AI: removing jobs or enabling change?

"AI is unlikely to cut jobs in procurement"

These changes are coming in now. Anyone who is resistant to them will be the first ones to go. If anyone lacks knowledge or doesn’t want to retrain and catch up, then that’s also going to be a problem. The expectation is that you’ll optimise your time and demonstrate your value, and if you don’t, leaders will notice. They are putting their time into their employees and want them to help revolutionise the company.

When the revolutionary becomes standard

I did a workshop with the University of Birmingham's supply chain students who were due to graduate later that year. The conclusion was that they need to start looking at these skills now, before they enter the job market.

When they’re interviewed by hiring managers, they’ll need to demonstrate these basic abilities, so nobody has to waste time teaching them what will be seen as core skills. They can focus on company-related training, corporate policies and other things that will prove to be directly useful to them.

There was a time when you wrote in your CV that you knew Word, you knew Excel, and you knew PowerPoint. That's gone now. People will want to see that you are familiar with AI or regularly use ChatGPT. You don't need to have deep Word or PowerPoint skills anymore. You need to be familiar with whatever AI platform you’re using, because it can create a five-page slide for you in 10 seconds.

Deploying new ideas

Last year, the company gathered ideas for AI use across our international organisations. Out of 200 ideas and initiatives, around 80 were deployed or are in the process of deployment. That indicates a strong direction for our 2026 adaptation.

By the close of this year, we will be able to say how much time we were previously spending on activities that the AI tools were brought in to replace and how much time those activities are taking now. This is impacting our bottom line, as we’ve already achieved cost savings of around 10%. We're going to push it over 10% for 2026 and if some of these have worked beautifully, let's enrich them, and let's take a step forward and look at what else we can do.

To give you an example, we’ve already given some access to the system to our suppliers and trained them on it. This means they don't even need to pick up a phone or send an email. They type their purchase order number into the bot, and you get a response as to when they’ll be paid, and if it’s being held for any reason. It means that I can also walk into a meeting with our suppliers with confidence, because I can pull together the necessary information quickly using AI.  

In the past, you’d have to have spoken to the order management team and asked about the status of a purchase order. They’d have generated a report, you’d have downloaded an Excel spreadsheet, and only then could you have seen what the spend was. These low-level tasks are easy to automate.

The advantages of scepticism

As you can see, I’m very pro-AI. But of course, there are downsides. You certainly shouldn’t blindly accept whatever it says to you. I always ask ‘what’s your second source?’ Is it just that someone put it into Gemini and is now coming back to me saying, ‘Gemini says this, so we can do it’. Or is there something factual behind it? Have you discussed it, perhaps with the supplier?

That is where I see, sometimes, a gap caused by the human reliance on artificial intelligence. It is still learning and, coming back to the prompts, if you ask everything nicely, like ‘please help me,’ or ‘please do this,’ it will show you only what you wanted to see - unless you criticise it. You want its findings to be questioned.

I normally ask AI to check it on several sources to make sure they produce the same result. If the AI advises me of a potential geopolitical risk, I want to know that it’s also looked at Gartner and other suitable tools. Is the output of the sources showing something similar? If it is, then okay. That suggests we are moving in the right direction.

AI as a decision-making tool

AI is already changing the conversation at the leadership table. Given its success, AI-based performance enhancement initiatives are now part of every department lead's annual goals, spanning procurement, logistics, finance, and other functions.

"AI is already changing the conversation at the leadership table"

This means it’s already happening. Trust me. I see the same catalyst as when fire was invented. It became a part of everything. You started forging metals and cooking meals. AI is going to behave in a similar way. It will help industries and it's going to help consumer behaviour as well.

And of course, there are some soft skills that AI can’t replace. One of those skills is negotiation. AI is only as good as what you tell it. It can produce a comparison. It can be used to make an analysis. But human judgement or decision making has to stay with the human.

When you’re sitting face to face, we can take so many things from our interactions. We can see when someone is uncomfortable and suggest an alternative solution or go outside. We can talk, take a break and reconvene, deciding to put a certain clause on hold. We might talk about other things and then come back to the negotiation. These are human things. For AI, it is just yes and no. There’s nothing in between.

The only thing that’s holding us back from embracing this complexity is fear. If you don’t have a necessary skill and don’t overcome that fear and start learning, you will feel a lot of pressure. In the community where we talk, I say don't be afraid and don't feel shy. If you don't know anything, just ask. AI is a tool. Use it to improve you. Don't use it to make your decisions.