If the profession was trained to think inside a single boundary, AI won’t fix the problem — it will amplify it at scale
By Jon W. Hansen | February 2026
For the Busy Executive
In July 2008, I responded to a network member’s question about supply chain management certification programs. The answer I gave had nothing to do with which program to choose. It had everything to do with a structural flaw in how the profession educates its practitioners — a flaw that remains uncorrected eighteen years later and is about to be amplified by artificial intelligence.
The data I cited in 2008 was stark: 73% of savings claimed by purchasing departments were rejected by CFOs as invalid. Over 80% of CFOs did not believe the CPO made any meaningful contribution to the organization. Senior executives expressed the opinion that purchasing departments are best run by individuals who do not come from a purchasing background.
These were not failures of individual competence. They were failures of educational design. Procurement certification programs taught procurement to procurement people — inside a single functional boundary — and then the profession wondered why the rest of the enterprise didn’t recognize the value. The curriculum never crossed the boundary. The CFOs weren’t being difficult. They were operating in a different reality that the coursework never acknowledged existed.
My advice in 2008 was simple and has never been more relevant: take the course materials to finance, IT, and other departments. Ask them whether the curriculum aligns with their objectives — departmentally and enterprise-wide. That is Phase 0 thinking applied to education. If you don’t cross the boundary before you invest, the investment won’t produce the outcome you expect — whether the investment is a technology platform or a professional certification.
Now ask the question that connects 2008 to 2026: What are we teaching the up-and-coming generation of procurement professionals — and how are we re-equipping current practitioners — for the Real AI Era?
Because if the answer is the same single-boundary curriculum with AI tools layered on top, we are not solving the problem. We are automating it. AI will help procurement professionals measure the wrong things faster, draw the wrong conclusions at scale, and amplify the dysfunction that nobody taught them to see.
The 50–80% implementation failure rate that has persisted unchanged across every technology generation did not begin with technology selection. It began with how the profession was trained to think. And until that changes, no amount of artificial intelligence will change the outcomes.
Read time: 6 minutes
Why This 2008 Post Matters Now
The following post was originally published on Procurement Insights on July 4, 2008. It is reprinted here in its entirety, unedited, because its argument has not aged — it has compounded. Every technology cycle since 2008 — cloud, mobile, RPA, machine learning, generative AI, agentic AI — has inherited the same educational blind spot this post identified. The profession was trained inside a single boundary. The technology keeps getting more powerful. The boundary hasn’t moved.
In 2008, I compared the industry to Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. In 2026, we’ve simply replaced the fiddle with a high-speed AI processor, but the city is still on fire. What follows is the original post, exactly as it appeared eighteen years ago.
Supply Chain Management Certificate/Course USA/CANADA
Originally published on Procurement Insights — July 4, 2008
As an adjunct to today’s Talent Attraction & Retention posting I thought it would be worthwhile to share with you the following Procurement Insights Question and Answer segment.
Network Member Question:
I’d like to get information about Supply Chain Management Certificate/Course in USA/CANADA. Preferred top Universities.
Andre Caliman, Sales and Marketing Executive, Brazil
My Answer:
The question regarding the real-world viability of the various programs being offered by institutions and associations at times conjurs up images of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome was burning. The greatest challenge that is faced is how the business community views these designations. And in this regard, many programs continue to overlook some critical facts.
A 2007 survey of CFOs produced these startling results:
73% of the total average annual savings claimed by an organization’s purchasing department, are rejected by CFOs as being invalid. They do not impact the bottom line, and as a result minimize the perceived value of purchasing to the organization. (Note: cost avoidance is one of the many savings myths that continue to be championed in course materials as a viable objective that is worthy of pursuit.)
This “absence of value” was further emphasized in the same study, which found that more than 80% of all CFOs interviewed do not believe that the CPO and his/her department make any meaningful contribution to the organization as a whole.
Finally, in a CPO Agenda Roundtable, senior executives expressed the opinion that purchasing departments are best run by individuals who do not have (or come from) a purchasing background.
As an international speaker these as well as other findings continue to resonate with my audiences as purchasing professionals strive to carve out their place in the emerging global marketplace.
With the focus of most association certification programs just now beginning to shift to a platform that will eventually (and hopefully) elevate the professional designation to a level that is seen as being on a par with that of a CA or CPA, the real issues we face is not how we view the programs as a profession, but how other professions within the corporate heirarchy view us and the corresponding value we bring to the table.
Once again, and given the growing recognition of the importance of looking outside of the realm of traditional “educational thinking”, it is through this filter of real-world understanding that you should evaluate the veracity of any curriculum.
