How Procurement Teams Can 3X Their Influence Without Adding Resources

Nearly 80% of procurement professionals say they’re under pressure to streamline processes, reduce errors, and deliver results faster — all without extra resources. Traditional procurement processes only add to the strain, holding teams back with slow, reactive systems that leave huge savings untapped. In fact, less than half of surveyed procurement leaders say technology is fully integrated into their workflows, limiting cost savings, compliance, and data-driven decision-making.

But there’s good news: AI-driven predictive procurement platforms like Arkestro are changing the game. Thanks to an unparalleled combination of AI, data science, and automation, new solutions are helping procurement teams manage up to three times more spend (yes, three times), lock in better pricing, and hit savings targets effortlessly.

Let’s take a deeper look at the challenges today’s procurement professionals face, along with the solutions empowering procurement to maximize influence without increasing headcount.

The Challenge: Procurement Teams Are Stretched Too Thin

Let’s start with the toughest pill to swallow. Today’s businesses are missing out on critical cost savings and growth opportunities — not because they don’t exist, but because procurement teams simply don’t have the bandwidth to act on them fast enough.

Here’s what’s getting in the way:

Limited Bandwidth, Missed Savings

Procurement teams are often stretched thin, forced to focus only on high-value, top-tier spend. According to The Hackett Group, procurement executives expect workloads to increase by 10% in 2025 while budgets grow by just 1%. That leaves procurement teams with a 9% efficiency gap, meaning long-tail opportunities — where big savings typically hide — will go largely unmanaged.

Slow, Cumbersome Quote Processes

In the digital era, markets, trends, and consumer demand change at lightning speed. In contrast, the RFQ process is unbearably tedious. Getting quotes, correcting errors, analyzing pricing, benchmarking, and approving purchases take weeks or even months — far too long to keep up with modern times. Complex, high-risk projects can take even longer, averaging 6-10 months or more.

Manual processes pile on the bottlenecks, creating delays in supplier approvals, stalling decision-making, and pushing potential savings and revenue further down the road.

Procurement’s Untapped Strategic Potential

Historically, procurement has been seen as a back-office function rather than a strategic driver of profitability. Without modern tools to act faster and scale influence, procurement teams have struggled to contribute meaningfully to business growth, supply chain resilience, and sustainability goals.

The bottom line? Procurement needs to move faster. To unlock cost savings, manage more spend, and drive enterprise priorities, outdated workflows must be replaced.

The Solution: AI-Powered Predictive Procurement

Fortunately, there’s a brighter future ahead.

According to McKinsey, procurement is now poised to drive value across the supply chain and help executives achieve their top priorities. AI-driven systems hold the key to this game-changing future, accelerating decision-making, reducing inefficiencies, and turning procurement into a true profit center.

New research from The Hackett Group shows that AI can help procurement increase productivity by 54% and cut costs by 47%, proving that the right tools are all teams need to do more with less. Notably, procurement organizations stand to benefit from AI even more than other industries, with a return on investment that’s 2.5 times greater than their peers.

How Arkestro Empowers Procurement Teams To Achieve More With Less

Procurement teams need speed, intelligence, and efficiency to thrive — and that’s exactly what Arkestro delivers.

Our predictive procurement platform combines the power of Negotiation Science, Supplier Science, and Process Science to help teams secure better pricing, move faster, and drive measurable impact across more spend:

• Negotiation Science: Combines fact-based negotiations, Pricing Science, and Suggested Offer technology so procurement can set the tone in negotiations, anchoring expectations for final prices and terms.
• Supplier Science: Harnesses real-time data, advanced analytics, and strategic insights to foster supplier collaboration and risk optimization.
• Process Science: Integrated advanced entity resolution, real-time data validation, and lean-inspired workflow improvements to streamline operations.

By leveraging AI, automation, and behavioral data, our platform empowers procurement teams to expand their influence and do more with less.

Get to the optimal price in one-third the time. Define your goals and let Arkestro deliver error-free, ready-to-review bids—fast. Make the first offer, ensure clear comparisons, and use line-item simulations to make confident, data-driven decisions.

Expand procurement’s impact with ease. Arkestro automates the busywork so you can focus on strategic decisions, manage more spend, and keep stakeholders happy—without the overwhelm.

Strengthen supplier relationships. Improve collaboration with dynamic feedback and counteroffers. Diversify your supply base, reduce risk, and drive savings with smarter sourcing.

Instead of chasing down quotes, manually comparing supplier pricing, and waiting weeks for approvals, procurement teams can secure best and final offers before traditional processes would even begin. Ultimately, they can secure better deals, accelerate savings, and contribute directly to profitability.

From Reactive to Proactive: The Arkestro Difference

Arkestro’s AI predicts supplier responses, suggests optimal pricing strategies, and automates negotiations. It turns a time-consuming, reactive process into a proactive, streamlined system that delivers results in days, not weeks.

Here’s how we deliver on our promise:

Faster Savings, Less Hassle

Instead of spending weeks chasing quotes and negotiating back and forth, Arkestro streamlines supplier selection and automates negotiation workflows. That means procurement teams get to the best and final offer faster — unlocking savings that traditional processes simply can’t match.

More Influence, Less Effort

Procurement teams often struggle to manage all their spend categories effectively, but Arkestro changes that. With intelligent, scalable workflows, teams can expand their reach, efficiently handling both high-value strategic spend and long-tail opportunities that are often overlooked.

Smarter Decisions, Instantly

What if you had real-time insights at your fingertips before making a sourcing decision? Arkestro delivers AI-powered recommendations on supplier performance, market dynamics, and pricing trends, providing confidence-inspiring data that leads to more impactful decisions.

Less Risk, More Resilience

Supply chain disruptions, long lead times, and supplier dependencies don’t have to derail business goals. Arkestro helps teams diversify their supplier networks, shorten procurement cycles, and adapt quickly to changing priorities like sustainability and continuity.

Procurement as a Business Growth Driver

When procurement is stuck in reactive mode, its strategic potential goes untapped. Arkestro shifts procurement from a back-office function to a core business driver. It aligns procurement efforts with enterprise-wide goals to fuel profitability, agility, and long-term success.

Modernize Procurement, Maximize Impact

In an era of lean teams and slim budgets, most procurement teams can’t afford to increase headcount. At the same time, traditional procurement methods simply aren’t up for the high-pressure tasks of the modern, digital world.

Luckily, procurement teams don’t need more resources to increase their impact — they just need better tools.

Arkestro solves the problem of outdated, inefficient procurement processes that leave money on the table. With the help of AI, automation, and behavioral science, it transforms how teams negotiate, engage with suppliers, and make faster, smarter decisions with existing resources.

Game-changing procurement starts here. Chat with us to learn how Arkestro can help you achieve bigger wins today.