772: 2025 Outlook: Procurement’s ‘Year of Convergence’ with Nick Heinzmann and Matthew Hardin

“We’re in a new world where we’re trying to converge all these different areas, not only to fix problems, but to drive different kinds of capabilities for procurement, ones that are not theoretically possible with the old approach.” – Nick Heinzmann, Head of Research at Zip

Procurement is continuously improving and maturing, but over the past few years, a series of distinct trends has gathered momentum. 2025 is looking more and more like the pivotal year when all of these trends will converge, transforming procurement and their role in the business. 

This is a defining moment for procurement, bringing with it a significant opportunity to finally solve some of procurement’s most systemic pain points. 

In this episode, Philip Ideson is joined in conversation by Nick Heinzmann, Head of Research at Zip, and Matthew Hardin, Director of Advisory at Zip. Nick and Matt explore why they’ve dubbed 2025 as the “year of convergence” for procurement.

Nick and Matthew discuss:

• How the convergence of AI, orchestration, transformation, and changes to procurement’s operating model are setting the tone for 2025
• Ways AI is changing procurement’s role in the business, while also enabling them to focus more on strategy and relationship building
• Why monitoring the stakeholder experience and capturing satisfaction metrics are key to procurement’s success 
• How to find new and better ways to create value, even in a “do more with less” environment 

Links:

• Nick Heinzmann on LinkedIn
• Matthew Hardin on LinkedIn
• 25 Procurement Predictions for 2025
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube