shared how their platform is helping procurement evolve beyond compliance and cost savings into something far more valuable: clarity.
Addressing the core problem
While many conversations at the event kept coming back to the use of AI, Candex is doing things differently. “AI will transform procurement by uncovering better, more innovative vendors,” says Lappin. “But every new vendor comes with the burden of onboarding and compliance. That’s where Candex makes a real difference—we streamline that process by enabling fast, compliant purchasing without the heavy lift of onboarding. As companies adopt AI, they’ll need a system like ours to truly benefit from what it reveals.”
It’s about bringing the conversation back to the core problem. Lappin continues: “Candex makes it possible to onboard and pay new vendors in minutes, and without setup delays, while keeping procurement firmly in control. That’s where we unlock both agility and compliance.”
Solving procurement’s data problem
After speaking to many procurement leaders at events such as DPW New York 2025, one topic of conversation stood out: that messy data can be a major hurdle to overcome before successful AI adoption can occur. Companies dealing with multiple affiliates for a single vendor can find their data ends up split, duplicated, and difficult to work with at scale.
“The fragmentation of data is a very old problem,” says Lappin. “One of the reasons it occurs is because the data is organised by affiliates and isn’t aggregated properly. This creates enormous processes.”
A dedicated platform can take on the heavy lifting of sorting through this data, without the use of complex AI models. Lappin continues: “One thing that Candex does to help this problem with smaller vendors is auto-aggregating affiliates under one corporate umbrella. It’s going to massively reduce the data problem by directing that small spend through us.”
McQuiston adds: “Data is the foundation of all the decisions that procurement makes. And the fact that they can consolidate that data within Candex, and look at it only when it’s relevant to what actions they have to take, is a huge contribution to the space for procurement.”
The right data at the right time
Candex isn’t trying to flood procurement teams with dashboards. Instead, it delivers data when and where it’s needed, stripping away the noise to surface what’s important.
“Our customers tell us we filter out 95% of the noise and highlight just the actions that matter. It’s not just visibility, it’s visibility at the right moment,” says McQuiston. “We have amazing reporting that has hundreds of lines of precision data in there, but it’s also aggregated in a way that it calls out to the things that need attention rather than being bogged down with the rest.”
“Oftentimes the stuff that goes through us is the stuff that procurement doesn’t have the time to give its attention to,” explains Lappin. “I think one of the most powerful things we do is get rid of the things they shouldn’t care about so that it’s very easy to see what they should.”
Simplicity wins
Some procurement tools are complex, slow to adopt, and full of friction, but Candex takes a different approach. “The users just want to be able to operate and do the work that they need to do to serve their objectives,” says McQuiston. “Procurement doesn’t have enough resources to deal with all of the small things.”
Bringing the focus back to the core function of procurement simplifies processes and reduces noise. When working with a lot of small vendors, procurement teams can get bogged down with admin and data. This is where Candex takes on the weight of that burden, and allows the business to move forward.
“At the end of the day, Candex is a tool that is so simple from a user perspective, but still has the confidence of the procurement organisation,” McQuiston continues. “It also shines a better light on the procurement function, which often gets a black eye for being in the way of things.”
Real people
For Lappin, the hype around AI isn’t what makes a product great; it’s real-world validation from customers. “There’s only one way to get through the hype,” he says, “and that’s to find other companies that are using the products and loving them. I think that’s one of the things that has made us successful.”
It’s one of the strengths of DPW; these events showcase real use cases, not just demonstrations. This enables attendees to see the impact of new technologies for themselves, and connect with the people behind them. “DPW has the ambition to use real use cases rather than just relying on demos,” says McQuiston. “That’s what’s a little bit different about DPW compared to some other conferences; the proof is in the pudding.”
Lappin and McQuiston also highlighted the importance of customer-led innovation through Candex Connects – roundtables all over the world that allow procurement peers to meet, discuss the challenges affecting them, and learn from one another, as well as sharing their own inspirational use cases. “We’re not just providing a solution. We’re providing a space where our customers get together, discuss best practices,” McQuiston adds. “And I think we’ve done that really well.”
Procurement, repositioned
Ultimately, Candex is about more than just a tool. It’s about reshaping the perception and potential of procurement teams, giving them the freedom and focus to lead strategically. By removing some of the friction of dealing with myriad small vendors, procurement teams are empowered to drive deeper value.
