Art of Procurement

Dear Diary… "I was watching a lot of smart people, day in and day out, looking across documents, opening folders."
Most procurement teams pick AI use cases by asking what the technology can do. Liza Tsimbal started somewhere else. On a random Tuesday, an OEM technical issue had a room full of smart people hunting through old drawings, contracts, and email chains for one piece of information. Her conclusion: information you cannot retrieve fast enough might as well not exist.
Liza is the Director of Supply Chain Management at TransAlta, one of Canada's biggest power generators. She leads a team of roughly 30 people across buying and strategic sourcing that supports more than 90 generating facilities in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
In this episode of The Agentic Procurement Diaries podcast, Philip Ideson and Liza discuss:
- Why TransAlta chose requisition-to-purchase-order automation and contract and PO leakage as its first agentic pilots, based on four criteria: high volume, rules-based, disliked by the team, and reversible
- Liza's test for taking the human out of the loop, and the decisions she won't hand to an agent, such as new material obligations or anything with a safety implication
- How she avoids AI FOMO by tying every use case to a measurable business outcome
- The risk of automating procurement's apprenticeship, and why the ability to define what good looks like becomes the scarce skill
Links:
Liza Tsimbal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liza-tsimbal-mba-59433242/ 
Zycus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zycus/ 
AOP Provider Directory | Zycus: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/zycusinc 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

"If you're not thinking about what you inherit through your procurement decisions, then you're not truly serious about managing your climate impacts." - Nicole Darnall, Professor, Arlene R. & Robert P. Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability, American University - Kogod School of Business
Companies have spent years setting sustainability goals, developing policies, and asking suppliers for more information, but there can still be a significant gap between those commitments and the decisions procurement teams make every day.
In this episode, Philip Ideson is joined by Nicole Darnall, Professor and Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability at American University, to explore procurement's role in turning sustainability commitments into measurable action. Nicole has spent more than two decades studying sustainability, including the last decade focused specifically on procurement.
Nicole explains why so much of an organization's environmental and social impact sits beyond its own walls and how purchasing decisions can influence those outcomes. She and Philip discuss the disconnect between sustainability policies and implementation, the growing burden of supplier surveys, and why procurement needs better ways to determine which sustainability information actually matters.
They also explore how procurement teams can identify the purchasing categories where they can have the greatest impact and how sustainability considerations are beginning to intersect with AI and data center sourcing decisions.
In this episode, Nicole discusses how to:
-Close the gap between sustainability policies and procurement decisions
-Identify the spend categories with the greatest environmental or social impact
-Ask suppliers more meaningful sustainability questions
-Incorporate sustainability criteria into the RFP process
-Look beyond purchase price when evaluating true cost
-Use AI to support sustainability decisions throughout the procurement cycle
-Consider environmental, community, reputational, and operational risks when sourcing AI and data services
Links:
Nicole Darnall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-darnall-4a905541/ 
Learn more about the Sustainable Procurement Research Initiative: https://kogod.american.edu/spri 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

"Everybody's trying to simplify. Everybody's trying to make the process better and the end-user experience for buying better." - Jeremy Lappin, Co-founder and CEO, Candex
Are you frustrated by the endless friction and noise around tail spend?

Candex Co-founder and CEO Jeremy Lappin shares how procurement leaders are breaking through the complexity of global tail spend and solving supplier onboarding, compliance, and cross-border payments without adding "yet another tool" to the stack.
In this Provider of the Week conversation, Jeremy reflects on Candex's evolution from startup to global player, unraveling the strategy behind their "it just works" reputation. He walks through real challenges faced by multinationals, the difference a seamless user experience makes, and why their growth has been driven by relentless focus on customer needs and edge-case scenarios.
Jeremy also shares practical advice on how to launch quickly, build business cases grounded in real numbers, and expand globally without sacrificing simplicity. Whether you're battling high supplier setup costs, chasing faster adoption, or facing a cross-border compliance maze, Jeremy offers a refreshing perspective for digital procurement leaders.
Listen to the full episode to hear Jeremy's perspective on:
-Lowering tail-spend friction by removing onboarding headaches
-Supporting expansion into 55+ countries while handling local compliance
-Embedding directly into existing procurement stacks, not adding another login
-Scaling adoption gradually, avoiding license-heavy lock-ins
 
Links:
Jeremy Lappin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-lappin-555718/ 
Candex Profile in the AOP Provider Directory: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/candex 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

"It has to start with the business outcomes that we want. This becomes an operating model decision. Technology has to support the operating model that we're designing." - Christopher Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group
AI adoption is quickly becoming commonplace in procurement, but the biggest performance gap is in how some organizations are using it to rethink the entire way procurement work gets done. For procurement leaders, the next stage of AI maturity may have less to do with finding another use case and more to do with reconsidering how the function should operate when AI is embedded into the work itself.
In this episode, Philip Ideson is joined by Christopher Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group, to discuss findings from The Hackett Group's AI World Class Procurement research and what they reveal about the next stage of procurement's AI journey.
Chris explains why many organizations remain focused on incremental productivity improvements while leading teams are beginning to redesign workflows, operating models, staffing approaches, and performance measures around AI. They also explore what happens to the capacity AI creates, why pilots don't necessarily translate into transformation, and how procurement leaders can prepare their organizations for a future that remains difficult to predict.
In this episode, Chris discusses how to:
-Move beyond AI experimentation toward work redesign
-Turn AI-created capacity into higher-value procurement work
-Design an operating model where technology supports the desired way of working
-Identify where AI can have the greatest impact across procurement processes
 
Links:
Christopher Sawchuk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-sawchuk/ 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement

Dear Diary…
"I use AI a lot to help scout out things or pose challenges and see where solutions are being marketed along those lines."
Jeffrey Ostrander runs a nearly $5 billion business in one of the most dynamic supply markets on the planet. His team has left the starting block on agentic AI. What they are still deciding is how far into the race they want to run.
That distinction runs through this whole conversation. Jeffrey talks about pilots that stumble, business cases that change daily, and a supply base of machine parts makers who are not sitting in front of a computer.
Jeffrey is Head of North America Basin Supply Chain for SLB, the 100 year old company formerly known as Schlumberger. He returned to the same organization he started with 15 years ago, after time in global business services and other functions around the world.
In this episode of The Agentic Procurement Diaries podcast, Philip Ideson and Jeffrey discuss:
- Why sourcing and supplier performance sit in mirrored category structures, and how that builds a talent pipeline
- The use cases already in play, from tail procurement to freight pay assurance and contract scouring
- The "work-work balance" and why AI discovery has to be carved into paid time
- Where he will not yet take the human out of the loop, and who is legally responsible when an agent makes the call
Links:
Jeff Ostrander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-ostrander/
Zycus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zycus/ 
AOP Provider Directory | Zycus: https://artofprocurement.com/provider-directory/zycusinc 
Subscribe to the AOP Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe 
Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofProcurement