SCMDOJO

This is not a prediction. It is already happening.

For 20 years, procurement was about RFQs and spreadsheets, vendor negotiations, and cost reduction through price pressure.

In 2026, that will become obsolete.

The new procurement leader looks like this:

✅ Data Analyst: understands supply chain analytics, demand sensing, price forecasting

✅ Business Atrategist: ties procurement to revenue growth, not just cost cuts

✅ Technology Operator: manages procurement systems, knows how to augment and automate procurement processes using Agentic AI solutions like SCMDOJO SENSEI AI 👉 https://sensei.scmdojo.com/agentic-workflows

✅ Change Agent: drives digital transformation across suppliers, direct reports and internal stakeholders.

✅ Risk manager: builds supply chain resilience into sourcing strategy, not as an afterthought when $hit happens

If your background is "I've managed RFQ cycles", you're becoming less valuable every year.

If your background is "I've optimised category strategies using data analytics and built agentic supplier ecosystems", you're becoming indispensable.

Procurement professionals, what is your biggest skill gap right now?

What do you need to learn to stay relevant in the next 3–5 years?

If logistics in your organisation is treated as a back-office function, you're missing something critical.

Every box that moves late is a customer conversation you don't want to have. Every transparent delivery builds trust. Every optimised route frees up capital for growth.

Logistics isn't tactical. It's strategic.

The companies pulling away from their competitors understand this. They've elevated logistics to the C-suite conversation. They've aligned it with customer experience, profitability, and brand promise.

Your logistics team isn't managing movement. They're managing competitive differentiation.

Treat them and the function accordingly 😎

Outsourcing in the supply chain is one of the most consequential decisions a leadership team makes.

Get it right, and you unlock cost efficiency, specialist capability, and scalability. Get it wrong, and you hand control of a critical function to a third party and spend the next three years trying to claw it back.

Most organisations get it wrong because they treat outsourcing as a cost decision rather than a strategic one. This week's edition gives you everything you need to approach it correctly.

In this week's newsletter, I am sharing the strategic guide, two courses, a video debate, and an AI tool to help you decide.

Outsourcing your Supply Chain? Most companies get this decision badly wrong. Hi Folks, Outsourcing in supply chain is one of the most consequential decisions a leadership team makes. Get it right and you unlock cost efficiency, specialist capability, and scalability.

AI is here, but where do you start & apply it in the supply chain?

Supply Chain leaders & managers are under pressure from C-level to deploy AI in their daily work, but where do you start?

Here are 5 use cases where you can start seeing the benefits of AI immediately:

ASK: Grounded Q&A from the knowledge base. Answers supply chain questions the way a 20-year practitioner would, not the way ChatGPT hallucinates.

DIAGNOSTICS: 22 live maturity assessments across logistics, procurement, inventory, 3PL, warehouse operations and more. Structured scoring, gap analysis, prioritised roadmap. In minutes.

AGENTIC WORKFLOWS: Multi-step autonomous workflows: Freight Spend Diagnostic, Inventory Health Check, Spend Analytics, Sourcing RFPs end-to-end, Contract Red Flag Review. Complex sequenced operations with minimal manual input.

DRAFT: 24 DOCX templates live today. SOPs, category strategies, negotiation playbooks, and KPI scorecards are generated and downloadable instantly.

ANALYSE: Upload Excel or CSV data. Freight cost variance by lane and carrier, inventory optimisation, and supplier spend categorisation. Root cause analysis without an analyst. No schema mapping required! Data secured in Google Cloud, fully encrypted.

So what is the difference vs a generic LLM chatbot?

It's a RAG-powered, domain-specific AI supply chain consultant, trained exclusively on SCMDOJO's four-year knowledge corpus: 82 expert courses, 700 practitioner videos, 450+ research articles/blogs, 41 toolkits across 25 SCM domains.

Not fine-tuned on the internet.

Trained on verified practitioner knowledge.

Let me know what you think. Your take would be worth hearing.

Most logistics and supply chain leaders I speak to are fighting the same losing battle.

They renegotiate carrier rates. Costs climb anyway. They renegotiate again. Same result.

The problem isn't the rates. It's the inputs that shape them — load optimisation, network design, mode selection, consolidation. Fix those, and the rates take care of themselves.

This week, everything we've published connects to that one idea.

Your freight costs are a structural problem, not a rate problem Hi Folks, Most logistics and supply chain leaders I speak to are fighting the same losing battle. They renegotiate carrier rates.

Stakeholders assume demand follows a steady, predictable pattern, with the same quantity ordered every period. This is the idealized, textbook scenario that simplifies forecasting and planning.

Actual demand fluctuates unpredictably across periods, even when underlying customer consumption remains relatively stable. Some months spike, others drop, creating planning chaos.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

When supply chain teams assume "consistent demand," they:

- Over-build safety stock in low periods

- Scramble for expedited production in high periods

- Create excess inventory that ties up working capital

- Miss opportunities to right-size procurement strategies

𝗦𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁.

- Different products, customer segments, channels, and geographies display different variability patterns.

- One-size-fits-all demand planning fails because:

- SKU-level volatility ≠ category-level volatility

- Channel demand patterns differ (B2B vs. retail vs. direct)

- Regional seasonality varies

- Customer tier ordering behavior differs (large accounts vs. spot buys)

𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Consistent monthly demand.

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Volatile order patterns masking relatively stable consumption.

This is why demand segmentation isn't optional; it's foundational.

Without it, you're planning blind.

Understand your demand variability, and you unlock efficiency, capital, and service excellence.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Richard Wilding OBE (Professor) and enjoyed the PROF, RICHARD CURRY.

The main reason for me was to pick up expert insights from the leading authority in Supply Chain Risk and Resilience, given the High Risk ⚠️ Supply Chain scenarios we are dealing with.

In episode 89 of The Supply Chain Show™, we break down what’s really happening behind the scenes and what it means for supply chain professionals worldwide to create an Anti-fragile Supply Chain.

💡 Learn how disruptions ripple across industries—from oil to food

💡 Discover the 3Rs → 4Rs framework for building resilient systems

💡 Understand why “antifragile” supply chains are the future

💡 Get practical strategies like multi-shoring, route diversification, and smarter decision-making

This isn’t just theory—this is what supply chain leaders are dealing with right now.

Watch full episode here 👉

Anti-fragile Supply Chain Secrets Supply chains are under pressure like never before. From rising shipping costs to global disruptions, the game has changed and is changing fast. In this epis...

Happy to share that I'll be speaking at Procurement and Supply Chain in Wartime: Challenges and Lessons ! Make sure to attend it on April 24.

Thanks to procurement expert Maryna Trepova and IPSM Procurement team for organising this webinar on a very pertinent topic.

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