“Our whole business is focused on agility and value creation,” says McQuiston. “We have to be compliant because our customers demand it, but it’s not really about cost savings when you talk about tail spend. Procurement has always been in a position where they believe they can squeeze something out of every purchase. We’ve gotten to a point in the evolution of the function where they realise there’s a portion they can’t squeeze anything out of. It’s powerful to be able to let that go.”
“Procurement needs to be involved in decisions around spend,” adds Lappin. “They help negotiate. They figure out the right vendors. They really are needed in this process, which is why it exists.”
Candex isn’t just solving tail spend, it’s redefining how procurement operates at scale. With built-in controls, full audit trails, and seamless integration with existing systems, Candex empowers procurement to lead strategically, reduce supplier bloat, and stay agile in a complex world.
Candex is proving that the biggest transformation comes from helping procurement teams reduce the noise and get back to the work that matters.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding – and the evidence of TealBook’s increasingly-successful evolution lies in its client relationships.
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We talked endlessly about data and AI at DPW New York 2025. A universal truth is that the successful implementation of AI requires clean data. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but businesses certainly need to have a decent handle on their data before adopting AI tools successfully.
To help make this a reality, North American data and software company TealBook has recently announced a legal entity-based data model. It’s designed to resolve supplier records to the correct legal entities, map parent-child relationships, and enrich profiles with verifiable attributes, enabling accurate supplier data to flow seamlessly into procurement systems and AI applications. “This is part of a 12-year journey for TealBook,” says Stephany Lapierre, the company’s Founder and CEO. “Our vision has always been to build a way to enable procurement organisations to have high quality data with a lot of integrity. That way, you give them the trust they need to put data directly into their systems.
“Twelve years ago, we underestimated the complexity of getting large enterprises to trust a third-party data solution. As part of our journey, we started using AI early on to find information where it exists on supplier websites and databases. We also started creating digital profiles in a structured way for procurement to access it, match it to their vendor master, and use it.”
TealBook’s data evolution
But, again, at the beginning, TealBook couldn’t be sure whether the data was high enough quality. In 2017, the company was primarily known as a supplier discovery application. It was positioned as a pre-sourcing engine to help procurement teams identify alternative suppliers. At the time, TealBook’s data and models enabled it to determine which companies were similar to others. This meant users could search and find comparable suppliers to expand their sourcing options.
“But that was just a way for us to deliver something that was underserved in the market,” Lapierre continues. “Then our customers started asking for certificates, which are hard to collect and match. They needed cleaner data. They felt they were under-reporting. So in 2018, we started to see whether our technology could refine the data more. We focused on certificates and supplier diversity. We collected great use cases along this journey, and the vision never wavered.
“Just last year we released a new technology – completely different, really sophisticated – allowing us to pull from a lot more data sources. We have provenance so our customers can actually verify where the data’s coming from. We can match it to vendor masters. And now, we also have this new model that includes 230 million verifiable global legal entities from across 145 countries’ registries. We marry this with global parent and child hierarchy, which is really hard for our customers to match themselves.”
Partnership with Kraft Heinz
Now, after 12 years of that vision, TealBook is deeply proud of what it’s achieved. Part of its ability to get to this point is due to early adoption from key customers. Kraft Heinz is a business which Lapierre describes as a “co-innovation partner”, and has been invaluable in helping TealBook achieve its recent goals.
From the perspective of Stefanie Fink, Head of Global Data and Digital Procurement at Kraft Heinz, the partnership has been an immediately valuable one. “It really started with having a visionary, like-minded relationship,” she says. “That’s an important piece of it, because my vision for procurement is that we are partners in our enterprise.
“In order for us to do our jobs, we have to bring in the right data for use. This is where Stephany’s partnership and vision really resonated. We were really looking for diversity and we could make things easier for our partners, while making sure we had the right people in our ecosystem. We also had to lift up the hood and see what was underneath everything we’ve got. Stephany brought our vision to life. TealBook has evolved too, as we’ve seen; it’s more about orchestration and software-as-a-service. It has been a partnership of need and we cannot continue to do other things without this kind of partnership around data.”
When initially dabbling with this relationship, Fink was clear that Kraft Heinz had no desire to be taking care of more stuff. What she wanted from TealBook was a strong focus on good quality data. After last year’s product release from TealBook, Kraft Heinz already saw its data enriched by 25%. The recently-announced new data model gives the business and TealBook’s other customers the right structure tied to a legal entity, which is a highly credible anchor. “We’re able to do entity resolution – all automated – remove all the duplicates, and then you start with a clean, digitised vendor master,” says Lapierre. “That’s what brings further enrichment.”