Specifically, take prospective course materials to individuals from other departments within your own organization, such as finance and IT. Ask them their thougths concerning the value of the curriculum and how it meshes with their objectives from both an individual department and enterprise wide standpoint.
The Through Line: 2008 → 2026
The advice above — take the curriculum across the boundary and ask whether other departments see value — is the same principle that has driven every piece of work Hansen Models™ has produced:
2008 — Education: Procurement certifications teach inside a single boundary. CFOs reject 73% of claimed value because the curriculum never taught practitioners to speak the language of the enterprise.
1998 — DND (RAM 1998™): “What time of day do orders come in?” revealed that 90% of what looked like technology failures were behavioral problems invisible from inside any single department. The curriculum didn’t teach anyone to ask that question.
2009 — JLARC: A 63% favorable survey concealed five competing realities. The methodology I used to expose them — agent-based versus equation-based, in those exact words — is the cross-boundary thinking the certification programs never included.
2014 — Forrester: Virginia killed an ERP migration because someone asked the readiness question before the technology question. That question isn’t in any procurement curriculum I’ve seen.
2026 — RAM 2025™: Twelve AI models applied to the same evidence base, surfacing disagreements that reveal what single-model consensus conceals. This is what cross-boundary thinking looks like at scale. And it is precisely what the profession has not been trained to do.
The constant holds: single-boundary thinking produces cross-boundary blindness. And it starts in how the profession is taught.
The AI Era Question
Artificial intelligence does not eliminate educational blind spots. It inherits them.
If a procurement professional was trained to measure cost savings inside a procurement boundary, AI will help them measure cost savings inside a procurement boundary — faster, with better dashboards, with more impressive visualizations. The CFOs will still reject 73% of it. The implementation failure rate will still hold at 50–80%. The outcomes will still be orphaned from the readiness that determines whether they’re achievable.
The question is not whether AI will transform procurement. It will.
The question is whether the profession will enter the AI era with the same single-boundary education that produced eighteen years of unchanged failure rates — or whether someone will finally take the curriculum across the boundary and ask the enterprise whether it sees value in what we’re teaching.
That question was asked in 2008. It has not been answered.
References
Jon W. Hansen is the founder of Hansen Models™ and creator of the Hansen Method™, a procurement transformation methodology developed over 27 years. He operates Procurement Insights, an independent blog with archives spanning 2007–2025.
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Procurement Insights
What Are We Teaching? How a 2008 Certification Post Exposes AI’s Biggest Blind Spot
Posted on February 14, 2026
0
If the profession was trained to think inside a single boundary, AI won’t fix the problem — it will amplify it at scale
By Jon W. Hansen | February 2026
For the Busy Executive
In July 2008, I responded to a network member’s question about supply chain management certification programs. The answer I gave had nothing to do with which program to choose. It had everything to do with a structural flaw in how the profession educates its practitioners — a flaw that remains uncorrected eighteen years later and is about to be amplified by artificial intelligence.
The data I cited in 2008 was stark: 73% of savings claimed by purchasing departments were rejected by CFOs as invalid. Over 80% of CFOs did not believe the CPO made any meaningful contribution to the organization. Senior executives expressed the opinion that purchasing departments are best run by individuals who do not come from a purchasing background.
These were not failures of individual competence. They were failures of educational design. Procurement certification programs taught procurement to procurement people — inside a single functional boundary — and then the profession wondered why the rest of the enterprise didn’t recognize the value. The curriculum never crossed the boundary. The CFOs weren’t being difficult. They were operating in a different reality that the coursework never acknowledged existed.
My advice in 2008 was simple and has never been more relevant: take the course materials to finance, IT, and other departments. Ask them whether the curriculum aligns with their objectives — departmentally and enterprise-wide. That is Phase 0 thinking applied to education. If you don’t cross the boundary before you invest, the investment won’t produce the outcome you expect — whether the investment is a technology platform or a professional certification.
Now ask the question that connects 2008 to 2026: What are we teaching the up-and-coming generation of procurement professionals — and how are we re-equipping current practitioners — for the Real AI Era?
Because if the answer is the same single-boundary curriculum with AI tools layered on top, we are not solving the problem. We are automating it. AI will help procurement professionals measure the wrong things faster, draw the wrong conclusions at scale, and amplify the dysfunction that nobody taught them to see.
The 50–80% implementation failure rate that has persisted unchanged across every technology generation did not begin with technology selection. It began with how the profession was trained to think. And until that changes, no amount of artificial intelligence will change the outcomes.
Read time: 6 minutes
Why This 2008 Post Matters Now
The following post was originally published on Procurement Insights on July 4, 2008. It is reprinted here in its entirety, unedited, because its argument has not aged — it has compounded. Every technology cycle since 2008 — cloud, mobile, RPA, machine learning, generative AI, agentic AI — has inherited the same educational blind spot this post identified. The profession was trained inside a single boundary. The technology keeps getting more powerful. The boundary hasn’t moved.
