Will Procurement Teams Shrink in 2026?

It is time for our retrospective! In this episode of Proc & Roll, hosts Conrad Smith, Natasha Gurevich, and Zachary Bachir look back at their 2025 forecasts and lay out their bold predictions for the year ahead.

We even let an AI agent grade our 2025 scorecards. Did we hit the mark on the "AI Hype Cycle" crashing into the "Data Wall"?

In this episode, we cover:

🔮 The 2025 Scorecard:

• The Data Wall: AI confirms that the hype cycle crashed in Q2 2025 as companies paused projects to fix master data.

• The Amazon Effect: Intake management became the hottest category to solve user experience.

• Savings vs. Value: Why the CFO still demanded hard dollar savings despite the push for "value.

🚀 Top Predictions for 2026:

• The Great Tech Stack Reshuffle: Natasha predicts CPOs will cancel niche subscriptions to self-fund new tools—no incremental budget expected.

• Shrinking Teams: A controversial take that procurement teams will get smaller as manual tasks vanish, shifting focus to high-level strategy.

• Tangible AI Value: Moving past the "shiny toy" phase to asking where AI agents are actually executing work.

• The Gig Expert: The rise of the "fractional" procurement expert to solve the talent crisis.

Plus, Conrad shares an AI-generated "Top 10" list for 2026, including the death of the PowerPoint QBR and the thawing of US-China relations.