The challenge of assessing data quality
Assessing its data before involving TealBook was important for Kraft Heinz, but challenging for such a large organisation. “We had to fail first and fail fast,” says Fink. “We tried some AI around fixing things early, but that didn’t work for us. It was a real eye-opener, realising where this next evolution could take us. Particularly regarding focusing on AI and agents for the right things, not the meaningless things. Before, we were asking agents to tell us if things were duplicates, when we should have been asking: what do these suppliers offer? Where is the innovation? Where is the value?”
What surprised Fink most when looking under Kraft Heinz’s hood was the lack of attention that was being paid to what the business was doing. “It was amazing that nobody had questioned it sooner,” she says. “So I said, let’s take this as a crawl, walk, run approach. I have a wonderful CPO who really understands where we want procurement to go as a function. She was excited about us just getting it done and getting people involved, and that’s what it takes: real pride in ownership of the data.”
Getting engrossed in GenAI
True partnership and an all-in approach has enabled Kraft Heinz to work successfully with AI. This is something some businesses are struggling with as the conversation around artificial intelligence grows louder. For Lapierre, as the CEO of a tech company, adopting AI successfully has meant trying and failing and being fully entrenched in AI as it has evolved.
“We’ve been using AI in our technology since 2016,” she states. “We’re an early adopter. We’d be talking about scraping data, and data in the cloud, and AI models, and our customers’ pupils would widen in surprise. We’ve come a long way and the market has come a long way.
“The technology we deliver today wouldn’t be possible without the AI tools now at our disposal. We used to build models; we don’t do that anymore. We spend a lot of time investing in engineers to build and test models. That’s made us so much more efficient. I use GenAI every day for so many things now. I’m encouraging my team to be so involved in AI. That’s how you build expertise. You need really strong expertise to use GenAI well.
“Getting good with AI is about taking risks and having a leadership team that pushes for new things. Suddenly, the successful use of AI becomes a habit.”
Why businesses should prepare themselves for AI by not getting lost in the whirlwind of hype and focusing only on what works for their needs.
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With AI being the topic of conversation for procurement professionals right now, it’s easy to get lost in the maze of conflicting information. Vroozi is a procure-to-pay platform powered by robust AI capabilities to deliver meaningful use cases. CEO and Co-Founder, Shaz Khan, takes approaching AI the right way very seriously.
For Vroozi, the use of AI is a two-sided coin. It’s an organisation that talks about AI both in production and consumption. AI is a tool that has been a game-changer, because it has enabled Vroozi’s software and technology engineers to be able to rapidly prototype and develop code. And that code is beneficial for creating feature sets and capabilities that the company wants to introduce to the market.
“Similarly, we take steps to look at how a customer interacts with our software for the first time,” Khan explains. “The implementation process is also ripe for consuming and producing great results with AI. Imagine you go through some type of interview wizard where you prompt the system based on your region and industry. The system will self-configure according to your business unit. This is real intelligence that understands your business at a different level, as well as the competitive landscape, and brings in best practices to deliver incredible results.”
Getting the approach right
Having said that, Khan freely admits that we’re in the early innings of AI adoption. For him, leaders should adopt a multi-pronged approach to implement AI. The first move is to assemble a team. “One key area with AI is that a lot of companies are relying on outside experts that don’t know the business and the goals that they’re trying to achieve,” he explains.
“You should invest in your own people before you invite outside parties in. Bring that education and assemble a use case, before assessing the problems you’re trying to solve and determining whether AI is a good tool set or capability to solve the problem. If these things match up, execute the game plan, bring in the right technologies and the right expertise, and only then bring AI capabilities into your workforce.”
The challenges
With this being the “early innings”, there are also barriers and challenges. The main issue, from Khan’s perspective, is security. “There’s a trust aspect that has to be looked at,” he explains. “There’s also an ethics aspect. Are you delivering the right results? And how much autonomy are you giving AI and its agents to go out and deliver those results for you without any human interaction? I think the companies that get it right will strike a balance between the trifecta of automation, really great AI technologies, and a balance of human interaction to create an overall output.”
There’s also the question of data. If the data isn’t clean, output will be compromised and lead to poor results. We haven’t seen the worst of what can happen, Khan believes, and AI has the potential to create scenarios that are hard to recover from, if used poorly. “We need to prepare ourselves now to prevent those types of potential calamities from happening,” says Khan. Which is the entire point of DPW: for procurement and technology leaders to educate and learn about best AI practice.
