Understanding modern CPO priorities: From savings to strategy

The role of the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today’s CPOs are no longer just cost managers—they are strategic leaders driving value, innovation, and resilience across the enterprise. As organizations face growing complexity, digital disruption, and rising stakeholder expectations, understanding how the role is evolving and what it will demand over the next 10 years is essential for future-ready leadership.

What does a CPO do? 

A CPO leads and develops an organization’s procurement department. Traditionally, the role was strongly focused on reducing costs and improving process efficiency. Typical CPO duties include: 

• Establishing the overall procurement strategy and budget. 
• Being accountable for all direct and indirect spend. 
• Defining the procurement operating model. 
• Building an efficient team.  
• Issuing instructions (or policies) for acquisitions to ensure compliance. 

While these foundational responsibilities remain important, modern CPOs have a broader focus beyond cost control and transactional procurement. 

How the role is changing

The role of the CPO has evolved dramatically over the past decade, shaped by several powerful forces. Advances in technology, AI, and analytics have enabled them to lead digital transformation across procurement. At the same time, the rising importance of sustainability has made ESG and ethical sourcing central to corporate strategy. And as global risks—from pandemics to geopolitical tensions—continue to disrupt supply chains, CPOs are now charged with building agility and resilience into their organizations.

Key priorities and challenges of modern CPOs

Being a CPO today is about much more than just keeping an eye on costs. To stay ahead and meet shifting business demands, modern CPOs must focus on:

• Aligning procurement priorities with organizational objectives: Ensuring that procurement is focused on the key factors that contribute to business growth, like cost reduction and innovation. 
• Operational efficiency: Streamlining processes and improving the overall effectiveness of the procurement function.
• Digital transformation: Improving decision-making, efficiency, and process visibility by implementing technology, data analytics, and AI. 
• Agility and resilience: Building supply chains that adapt to disruptions and manage risk effectively.
• Sustainability & ESG integration: Embedding ethical and environmentally responsible practices into sourcing decisions. 
• Strategic leadership: Leading cross-functional teams, influencing enterprise strategy, and developing future procurement talent. 

But these priorities come with significant challenges. Many organizations still struggle with fragmented or unstructured data, which has a major impact on procurement’s ability to operate effectively. Bad data leads to unproductive technology and AI use, poor transparency, higher risk exposure, and increased costs. These knock-on effects limit the department’s capacity to focus on ESG goals and other strategic business objectives.

Talent shortages add another layer of pressure: nearly 40% of CPOs cite leadership and skills gaps as their biggest challenge, according to the Deloitte 2025 Global CPO Survey, making it harder to leverage tools, processes, and insights effectively. Volatile markets intensify the strain, with 57% of leaders naming geopolitical uncertainty as their top concern. And as environmental and social regulations continue to evolve, ensuring global compliance becomes increasingly complex. 

Why we need an AI-powered CPO to navigate the future of procurement

Achieving the objectives and overcoming the challenges CPOs face is no small task. This is where AI and digitalization become a critical enabler for the CPO of the future. In the coming decade, procurement will become increasingly autonomous, data-driven, and integrated across the enterprise. AI systems will augment tasks that were once manual and time-consuming. In the Deloitte survey, CPOs report that the top three focus areas for next-gen technology adoption are data analytics (88%), invoice and payment processing (78%), and purchasing (75%).

As resource-heavy manual tasks are increasingly automated and procurement decisions progressively rely on real-time insights, predictive modeling, and scenario simulations, the role of the CPO will continue to evolve, shifting from traditional oversight to strategic orchestration. To make the most of the potential of AI in procurement, future-ready CPOs will need to:

• Build digitally enabled, agile operating models: Design a function that consists of human and agentic employees, considering implications on process design, team size, and technological enablers.
• Guide AI-augmented decision-making: Understand AI recommendations, question assumptions, and translate insights into actionable strategies.
• Manage autonomous processes: Oversee systems that handle routine sourcing, compliance checks, and supplier scoring, while focusing on exceptions and high-impact decisions.
• Drive enterprise-wide collaboration: Leverage AI insights to influence cross-functional strategy, align with business priorities, and foster stronger supplier relationships. In digitally advanced organizations, CPOs report greater involvement in organizational decision-making about various business/enterprise-level concerns, including corporate risk management, sustainability, and outsourcing, offshore, and automation decisions.
• Develop future skills: Cultivate digital skills and AI literacy within their teams. According to the Deloitte survey, the most successful organizations are not just doing basic digital literacy training for individual staff members, but also developing the skill as a function. In cross-functional teams, hands-on training of advanced technologies like process orchestration, data analytics, and AI agents is empowering employees to trust AI tools and agents with simpler tasks, while humans stay in control and lead the change.

Build AI literacy with Procure Ai

Understanding AI’s opportunities and capabilities is just the first step. To be a CPO ready for 2035, leaders must prioritize building AI literacy and adopting the latest tools. That’s where Procure Ai comes in. Through the Procure Ai Procurement Aicademy, leaders can build AI literacy step by step with practical, accessible learning. And with the Procure Ai platform, they can put that knowledge into practice—applying AI to sourcing and negotiations, supplier and risk management, purchasing, and analytics. Together, these two aspects give CPOs both the understanding and technology they need to make AI a driver of procurement performance.

Leading procurement into the future

The role of the CPO has shifted from cost oversight to strategic leadership, shaped by global complexity, rising expectations, and rapid technological change. Today’s CPOs are responsible for aligning procurement activities with business objectives, improving operational efficiency, managing risk, embedding sustainability, and leading digital transformation—while guiding teams and suppliers through constant uncertainty.

AI is a powerful enabler for future-focused CPOs, allowing them to automate resource-heavy manual tasks and make smarter decisions based on real-time insights, predictive modeling, and scenario simulations. The most effective CPOs will embrace these technologies and lead the change. They will guide AI-augmented decision-making, manage autonomous processes, and foster collaboration across the enterprise.

The first step in harnessing these capabilities is building AI literacy to allow you to lead by example. Are you ready to step up? Sign up for the Procure Ai Aicademy now to become fluent in AI.