In recent conversations with CPOs and senior procurement practitioners, a pattern emerged: the way most ProcureTech vendors present their AI capabilities falls flat.
One executive called it “ineffectual and hollow.”
Another said it “doesn’t answer the questions I’m actually asking.”
These aren’t outliers. They’re signals.
And their response isn’t about the quality of the technology. It’s about the story being told about it.
That distinction matters — because what ProcureTech AI can actually do and how it is currently being framed are no longer aligned.
What the Pitch Usually Looks Like
Open any ProcureTech vendor’s website or LinkedIn feed, and you’ll see variations of the same approach:
A friendly avatar or persona: “Hi, I’m your new AI teammate!”
Automation percentages: “80% of tasks automated!”
Workload framing: “AI handles the heavy lifting so you can focus strategically.”
It’s clean. It’s visual. It’s optimized for engagement.
And it’s missing the point entirely.
What CPOs Are Actually Asking
When a Chief Procurement Officer evaluates an AI-powered solution, they’re not asking:
“How much can you automate?”
They’re asking:
The Real Questions
Who decides what gets automated vs. what needs human judgment?
Who catches errors before they scale across thousands of transactions?
Who governs the handoff when AI flags an exception?
Who’s accountable when the ‘80% automated’ gets it wrong?
The friendly avatar doesn’t answer these questions.
The automation percentage doesn’t answer these questions.
The 80/20 workload split doesn’t answer these questions.
That’s why the pitch falls flat.
The Governance Gap
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most ProcureTech AI marketing shows the engine but hides the steering wheel.
The Engine (What Vendors Show)
The Steering Wheel (What CPOs Need)
Processing speed
Decision rights
Automation rates
Escalation paths
Task completion
Verification protocols
Workload reduction
Accountability structures
Feature lists
Exception governance
Vendors love talking about the engine because it’s measurable, visual, and impressive.
But CPOs have learned — often the hard way — that powerful engines without steering wheels don’t create value. They create faster dysfunction.
This Isn’t a New Insight
The principle that AI should stimulate insights and dialogue rather than replace judgment isn’t a 2025 discovery. It’s a lesson we learned decades ago.
In early agent-based work in 1998, systems tracked historic and real-time variables and presented them to the buyer. The buyer then decided the weighting:
Is this time-sensitive (next-day delivery)?
Or cost-sensitive (lowest price overrides speed)?
Does risk outweigh savings?
Does resilience outweigh efficiency?
The technology handled complexity. The human handled meaning.
That wasn’t automation. It was “decision collaboration.”
And it worked — because it respected where accountability actually lives.
Twenty-seven years later, the technology is exponentially more powerful. But the fundamental truth hasn’t changed:
AI does not replace judgment. It stimulates dialogue.
The vendors who understand this will frame their AI as a collaboration partner. The ones who don’t will keep marketing it as an order taker — and keep wondering why senior leaders aren’t buying.
The Deloitte Proof Point
In 2025, Deloitte delivered AI-generated reports to government clients in Australia and Canada. The technology was impressive — Azure OpenAI, GPT-4o, hundreds of pages of fluent output.
The result: $2 million in refunds across two countries.
The reports contained fabricated citations, non-existent academic papers, and invented quotes attributed to real court cases. All delivered with confidence. All caught by external reviewers — not internal verification.
The technology worked perfectly. It produced exactly what it was designed to produce: fluent, plausible text.
The governance layer didn’t exist. No one verified. No one cross-checked. No one asked “should we trust this before we deliver it?”
This is what happens when you have an engine without a steering wheel.
Why “Meet Your AI Teammate” Doesn’t Land
The friendly-avatar approach fails because it frames AI as a peer rather than a governed system.
A “teammate” implies:
Autonomous judgment
Shared accountability
Trust by default
But that’s not how enterprises actually need to deploy AI. They need:
Bounded autonomy — clear rules about what AI can and cannot decide
Defined accountability — explicit ownership when something goes wrong
Trust by verification — earned through demonstrated reliability, not assumed
When a vendor says “Meet your new AI teammate,” a CPO hears: “We haven’t thought about governance.”
That’s not a trust signal. That’s a risk signal.
What Would Actually Work
The vendors who win the next era won’t have better engines. They’ll have better stories about steering wheels.
Here’s the shift:
What Vendors Say
What CPOs Need to Hear
“Meet your new AI teammate”
“Here’s exactly who’s accountable at every decision point”
“80% automated”
“80% automated with governed exception handling and verification”
“AI handles the heavy lifting”
“Here’s how we catch errors before they scale — and who governs the boundary”
“Workload clarity”
“Decision clarity — who owns what, when, and how escalations work”
“AI-powered efficiency”
“AI-powered reliability — verified before execution”
The difference isn’t features. It’s framing.
Efficiency is a byproduct. Governance is the value proposition.
The Questions Vendors Should Be Answering
If you’re a ProcureTech vendor marketing AI capabilities, ask yourself:
Can a CPO explain to their board who’s accountable when our AI makes a mistake?
Do we show how exceptions are handled, or just that automation rates are high?
Is our verification process visible, or do we assume trust?
Do we demonstrate governance, or just capability?
If the answer to any of these is “no” or “we haven’t thought about it,” your marketing will keep falling flat — no matter how user-friendly your avatar is.
The Real Opportunity
The ProcureTech vendors who figure this out will separate themselves from the noise.
Not by having better AI — everyone claims that.
Not by automating more — that’s table stakes.