This allows people to cut through the, as Khan puts it, “hysteria” around AI that can cause problems for businesses. They’re rushing to solve problems, and while leveraging AI can be a component of a complete holistic toolkit, it can’t be the only answer. “A lot of companies today still struggle with getting their businesses off spreadsheets,” he states. “AI should be an equaliser and enabler to get it right.”
Structuring unstructured data
For Khan, in order to ready themselves for AI, procurement professionals and practitioners need to be absolutely committed to data management and governance. “What companies often forget is that much of today’s data is unstructured. It’s not neatly stored in databases – it might be a chat, an image of a spec sheet, or a contract never digitised. This unstructured data often can’t be used by AI models today, so companies risk only addressing a small part of the challenge. Data governance has to be an ongoing exercise.”
Having said that, Khan is keen to differentiate between clean data and perfect data. In fact, many procurement professionals we spoke to at DPW New York 2025 said the same. The message is: don’t wait around for everything to be perfect, or you’ll never start.
“Good enough data is just fine,” Khan says. “But if you’re going to continue to feed your AI engines and algorithms bad data, your outputs will be compromised. Companies need to have data governance strategies and upfront policies in place so that they can manage this, independent of the people that offer them.”
AI creating a complete picture
While treading carefully is important, Khan is equally keen to extoll the many virtues of AI for procurement professionals. There are many incredible use cases already, and AI tool sets and algorithms can effectively interrogate a company’s data and give them the answers they require. AI enables these users to have a complete picture of their buying cycle, and allows them to get additional information for where they can pivot.
“This is where the true power of agentic AI will come into play,” says Khan. “When you can fully trust the system inputs, AI will be able to orchestrate those processes autonomously, and present that information to an end user for final decision.”
Khan is very excited about what Vroozi is doing within its own AI layer. The business looks at AI and intelligence as a pervasive thread across its entire tech stack. Every aspect of its platform has some kind of AI enablement, although it’s not an AI-first company.
“We follow three distinct areas where we are thriving on the AI front,” says Khan. “First is intelligent document processing. Can we take structured and unstructured data such as contracts, quotes, work orders, and invoices, and populate them automatically onto a screen without any human touch? Processing invoices might require an army of people typing in data, and they might not capture it all. But an AI toolset can take millions of records and process them simultaneously. That’s the power of AI.”
The power of hyper-personalisation
The second area is what Vroozi calls hyper-personalisation, where it intensely personalises the platform to meet a company’s preferences and needs. It’s about how AI can find trends and not only predict the user’s needs, but also help take the next steps. This includes finding suppliers and ordering things that are needed, so that workflows aren’t disrupted.
“Then we also have what we call the push economy,” says Khan. “AI’s power is in pushing and giving people head starts. So when you talk about AI algorithms and look at analytics, it’s about how AI can present to companies in the procurement space when they need to lock in favourable pricing on products and services, and predict when you are seeing potential fraud scenarios based on trends and patterns. You need a lot of data for those AI models to train on, which is why I say we’re in the early innings. It takes time, but it’s incredibly powerful when you get to that point.”
The benefits ahead
At such an exciting time for procurement, 2025 and 2026 look bright for leaders in this space. Not only procurement, but also supply chain and FinTech, are set to benefit from what AI can do with data.
“There’s going to be a focus on how to capture and harness data, and feed it into AI in a way that produces results,” says Khan. “What we’ll see in the next two years is that AI has now learned from the data that’s been fed into it. You’re going to see higher-quality results and better outcomes. Again, I would caution companies to define the problem first. Then determine if AI is an absolute enabler and game changer. We believe AI can be an influencer and supercharger in terms of productivity. However, there needs to be specific use cases that make sense for corporations.
“In 2025 and beyond, you’re going to see great technologies embedded into organisations that really work.”
Catching up with Mitha-Ai’s Co-Founder, Arash Saberi, we dive into the vital importance of a solid data foundation.
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Whether we’re talking about gen AI, 10X, or any other kind of advanced tech solution, data is at the core of the discussion. And when data isn’t clean or ready for the implementation of something being built on top of it, businesses can end up significantly held back. Mithra-Ai is an organisation that helps its customers to build trust in their data, which is a core issue for many.
“That sets us apart,” says Arash Saberi, Co-Founder of Mithra-AI. “We help procurement leaders and category managers create, execute, and realise their strategies. This is backed by reliable, comprehensive data, both internal and external, tailored specifically for their categories.
