The pressure on the procurement function to modernize is continuing to grow.

Organizations must continually drive efficiency, manage costs and advance environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities, all while operating in a volatile and high-risk landscape. That’s impossible without the right tools, but many teams are still constrained by fragmented systems and inconsistent data. 

As technology has evolved, more point solutions have become available to procurement processes and ecosystems. But adding capabilities also added a significant amount of complexity. The tools couldn’t easily integrate with each other, leading to duplicate records, data silos and manual handoffs.

Today, technology is maturing in a new way. Patchwork tech stacks made up of a multitude of tools, each chosen to address a single problem, are no longer fit for purpose. Future-ready procurement processes depend on the entire ecosystem working to help teams achieve their strategic goals.

This is where agentic artificial intelligence has a defining role to play, with autonomous agents working alongside procurement experts, while both automating and orchestrating key processes. 

Adoption of agentic tools is rapidly accelerating; Capgemini research found that while only 10% of organizations were using AI agents in 2024, an additional 82% intended to be using them by 2027. And this intent is coming to fruition, with recent research finding that 35% of procurement teams now use AI or advanced analytics tools as of December 2025.

The rise of agentic AI is having a direct impact on procurement teams, and will be central to 2026 strategy. It offers a clear opportunity to create connected, intelligent and autonomous procurement platforms that can deliver proactive recommendations or even automate decision-making within certain parameters.

Agentic AI can also optimize for outcomes, so teams can set their procurement goals, and agents will recommend initiatives to reduce risk, speed up processes and increase efficiency.

Seizing this opportunity means shifting the thought process behind technology and data. AI agents need the complete context of procurement lifecycles to operate at their full potential. With the right foundation, they can coordinate tasks and autonomously carry out multi-step processes. And that relies on having connected data sources and integrated tools.

When adopting AI agents, it’s crucial to remember that they’re only as strong as the foundation they’re built on. The biggest risks don’t come from agentic AI itself; they come from what happens around it. So several key elements must be embedded upfront.

Proper governance ensures that agents stay within pre-defined boundaries. It gives them clear rules to follow about when they can make autonomous decisions, and when they must wait for human approval.

Adequate data access allows agents to understand all the context they need across systems to make decisions and orchestrate workflows. Without it, they can’t operate across the whole end-to-end-procurement process without producing errors.

Cross-enterprise alignment enables agentic AI to move beyond procurement and become an organizational growth driver. Procurement teams need to align with other departments such as finance and legal on policies and strategic goals. Agents must also be aligned to create shared assets instead of than more silos.

As teams look to the upcoming year, embedding these three key elements from the start will ensure that AI agents function to the required standard and fulfill their huge promise. That’s because this foundation creates a scalable base for agentic AI. With these processes cemented into the agentic ecosystem, forward-looking teams can add new capabilities and expand without going back to the siloed, patchwork environments of the past. Integration will become the standard.  

Almost three-quarters (74%) of procurement leaders say their data isn’t AI-ready. 

To adopt a modern, integrated procurement ecosystem capable of supporting agentic AI, establishing strong data foundations must be the first step.

This requires understanding and implementing effective data-governance practices. Data sources need to be scrutinized, access controlled so that only approved users can work with the data they need, and storage managed appropriately, particularly for commercially sensitive or confidential information. It’s also essential that existing data sources integrate effectively to create a single source of truth for AI agents.

Aligning data and infrastructure, however, is only one side of the modernization equation. The other is people.

As agentic AI becomes embedded in procurement workflows, required roles and responsibilities will evolve. Organizations must identify skills gaps in the effective use of agentic AI, and address them through upskilling existing teams or hiring talent with stronger digital capabilities and data literacy. By automating routine tasks, agentic AI can free procurement professionals to focus on higher-value activities, such as identifying new opportunities to further improve processes.

More than half (58%) of those responsible for hiring procurement and supply professionals globally have struggled to find and retain talent in the past 12 months. Agentic AI should represent part of the solution to this industry-wide talent shortage.

Younger generations want to work in digital-first teams. They’ve grown up in a world where technology is advanced and readily available, and they want that trend to continue into their careers. They’re comfortable working with AI, automation and analytics, and actively seek roles that are augmented by the technology. For a procurement function to flourish in 2026 and beyond, it will be essential to create roles that will attract the brightest new talent as they begin their careers.

Digital transformation is no longer about implementing isolated tools and patching over legacy processes; it’s about treating data and digital processes as parts of a complete whole. That means investing in governance, data readiness and cross‑enterprise alignment as well as new technology. It means preparing teams to take on new roles and learn new skills. And it means embracing a mindset where procurement is no longer a collection of disconnected activities, but a unified, intelligent system designed to deliver strategic outcomes.

Done properly, agentic AI can elevate procurement to true enterprise value creation. Do that, and 2026 can become the most exciting year yet.

Mita Gupta is executive vice president and business unit head of WNS Procurement.