In every kitchen I worked in, the new piece of equipment arrived on a Monday and the arguments started on Tuesday. A combi oven can do almost anything. It cannot decide what you are cooking, in which order, for whom. Mise en place is a logic about how work flows, not a gadget, and the gadget only helps once that logic exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was reminded of this by a Gartner press release published on 8 October 2026. In its 2026 Chief Procurement Officer Survey, covering 213 senior procurement leaders, 63% said they expect AI to significantly improve procurement performance over the next three years. Yet only 25% had redesigned jobs or roles as a direct result of implementing AI. Gartner’s Fareen Mehrzai calls successful AI implementation at functional level “fundamentally a role redesign challenge”, and warns that skipping it invites what Gartner calls “job chaos”. (Both surveys concluded in April 2026. The full release is on Gartner’s newsroom.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read those two numbers side by side. Nearly two thirds expect the benefit. A quarter changed the work to earn it. That gap is where most buyer enablement technology goes to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have interviewed buyers for years as part of my research, and one pattern keeps returning. When I ask what would make buying easier, they rarely ask for another platform. They describe friction: a supplier who needs the same information three times, an approval route nobody can explain, a tool that records decisions after they have been made rather than helping to make them. The technology was bought. The logic of the work was never revisited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This matters well beyond your own department. Your suppliers experience your processes as the product you sell them. If your AI-assisted intake form asks twelve questions a human colleague would never ask, the supplier does not see innovation. They see a buyer who is hard to work with. And a buyer who is hard to work with gets the second-best proposal, the slower response, the account manager who is quietly reassigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mehrzai says CPOs must give employees agency in shaping how their roles evolve, and that redesign cannot be a one-time exercise. I would translate that into three questions for your next team meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, which task did this tool take away, and what did we decide the person does instead? If the honest answer is “the same job, plus the tool”, you have added load, not leverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, where does the time saved go? In a kitchen, a faster prep station only helps if the pass is ready for it. In procurement, the hours released from chasing quotes should flow towards the work machines handle badly: reading what a supplier is really telling you, building trust, spotting the weak signal in a delivery pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third, who decides when the tool is wrong? Every system needs a human who is allowed to say “this recommendation does not make sense for this supplier”. Without that person, you have automated your blind spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In The Buyer’s Balance<\/em> I argue that B2B relationships work when buyer and seller find equilibrium, and that relevance and information sharing build that relationship far more reliably than a dazzling moment. Technology can serve that balance or erode it. Used well, it clears the administrative undergrowth so a buyer has time for the conversation that matters. Used badly, it puts a more efficient wall between you and the people who hold the information you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the test I would apply is a simple one. After you introduced the tool, did your suppliers find you easier to work with? If you do not know, ask five of them. That is cheap research, and in my experience the answers arrive within the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pick one tool your team already owns. Write down the job it was meant to change, then write down what actually changed. Where the two lists differ, you have found your role redesign. Start there, with the people doing the work in the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gartner’s numbers suggest most of us are still waiting for the technology to do the redesigning for us. It will not. The oven never decided what was for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bert Paesbrugghe is associate professor of sales management and purchasing strategy at IESEG School of Management (Paris) and guest professor at Ghent University. He is the author of<\/em> The Buyer’s Balance: What your customers want to share with you (Owl Press, 2025, ISBN 9789464778908). More at evaluationshub.com\/book<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Gartner, “Gartner Survey Shows Chief Procurement Officers Stalling on Needed AI Role Redesign”, press release, 8 October 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gartner’s 2026 CPO Survey: 63% expect AI to improve procurement performance, but only 25% have redesigned roles. Why buyer enablement technology needs logic, not just licences.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-succes"],"acf":[],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evaluationshub.com\/api-v1\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Before the next licence renewal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n