CPO Outlook 2026
From Strategy to Practice: Making Procurement Transformation Real
Every CPO is expected to lead on AI, ESG, supplier risk and transformation — with the same team and budget as last year. That gap doesn’t close from listening alone.
Two days of real exchange with Nordic peers and experts — roundtables, panels and keynotes built around what you’re working on now.
Not a line-up. A list of things you’ll work out — and who you’ll work them out with.
Confirmed so far. More as the programme locks. Every line is a real session, led by a practitioner or expert close to the work.
Understand where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding next — and where most strategy decks no longer match the data.
Lena Sellgren · Chief Economist & Head of Research · Business Sweden
Learn how indirect procurement rolled out Coupa and AI-enabled buying during Denmark’s largest-ever merger — instead of putting procurement on hold.
Louise Noer · Global Head of Indirect Procurement · Novonesis
See how UPM is rebuilding sourcing around business value — splitting today’s category work into the third to stop or automate, the third to keep, and the third to add by 2030.
Vesa Kuismanen · Director, Sourcing & Business Transformation · UPM
Hear what procurement is now asked to do with AI at once: govern it for the rest of the business, and rebuild its own function with it.
Nina Rapp · Copilot Regional GTM Lead, Nordics · ALSO
Discuss who actually owns the regulatory work when the rules — and the deadlines — keep moving.
Alisha Bloodworth · Vice President, Global Procurement · Perstorp
Challenge whether procurement is set up to shape AI, not just gate it, and what it can honestly tell the CEO it’s getting back.
Jatin Singhal · Global Head of Category, Technology · Adecco
Compare how supplier risk runs at scale across 45,000 entities: seven processes consolidated into one, now with AI.
Isabel Carlebom & Nils Holm Andersson · Sourcing & Digital Procurement · Orkla
Pressure-test how procurement proves value forward, not just defends cost.
Dnyanesh Sarang · Director, Strategic Sourcing · Cytiva | Danaher
Keynotes, peer labs and roundtables, the Nordic CPO of the Year award, and an evening reception with dinner.
Panels, focused workshops and closing keynotes — finishing around 15:00.
Roundtables and labs run in parallel. You pick the rooms that match what you’re working on — there’s no fixed track.
A sample of what’s confirmed so far. See the full 2026 programme →
Ready to join CPO Outlook 2026?
Limited seats for senior procurement professionals. Connect with Nordic peers and experts, compare what’s working, and leave with conversations that keep paying off.
Who you’ll learn from
Lena Sellgren
Where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding — what the data is actually saying
Despite geopolitical turmoil, Nordic companies keep performing internationally — but the playbook is being rewritten in real time. Lena opens the day with the view from outside in: where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding over the next three years — and where the assumptions in many strategy decks no longer match the data.
Louise Noer
The Supermarket: Accelerating growth and procurement synergies through technology
Mergers usually put procurement on hold — everything waits until the new structure is decided. When Novozymes and Chr. Hansen combined into Novonesis in Denmark’s largest-ever merger, Louise’s team did the opposite, treating the disruption as the moment to rebuild. She shows how indirect procurement became a strategic lever — rolling out Coupa and AI-enabled buying while the organisation was still in flux — and how an AI “front door” now guides employees to the right supplier, at the right time, for the right price.
Vesa Kuismanen
What to keep, what to stop, what to add — designing UPM’s procurement operating model around business value
For forty years procurement has agreed on the work it wants to do; the constraint was never knowing what good looks like, it was time — and the operating model that kept the strategic work losing to the operational. AI may finally do the work better, but point even the best tool at the wrong model and you only do the wrong work faster. Vesa takes UPM’s own sourcing function as the worked example: a deliberate split of today’s category work into the third to stop or automate, the third to keep, and the third to add by 2030. Real choices, real trade-offs, and the criteria behind them — close to the ground, not statements about the future.
Nina Rapp
Beyond AI pilots — translating AI workforce transformation into real business value
Procurement is being asked to do two things with AI at once: govern it for the rest of the business — the licences, contracts, agents and renewals nobody modelled properly — and rebuild its own function around the same technology. Two chairs, same week, same team. Drawing on years of hands-on enterprise AI rollouts across the Nordics, Nina brings a translation key any function leader can use: how AI moves from experimentation to measurable impact, and why some initiatives scale while others stall. The pattern that stands out right now — how the workforce itself is being reshaped, from AI assistants to agentic AI — is where the economics of AI begin to change.
Three CPOs who read the cases — and the room
Björn, Anna and Johan sit on the jury for the Nordic CPO Award — senior procurement leaders evaluating nominees against the conditions they actually operated in. They join CPO Outlook on stage to share what the process surfaced: a clearer picture of what meaningful progress looks like when it’s measured against real constraints rather than ambition, the difference between a function that claims transformation and one that can show it, and an honest read on where the bar actually sits.