“Maintaining high-quality data is crucial as it influences the accuracy and reliability of AI-driven insights and recommendations. That’s where Mitha-AI comes in. Our cleansing, enrichment, and auto-classification engines ensure that procurement stakeholders, including data scientists, begin with a reliable data foundation.”
Cleaning and classifying data
Mithra-Ai is an AI-native SaaS solution, which starts off by proposing a meaningful spend hierarchy for every category. What’s key is that this is paired with an automated cleansing and classification engine. This is so important because the only way to achieve truly clean data is to make sure it enters the system clean in the first place.
“Clear visibility into categorised spending eliminates uncategorised expenses and wrong assumptions,” says Saberi. “When supplemented by relevant external data intelligence, category managers are empowered to negotiate with confidence, achieve greater savings, and monitor initiatives effectively.”
A world beyond cost savings
When launching Mithra-Ai in 2021, the company’s founders rightly foresaw that the role of procurement would evolve beyond focusing merely on cost savings, and become the central hub of every organisation. Because of that, they knew that accurate, reliable information was needed – hence the necessity for Mithra-Ai.
As procurement has shifted, the status quo is no longer good enough. It’s an exciting time for the sector, but also one of high demand in the race to adopt increasingly advanced technology. But it’s necessary for efficiency and growth.
“Tesla and Nvidia exemplify the power of embracing change over maintaining that status quo,” says Saberi. “Procurement is facing intense pressure to evolve with organisational needs. Those organisations can opt for incremental changes, which will likely slow them down, or pursue a 10X leap to maintain competitive advantage. The latter requires bold and decisive leadership from heads of procurement.”
The road to 10X thinking
The way to drive 10X thinking, Saberi believes, is through having a clear vision of your goals. Sometimes businesses, especially ones which are going through major change or those navigating outdated legacy systems, are at risk of losing sight of their goals. But having that vision is a foundational necessity, regardless of what stage you’re at.
“Set aspirations high, and question existing norms,” says Saberi. “Procurement leaders can draw inspiration from startups by fostering a culture of innovation through small-scale initiatives that can rapidly expand. Reevaluate the skills and team structure necessary for future success.”
Another important aspect to bear in mind when considering these things is the level of risk you’re willing to undertake when setting goals and aspirations. “That’s often overlooked,” Saberi continues. “Determining the acceptable level of risk is crucial. It significantly influences partner selection and the outcome of RFPs.”
Thinking big, starting small
While ambition is vital to 10X thinking and beyond, businesses must also make sure they don’t bite off more than they can chew. Launching into adopting huge volumes of advanced technology can lead to overwhelm and can make a business stall rather than evolving. A more careful approach is required.
“Think big, start small,” says Saberi. “Prioritise high-impact, low-effort initiatives over those requiring significant effort. Many transformation projects fail to deliver the expected benefits and incur high costs during the program.” This is another reason to decide on the appropriate risk level early on, in order to guide prioritisation decisions and transformation pace.
It’s an incredibly exciting time for procurement, and that includes Mithra-Ai. In a very short time, it’s developed several foundational modules for its data-driven category management solution. This includes the Collaborative Initiative Tracker that was launched during DPW Amsterdam 2024 – just one of Mithra-Ai’s inspiring undertakings as we approach 2025.
“The tracker means that procurement teams can now involve multiple stakeholders in collaboratively tracking and enhancing the impact of key initiatives, such as cost-saving measures,” says Saberi. “Exciting times lie ahead.”
DPW Amsterdam is the perfect stage for launching a solution like this. It’s an event that inspires a culture of innovation, bringing procurement professionals together to teach, learn, and shout about their latest additions to the procurement landscape.
“DPW stands out as the premier procurement tech event of the year,” says Saberi. “Practitioners can explore and engage with procuretech suppliers, showcasing valuable use cases and personal stories across multiple stages. DPW is a catalyst for ideation, creating trust and confidence in the benefits of applying cutting-edge technologies to improve business outcomes. This year’s event felt even more international than previous years. I look forward to seeing it continue to grow.”
Saberi’s main takeaway from DPW Amsterdam this year is that a solid data foundation is essential – something he was well aware of as part of Mithra-Ai. “Without it, transformation projects and new technologies will struggle to succeed,” he concludes. “In the past two years, there has been increased focus on sustainability and risk intelligence, driven by numerous new solution providers. However, during the DPW Amsterdam 2024 conference, we observed new trends coming up and, again, more focus on data quality, which works to our advantage.”
