Your AI Pilot Didn't Fail Because of the Vendor. It Failed Because of What You Ignored Before You Called Them.

You convinced your board for AI transformation in Procurement. The Board was still sceptical of early adoption of AI. You presented an analysis with considerable savings opportunity and ROI.

You got the entire organisation excited about this new transformation. But now data presented to you is telling you another story. The board that almost said no — is watching. And you're sitting with something no one else in the building is saying out loud.

We were never ready for this.

Not the technology. Not the vendor. Not the market timing. You. The organisation. The data sitting in seventeen systems that have never spoken to each other. The processes that were automated before they were ever properly mapped. The people who were enthusiastic but not equipped. The business case that was approved because the vision was compelling — and no one wanted to be the one who slowed it down. You know this problem is not unique to your own organisation. How did others find a way through?

The Post-Mortem Nobody Wanted to Have

The post-mortem has twelve people in it. Eleven of them have a theory. Another project has failed. Northstar pilot project that was going to be revolutionary. Procurement business head just said it bluntly “Vendors made fake promises and did not deliver. They sold us technology that cannot be customised as per our expectations”. Hearing those words, as IT Lead, I said nothing. Because the real reasons were ones we had all avoided asking about — including me. Were our processes ever truly standardised? Every process had exceptions nobody had ever documented. €2M already spent. The promised ROI — a distant dream.

That post-mortem could have happened to any organisation. This is happening everywhere. Northstar wasn't an exception.

“The biggest challenge in AI isn’t the algorithms — it’s the data and the processes around it.”

— Cassie Kozyrkov, former Google Data Scientist, founder of Decision Intelligence

What the Organisations That Scaled Did Differently

Before touching a single AI tool, the first step is mapping end-to-end processes. We should have asked one fundamental question: do we start only with template automation or mapping of all end-to-end processes.

The organisations that scaled did one thing before anything else - they did not ignore their local businesses. The focus was not on just global templates but they also pre-identified all business units that will be impacted and identified their important local processes that will also reap business benefits. While implementing local processes, to tackle every exception in the process opened a new can of worms. But with proper structuring and classification, dealing with these exceptions upfront made business unit processes streamlined and transparent. Savings that were previously ignored were visible and made a contribution to overall ROI.

The meeting is now over. The room has been emptied. CPO stays back in the chair. Walks towards the window and stares at the green lawn outside for 30 minutes. An hour later STEERCO receives an email with title:

“What can we do better?”.

An email mandating all of us to ask questions that we have avoided so far. The STEERCO email had one effect nobody anticipated- introspection. STEERCO is forced to face the uncomfortable truth. For the first time, the conversation shifted from vendor failure to internal issues that we should resolve first.

The board that almost said no doesn't have to be the end of the story.

What your organisation needs now is not another vendor — but a trusted advisor who asks the questions everyone else avoided. ProcureSynth will assess your foundation based on predefined metrics and provide a concrete plan for resolution.

Foundation Assessment

Is Your Organisation Ready for This Conversation?

ProcureSynth assesses your foundation based on predefined metrics and delivers a concrete plan for resolution

Sources & References

• S&P Global (2025). AI Initiative Abandonment Survey. spglobal.com

• Gartner (2025). AI Agents Will Command $15 Trillion in B2B Purchases by 2028. gartner.com

• The Hackett Group (July 2025). Digital World Class® Procurement Teams Achieve 2.6X Higher ROI. thehackettgroup.com

• Deloitte (August 2025). 2025 Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey: Agents of Change. deloitte.com

• McKinsey & Company (October 2025). Transforming Procurement Functions for an AI-Driven World. mckinsey.com

• McKinsey & Company (January 2026). How AI Can Unlock Value for Procurement. procurementmag.com

• AI assistants for citations and stats check: Claude, for image generation: Gemini Nano

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