Robert Liljeblad
How the evaluation works — and why the framework matters as much as the verdict
Robert facilitates the jury’s evaluation through the structured framework behind the award. He takes the audience behind the process: how nominations are assessed, how independence and conflicts of interest are handled, and why a transparent method is what gives the result its weight.
Where the real work happens
Day 1 runs on labs — small-room sessions where peers compare design choices in real time rather than follow a fixed playbook. Each lab is hosted by a practitioner working the problem inside their own organisation. More hosts are confirmed in the weeks ahead.
Compliance: define it, implement it, prove it — who owns the regulatory work when the rules keep moving
The regulation tells you to comply. It never tells you who decides what it means, who sets the scope, or who is left holding it when the deadline moves — and the deadlines do move: the 2026 Omnibus pushed CSDDD out to 2029 and cut the framework by two-thirds, and PPWR starts to apply on 12 August, two months before this room meets, with part of its detail still unwritten. Chase each rule on its own timeline and you never catch up. The leaders getting ahead answer a different question first — who defines and scopes this, who implements it, who verifies it, and where the honest answer today is “nobody decided, someone just did.” Not a chemicals problem and not a sustainability-versus-cost fight, but an ownership question that normally sits across procurement, sustainability, legal and regulatory affairs at once — usually in four separate rooms. Here it gets one. The table builds a single A3, live, and the empty boxes are where it gets good.
From gate to shaper — designing AI that delivers
Most organisations are past whether to adopt AI; the question is how the function should. EBG’s 2025–2026 procurement surveys show a consistent pattern — most sit at “developing” maturity, few report material hours back, spending is up while outcomes stay modest. This lab puts the CPO-level question on the table: is procurement positioned to ask the design questions early, make the trade-offs visible, and tell the CEO what the function is getting back.
From digitalization to decision-making — designing risk solutions at scale
Orkla has consolidated seven siloed risk processes into one system across 45,000 legal entities — and is now adding AI to triage supplier forms, validate documents and monitor suppliers. This lab compares how the supplier risk process is organised and how AI is applied to manage risk at scale. As Orkla’s own team notes, the field moves fast — this is a room to compare design choices in real time, not a fixed playbook.
Predictive procurement — building the structure, finding the value
Risk and cost efficiency are now hygiene; the harder conversation is how procurement shows value forward — and what of that value rests on individual depth versus what has to sit in the structure. Dnyanesh built both: a method for predictive risk and resilience written down as a book, and an AI-enabled diagnostic that reads a real contract estate. In one case it flagged a regulatory pricing escalation fifteen weeks before the supplier’s own notification window — terms restructured in time, roughly fifty million dollars in revenue protected. The lab shows the structure and the diagnostic with their actual artefacts, then turns the question to the room.
Three rooms, back on stage
On Day 1, twelve labs each ran twice — closed rooms, nothing streamed, the one thing at the summit you had to be in to get. You can’t recap twelve, and trying would miss the point. So Day 2 opens differently.
What the rooms surfaced — drawn out, not presented
Anna sits down on stage with the hosts of three of those labs and draws out what their rooms surfaced across both rounds — what was common, what stood out, what stayed unresolved. A conversation she carries, not three presentations. What was said at the table stays at the table; only the map travels. By Day 2 the room knows these hosts — so it’s less a recap than a reckoning with the questions that wouldn’t close.
Led on stage by Anna Bjärkerud, Founder & MD, EBG | Network
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View CPO Outlook 2025 WrappedWhat an incredibly well-organized event. I have been to several similar ones, both in Sweden and internationally, and this truly held a level I have not seen before.
This Isn’t Another Conference
The agenda comes from the room — survey input from Nordic procurement leaders and sixteen years of running this format. Not from a programme committee guessing what matters.
What you take home isn’t slides. It’s how others have solved — or failed to solve — what you’re working on now.
Partnering with Industry Leaders
Leading organizations that support the Nordic procurement community and contribute to meaningful discussions at CPO Outlook.
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Nordic Procurement Intelligence
Surveys, webinars and analysis from the Nordic procurement community — the same input that shapes the agenda.
Annual Survey
Findings from 144 Nordic procurement leaders on what’s working and what isn’t.
Read the findingsExpert Webinars
On-demand sessions on AI, supplier management and what’s moving the function forward.
Watch webinarsFeatured Articles
Practical analyses on organizational change and procurement identity — through a behavioral science lens.
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Spring focus days for 30 procurement leaders. Peer and expert exchange. Rated 5.5/6 in 2025.
Learn moreReady to join CPO Outlook 2026?
Limited seats for senior procurement professionals. Connect with Nordic peers and experts, compare what’s working, and leave with conversations that keep paying off.