But by demonstrating that their AI is governed, verified, and accountable.
That’s what CPOs are actually buying.
That’s what “enterprise-ready” actually means.
And that’s what most vendors are failing to communicate.
The automation percentage doesn’t matter if no one trusts it.
The friendly avatar doesn’t matter if it doesn’t answer the governance question (the RIGHT governance question).
The feature list doesn’t matter if CPOs can’t explain accountability to their board.
The technology is ready. The framing is not.
The vendors who understand this will own the next era of ProcureTech.
The ones who don’t will keep wondering why their marketing falls flat.
The methodology for assessing whether organizations are ready to govern AI-powered systems — including Phase 0™ diagnostics and Hansen Fit Score™ criteria — is available to subscribers.
Procurement Insights
Why Most ProcureTech AI Marketing Falls Flat — And What Would Actually Work
Posted on January 26, 2026
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By Jon W. Hansen | Procurement Insights
In recent conversations with CPOs and senior procurement practitioners, a pattern emerged: the way most ProcureTech vendors present their AI capabilities falls flat.
One executive called it “ineffectual and hollow.”
Another said it “doesn’t answer the questions I’m actually asking.”
These aren’t outliers. They’re signals.
And their response isn’t about the quality of the technology. It’s about the story being told about it.
That distinction matters — because what ProcureTech AI can actually do and how it is currently being framed are no longer aligned.
What the Pitch Usually Looks Like
Open any ProcureTech vendor’s website or LinkedIn feed, and you’ll see variations of the same approach:
It’s clean. It’s visual. It’s optimized for engagement.
And it’s missing the point entirely.
What CPOs Are Actually Asking
When a Chief Procurement Officer evaluates an AI-powered solution, they’re not asking:
“How much can you automate?”
They’re asking:
The friendly avatar doesn’t answer these questions.
The automation percentage doesn’t answer these questions.
The 80/20 workload split doesn’t answer these questions.
That’s why the pitch falls flat.
The Governance Gap
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most ProcureTech AI marketing shows the engine but hides the steering wheel.
Vendors love talking about the engine because it’s measurable, visual, and impressive.
But CPOs have learned — often the hard way — that powerful engines without steering wheels don’t create value. They create faster dysfunction.
This Isn’t a New Insight
The principle that AI should stimulate insights and dialogue rather than replace judgment isn’t a 2025 discovery. It’s a lesson we learned decades ago.
In early agent-based work in 1998, systems tracked historic and real-time variables and presented them to the buyer. The buyer then decided the weighting:
The technology handled complexity. The human handled meaning.
That wasn’t automation. It was “decision collaboration.”
And it worked — because it respected where accountability actually lives.
Twenty-seven years later, the technology is exponentially more powerful. But the fundamental truth hasn’t changed:
AI does not replace judgment. It stimulates dialogue.
The vendors who understand this will frame their AI as a collaboration partner. The ones who don’t will keep marketing it as an order taker — and keep wondering why senior leaders aren’t buying.
The Deloitte Proof Point
In 2025, Deloitte delivered AI-generated reports to government clients in Australia and Canada. The technology was impressive — Azure OpenAI, GPT-4o, hundreds of pages of fluent output.
The result: $2 million in refunds across two countries.
The reports contained fabricated citations, non-existent academic papers, and invented quotes attributed to real court cases. All delivered with confidence. All caught by external reviewers — not internal verification.
The technology worked perfectly. It produced exactly what it was designed to produce: fluent, plausible text.
The governance layer didn’t exist. No one verified. No one cross-checked. No one asked “should we trust this before we deliver it?”
This is what happens when you have an engine without a steering wheel.
Why “Meet Your AI Teammate” Doesn’t Land
The friendly-avatar approach fails because it frames AI as a peer rather than a governed system.
A “teammate” implies:
But that’s not how enterprises actually need to deploy AI. They need:
When a vendor says “Meet your new AI teammate,” a CPO hears: “We haven’t thought about governance.”
That’s not a trust signal. That’s a risk signal.
What Would Actually Work
The vendors who win the next era won’t have better engines. They’ll have better stories about steering wheels.
Here’s the shift:
The difference isn’t features. It’s framing.
Efficiency is a byproduct. Governance is the value proposition.
The Questions Vendors Should Be Answering
If you’re a ProcureTech vendor marketing AI capabilities, ask yourself:
If the answer to any of these is “no” or “we haven’t thought about it,” your marketing will keep falling flat — no matter how user-friendly your avatar is.
The Real Opportunity
The ProcureTech vendors who figure this out will separate themselves from the noise.
Not by having better AI — everyone claims that.
Not by automating more — that’s table stakes.
But by demonstrating that their AI is governed, verified, and accountable.
That’s what CPOs are actually buying.
That’s what “enterprise-ready” actually means.
And that’s what most vendors are failing to communicate.
The Bottom Line
Stop selling engines. Start demonstrating steering wheels.
The automation percentage doesn’t matter if no one trusts it.
The friendly avatar doesn’t matter if it doesn’t answer the governance question (the RIGHT governance question).
The feature list doesn’t matter if CPOs can’t explain accountability to their board.
The technology is ready. The framing is not.
The vendors who understand this will own the next era of ProcureTech.
The ones who don’t will keep wondering why their marketing falls flat.
The methodology for assessing whether organizations are ready to govern AI-powered systems — including Phase 0™ diagnostics and Hansen Fit Score™ criteria — is available to subscribers.
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