Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Making artificial intelligence (AI) work with humans requires having an internal data champion to help overcome fears and create a safe environment. That was the advice offered at Digital Procurement World in Amsterdam today in a session focused on combining humans and AI to help procurement become a top value driver in modern business. Working through overwhelming amounts of data and dealing with employee concerns that AI will take their jobs.

In Part 1 of a 3-part series, Marcell Vollmer, chief digital officer at SAP Ariba, shares his take on where digital procurement is headed. What is the role of e-procurement in B2B e-commerce and what is the role of the chief procurement officer? Vollmer: Procurement has earned an unfair reputation of being a complicated process, but let's break it down simply here. Procurement's role in B2B e-commerce is to streamline the purchasing process and ensure that businesses get the right goods and services that meet all of their specifications, from a corporate-approved vendor, for the right price. Call this the golden triangle of procurement.

We've all seen it coming: disruptions everywhere, from radical technology innovations to trade policies, taxation, Brexit, and supply chain risk. In 2018, the realities hit home as the ground beneath us began to shift – for good. How will the finance community adjust to deal with uncertainty, manage risk, and help their organizations stay ahead? How will finance stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence? How will CFOs need to rethink and reinvent their roles?

Ardent Partners' recent research report, Sourcing and Procurement: The 2016-2017 Technology and Innovation Outlook Report, chronicles the evolution of sourcing and procurement technologies over the last two decades to where they are today and poised to go tomorrow. This report, which is chock full of great insights on many advanced, distinct sourcing and procurement technologies, has spawned a series here on CPO Rising that looks in depth at each of the innovative solutions coming onto the market today and in the near future. One of the outputs of machine learning is a greater understanding of user interfacing (UI) and how to improve user experiences (UX). But machine learning, powered by master data management, Big Data, and advanced algorithms, is on the cusp of delivering even more efficiency gains and insight to the end user. As discussed in the previous installment in this series, artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural extension of machine learning and is not-so-quietly preparing to take procurement, sourcing, and supply management to the next level of performance.