EBG read more than sixty live job ads over the summer. Some name AI capability, some name platforms, most describe procurement as it looks today. The starting point for everything below.

The follow-up: what are you hiring for when the function itself may look different in two years? No answer offered. That is the point.

The path that built every procurement professional is changing. The people on it should compare notes. Why a table for the next generation exists at a CPO summit.

Everyone says data is the foundation, everyone says AI is the future. Two 2026 surveys measure what happens in between — and the gap between what individuals get out of AI and what organisations get out of it has not closed. Sets up Kristina Prilepchanska’s lab.

Why a company that spent a decade building the foundation, not the feature, is worth a conversation in the year everyone discovered agents.

Agents move from isolated use cases into how source-to-pay operates end to end. The question that follows them: who governs the shadow agents, and what does agent debt cost?

Two maps, one Nordic room. Where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding — read through Business Sweden’s data ahead of Lena Sellgren’s opening keynote.

Prewave returns as Platinum Partner, with four years of practitioner learning on moving beyond Tier 1 visibility.

Their roundtable title says it: knowing your risk is not reducing it. An Expert Organisation EBG has worked alongside since 2016.

More than 35 years on a single idea: verify a supplier once and let many buyers rely on the same verification. What that means when the tiers that matter are not the ones you contract with.

Define it, implement it, prove it — and the ownership question underneath all three. Sets up Alisha Bloodworth’s lab.

Kraljic told purchasing to become strategic in 1983, and it worked — procurement owns more of the business than it ever has. The question nobody planned for came after. Sets up Vesa Kuismanen’s keynote.

Mauricio Bozzo spent ten years in procurement before becoming Group CIO of Arrive. The company you get when the pilot phase ends. Sets up the closing keynote.

The question is no longer whether to automate but where — and where a human in the loop stays non-negotiable.

Take cost out and keep the business standing when something breaks. Two demands, one team — and has AI moved either number yet?

The cost of a small purchase sits largely outside the purchase itself. What a function stops doing when the long tail is handled differently.