Procurement

27 Procurement Statistics 2026

27 procurement statistics for 2026 covering CPO priorities, AI and agentic procurement adoption, Best-in-Class benchmarks, and sustainable procurement ROI.

Last modified on Sep 15, 2026 Team Zeiv 5 min read

Procurement statistics are a procurement leader’s best friend. This data should inform your procurement strategy for the year ahead.

What is procurement benchmarking data?

Procurement benchmarking data compares how organizations perform against peers and Best-in-Class leaders across sourcing, spend management, supplier enablement, and technology adoption. Teams use these figures to set realistic savings targets, justify tooling investment, and spot where they’re falling behind on AI and sustainability maturity.

CPO Priorities and the 2026 Outlook

2026 is shaping up as a “do more with less” year: procurement teams face an average 8% increase in workload even as headcount and budgets hold flat or shrink.

  1. 79% of CPOs believe 2026 will be more challenging than 2025, and 49% report significant uncertainty about the year ahead, though 75% still expect their teams to perform better.
  2. The two biggest internal obstacles CPOs cite are budget constraints (54%) and misaligned, fragmented systems (37%).
  3. Supply continuity has overtaken cost savings as the No. 1 CPO priority after sitting at No. 2 for two straight years, with 48% of CPOs naming supply risk mitigation a top-three priority.
  4. Cost savings holds at No. 2, still named a top priority by 75% of CPOs, though expectations have cooled: only 45% forecast increased savings in 2026, down from 48% and 55% the two years prior.
  5. Deploying AI-enabled technology enters the top three CPO priorities for the first time in 2026, landing at No. 3 and displacing operating-model transformation.

Source: The Hackett Group, 2026 Key Issues Study

Best-in-Class Performance Benchmarks

The top 20% of procurement organizations, known as Best-in-Class (BIC), consistently out-execute the rest of the market by exerting wider spend control and adopting more technology.

  1. Spend under management (SUM) averages 69.3% industry-wide. BIC organizations manage 90.2% of enterprise spend versus 60.1% for everyone else.
  2. Average actual savings landed at 7.6% in 2025, with a 7.8% target for 2026. BIC leaders delivered 9.2% actual savings in 2025 compared with 7.3% for their peers.
  3. Only 50.7% of addressable spend runs through a formal sourcing process on average. BIC organizations source 69% of addressable spend versus 45% for others.
  4. Average contract compliance sits at 78.2%, meaning the typical organization leaks nearly 30% of contracted value. BIC leaders hold compliance at 92.8%.
  5. 61% of the average supply base is electronically enabled, rising to 74.1% among BIC leaders versus 50.8% for everyone else.
  6. BIC teams outpace “All Others” in ProcureTech adoption by 42% to 181% depending on the category. This technology gap is the single largest driver of the overall performance gap.

Source: GEP / Ardent Partners, Metrics That Matter 2026

AI and Agentic Procurement Statistics

AI has moved out of pilot programs and into live, day-to-day procurement operations.

  1. 43% of procurement organizations are actively pursuing AI deployment: 22% are already live in production, 35% are piloting select use cases, and 32% are still exploring.
  2. CPOs are investing in AI primarily for speed and cycle-time reduction (61%) and cost savings or margin protection (58%).
  3. 42% of CPOs point to operational efficiency as AI’s most visible impact so far, letting teams handle higher workloads without adding headcount.
  4. The top AI use cases in production today are contract management (49%), market intelligence and price comparisons (35%), and spend analytics (34%).
  5. Organizations mostly access AI embedded in existing software platforms (69%), followed by AI-native point solutions (38%) and custom-built models (17%). Embedded AI dominates PO processing (96%) and payables (84%), while AI-native tools lead in market intelligence (67%) and autonomous negotiation (64%).
  6. 61% of organizations already running AI initiatives plan to introduce agentic AI (autonomous, multi-step workflow execution with minimal human oversight) within the next two to three years.
  7. Data quality and structure remain the top barrier to AI adoption, cited by 59% of teams, followed by legacy system integration.
  8. Governance hasn’t kept pace with adoption: 42% of organizations rely on AI oversight that sits entirely outside procurement, and 34% have no formal AI governance framework at all.

Source: GEP / Ardent Partners, Metrics That Matter 2026

Sustainable Procurement and ESG Statistics

Sustainable procurement has moved from a compliance checkbox to a performance lever tied directly to resilience and margin.

  1. Supply chain disruptions cost the global economy $86 billion last year, representing over $1.6 trillion in forfeited potential revenue growth, and 52% of organizations lose at least a month of operating capacity annually to disruption.
  2. Proactively resilient organizations grow revenue 3.6% faster than less-resilient peers; AI-integrated, mature supply chains see 2.5x higher revenue growth and productivity.
  3. The average sustainable procurement program is now over 7 years old. More than half of organizations have a dedicated sustainable procurement team, rising to 81% among programs running 10+ years.
  4. Leaders cite regulatory preparedness (69%), risk reduction (62%), and innovation outcomes (57%) as the top value drivers. 81% of sustainable procurement leaders can quantify financial ROI, versus 67% of other organizations, and 80% cite innovation as their leading ROI driver, versus 54% of others.
  5. Supplier visibility falls off a cliff past Tier 1: 48% of buyers see 75%+ of Tier 1 suppliers (up from just 27% in 2024), only 12% have that visibility into Tier 2, and 85% have 0-25% visibility into Tier 3.
  6. Scope 3 carbon is a top priority for 54% of programs, but 30% of suppliers still hand over zero primary emissions data.
  7. Schneider Electric focuses sustainability efforts on its top 1,000 suppliers, which account for roughly 65% of its supply chain emissions, using energy-efficiency initiatives that pay back in visible cost savings.
  8. AstraZeneca’s program covers 95% of managed spend across 3,500+ suppliers; over 80% of that spend now sits with suppliers committed to Science-Based Targets, contributing to a 52% cut in emissions intensity since 2019.

Source: EcoVadis / Accenture, Sustainable Procurement Barometer 2026

Take control of your procurement processes today!

Get Started