Tom Mills recently posted a Top 10 Procurement Trends in 2026 post on LinkedIn that made me ask Really? Basically, I’ve been reading, and writing, about the majority of the “trends” for two decades. As per my recent 34-part series on you don’t need to read another state of procurement report for five years!, nothing has really changed in the last five years. In fact, not much has changed in the last ten, if not twenty, years. All that ever changes is the tech-du-jour, which particular risk is the most prominent, which particular process is the most recommended, and whether the trend is in-sourcing solutions, out-sourcing solutions, or hybrid models.

To make this oh-so-clear, we’re going to review Tom’s list and provide some colour commentary!

1️⃣ The CPO as Enterprise Architect

Back in the first major age of responsible sourcing in the early 2000s, the message was that the CPO had to be an enterprise architect to be responsible. To make this abundantly clear, SI did a 12-part series on the “Responsible Sourcing Supplier Workbook” released by the John Lewis Partnership which was the best example of how Procurement could architect a responsible enterprise!

2️⃣ Procurement as Business Storyteller

I remember going to Ariba Live a decade ago, and they opened with the SAP Storyteller. The reason – their solution (which never fully integrated Procuri that they had bought almost a decade prior) was going on 15 years old (while Coupa was still revolutionizing its platform and telling its own tall tales and BravoSolution was acquiring like mad [just before it became Jaggaer]) and there was less and less reason to buy Ariba’s outdated tech … until they told the whole story of what was possible when Ariba was fully integrated in the SAP ecosystem (and what could be possible — forget reality, just believe and buy).

3️⃣ Strategic Supplier Partnerships over Transactional Buying

State-of-Flux (SoF) was founded 24 years ago because strategic supplier partnerships were the key to success! Aravo (US) and SoF (UK) were the first to recognize this and this message has been consistent for decades, coming into the forefront whenever significant supply disruptions occur due to natural, or man-made, disasters. This goes back to the 80s when the recession, plant fires, and the lingering after-effects of the 70s steel crisis led to part shortages and cost hikes that could (only) be mitigated with strategic supplier partnerships. This situation reared its ugly head again as the web, and SaaS, exploded, we had new semiconductor (and RAM) shortages due to demand (and plant fires), multiple man-made and natural disasters had global consequences (9/11 attacks, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, etc.), and market losses surged (dot com bust, 2008 financial crisis), leading to the rise of SXM software as a key category in Procurement in the early 2000s.

4️⃣ Outcome-Based Procurement

That’s the whole point of GPOs. Outcomes is only the price model du jour because the AI vendors couldn’t sell their solutions using a SaaS model with true cloud computing costs being passed on to them by their hosting (and AI) providers! So they have to convince you to buy into their “outcome”-based model. (And that’s why, now, outcomes is a dirty word.)

5️⃣ Strategic Supplier Risk and Resilience Orchestration

Aravo was founded in 2000 to do this. I remember writing about them back in 2007, and Google was one of their early adopters.

To be continued …