In 2008, I compared the industry to Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. In 2026, we’ve simply replaced the fiddle with a high-speed AI processor, but the city is still on fire. What follows is the original post, exactly as it appeared eighteen years ago.
Supply Chain Management Certificate/Course USA/CANADA
Originally published on Procurement Insights — July 4, 2008
As an adjunct to today’s Talent Attraction & Retention posting I thought it would be worthwhile to share with you the following Procurement Insights Question and Answer segment.
Network Member Question:
I’d like to get information about Supply Chain Management Certificate/Course in USA/CANADA. Preferred top Universities.
Andre Caliman, Sales and Marketing Executive, Brazil
My Answer:
The question regarding the real-world viability of the various programs being offered by institutions and associations at times conjurs up images of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome was burning. The greatest challenge that is faced is how the business community views these designations. And in this regard, many programs continue to overlook some critical facts.
A 2007 survey of CFOs produced these startling results:
73% of the total average annual savings claimed by an organization’s purchasing department, are rejected by CFOs as being invalid. They do not impact the bottom line, and as a result minimize the perceived value of purchasing to the organization. (Note: cost avoidance is one of the many savings myths that continue to be championed in course materials as a viable objective that is worthy of pursuit.)
This “absence of value” was further emphasized in the same study, which found that more than 80% of all CFOs interviewed do not believe that the CPO and his/her department make any meaningful contribution to the organization as a whole.
Finally, in a CPO Agenda Roundtable, senior executives expressed the opinion that purchasing departments are best run by individuals who do not have (or come from) a purchasing background.
As an international speaker these as well as other findings continue to resonate with my audiences as purchasing professionals strive to carve out their place in the emerging global marketplace.
With the focus of most association certification programs just now beginning to shift to a platform that will eventually (and hopefully) elevate the professional designation to a level that is seen as being on a par with that of a CA or CPA, the real issues we face is not how we view the programs as a profession, but how other professions within the corporate heirarchy view us and the corresponding value we bring to the table.
Once again, and given the growing recognition of the importance of looking outside of the realm of traditional “educational thinking”, it is through this filter of real-world understanding that you should evaluate the veracity of any curriculum.
Specifically, take prospective course materials to individuals from other departments within your own organization, such as finance and IT. Ask them their thougths concerning the value of the curriculum and how it meshes with their objectives from both an individual department and enterprise wide standpoint.
The Through Line: 2008 → 2026
The advice above — take the curriculum across the boundary and ask whether other departments see value — is the same principle that has driven every piece of work Hansen Models™ has produced:
2008 — Education: Procurement certifications teach inside a single boundary. CFOs reject 73% of claimed value because the curriculum never taught practitioners to speak the language of the enterprise.
1998 — DND (RAM 1998™): “What time of day do orders come in?” revealed that 90% of what looked like technology failures were behavioral problems invisible from inside any single department. The curriculum didn’t teach anyone to ask that question.
2009 — JLARC: A 63% favorable survey concealed five competing realities. The methodology I used to expose them — agent-based versus equation-based, in those exact words — is the cross-boundary thinking the certification programs never included.
2014 — Forrester: Virginia killed an ERP migration because someone asked the readiness question before the technology question. That question isn’t in any procurement curriculum I’ve seen.
2026 — RAM 2025™: Twelve AI models applied to the same evidence base, surfacing disagreements that reveal what single-model consensus conceals. This is what cross-boundary thinking looks like at scale. And it is precisely what the profession has not been trained to do.
The constant holds: single-boundary thinking produces cross-boundary blindness. And it starts in how the profession is taught.
The AI Era Question
Artificial intelligence does not eliminate educational blind spots. It inherits them.
If a procurement professional was trained to measure cost savings inside a procurement boundary, AI will help them measure cost savings inside a procurement boundary — faster, with better dashboards, with more impressive visualizations. The CFOs will still reject 73% of it. The implementation failure rate will still hold at 50–80%. The outcomes will still be orphaned from the readiness that determines whether they’re achievable.
The question is not whether AI will transform procurement. It will.
The question is whether the profession will enter the AI era with the same single-boundary education that produced eighteen years of unchanged failure rates — or whether someone will finally take the curriculum across the boundary and ask the enterprise whether it sees value in what we’re teaching.
That question was asked in 2008. It has not been answered.
References
Jon W. Hansen is the founder of Hansen Models™ and creator of the Hansen Method™, a procurement transformation methodology developed over 27 years. He operates Procurement Insights, an independent blog with archives spanning 2007–2025.
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