How Vodafone deployed AI across its entire Procurement function

Few companies have managed to deploy AI beyond the pilot stage across their entire Procurement function. Vodafone Procure & Connect is one of them, with results confirmed by two independent financial audits.

Hervé Legenvre, professor at EIPM, MEOGROUP’s training institute, analyzes this deployment in The European Business Review. This case was also at the heart of his keynote at the 5th edition of MEO’Connect in Geneva.

His analysis focuses on AVA, the AI platform that Vodafone built to cover the entire procurement cycle, from sourcing to payment. It now supports 25 billion euros in annual spend.

Scaling up is based on three choices:

• An open architecture, connected to existing tools. Vodafone thus retains control of its intelligence layer without depending on a single software suite.
• Automation proportionate to risk. AI makes recommendations where buyers retain the final decision, and automates repetitive low-risk tasks.
• Buyers involved in the design. Category managers design their category plans themselves.

These choices are reflected in the results. In the very first year, Vodafone achieved 15% additional savings and reduced the duration of its sourcing cycles by nearly half.

For Hervé Legenvre, these efficiency gains do not diminish the role of procurement professionals. On the contrary, they free up time for negotiation, innovation, and collaboration with the business.

Read Hervé Legenvre’s full analysis in The European Business Review: https://lnkd.in/eaD2fbwv