Welcome to the November 2025 edition of Gordon’s Window with Gordon Donovan, your comprehensive guide to the latest shifts and challenges in global procurement and supply chain management. Save your own time reading research when you can get the key takeaways in one place!
This month, we have three interlinked themes: resilience, digital reinvention and value alignment.
Geopolitical risk, climate disruption and volatile markets are forcing procurement to evolve from efficiency-driven operations to strategic resilience builders.
Across studies, agentic AI, automation and data-driven decision-making emerge as enablers of agility, transforming tail spend, workforce management and payment systems. Yet, capability gaps and legacy systems persist, tempering progress.
Finally, financial integration and smarter contracts signal procurement’s shift towards value-centric governance, where cross-functional transparency and digital fluency define competitive advantage for the year ahead.
ProcureCon
The ProcureCon Europe CPO Report 2025 reveals a profession reshaping itself amid intensifying geopolitical, environmental and regulatory pressures.
Over half of European procurement leaders rank geopolitical instability (58 percent) and climate disruption (51 percent) as their top supply chain threats, highlighting a world where sustainability has shifted from purpose-led to operational.
Encouragingly, 81 percent say sustainability remains central to their agenda, with only seven percent scaling back despite headwinds. Yet progress is uneven: 59 percent are tracking Scope 3 emissions, but just 24 percent have robust systems in place.
The call to action: move beyond supplier self-reporting and treat Scope 3 visibility as the new benchmark for resilience.
Artificial intelligence has crossed the hype line into everyday practice. 67 percent of CPOs now deploy AI for compliance and risk management, while 58 percent rely on it for market intelligence and user experience. Still, legacy integration (39 percent) and change resistance (24 percent) slow progress.
Internally, capability gaps expose where strategy meets constraint. Strategic supplier relationship management (32 percent) and category management (30 percent) trail immediate needs, while talent and innovation rank surprisingly low.
Only four percent of leaders feel “very confident” in managing disruption, suggesting guarded optimism that demands renewed investment in people and foresight.
SIA
Globally, the contingent workforce surpassed USD 10 trillion in value across all major regions, according to SIA’s Global Contingent Workforce 2025 report.
The Americas led with USD 4.6 trillion, followed by EMEA at USD 3.8 trillion and APAC at USD 1.8 trillion.
Across every geography, Statement of Work (SOW) contracts dominated, representing about 70 percent of contingent workforce spend, signalling the ongoing transformation towards project- and outcome-based engagements.
Traditional temporary staffing now makes up just four to seven percent of market value, while platform-based work remains below one percent, though it continues to grow in capability and reach.
Contingent workforce management is no longer about filling roles, but about resourcing outcomes. Independent contractors and directly sourced temporary workers are expanding fastest, highlighting an emerging need for flexible compliance models and robust freelancer management frameworks.
With independent contractors representing up to 25 percent of contingent labour in some markets, supplier audits, risk management and proper classification have become central procurement priorities.
The MSP market has also evolved beyond cost control. Buyers now expect consultative, technology-enabled partners. AI adoption – especially agentic AI – is reshaping how MSPs manage sourcing, matching and talent analytics.
SOW spend within MSP programs has climbed to 39 percent, up from just 18 percent in 2017, underscoring a convergence between procurement-led services sourcing and HR-driven talent strategy.
The reports suggest that for organisations, the key call to action is to integrate workforce categories under a total talent strategy. Procurement must collaborate with HR to harness MSPs, leverage direct sourcing technology and build agile, compliance-minded ecosystems.
Data-driven workforce planning, ESG metrics and skill-based sourcing are now the cornerstones of competitive advantage in a world where “how work gets done” is redefining the entire talent supply chain.
Procurement Leaders
Procurement Leaders’ Strategic Planning Guide 2026 predicts a function entering a year of volatility with sharpened focus and leaner resourcing.
The research, drawn from 195 senior procurement leaders globally, finds cost reduction once again triumphant as the top priority, named by 55 percent of respondents. Speed and resilience round out the top three deliverables as teams brace for continuing geopolitical and economic headwinds.
Despite persistent uncertainty, procurement remains a high-performing ROI engine: the average function generated a return of 6.4x when factoring cost avoidance and up to 11x for top-quartile performers. Yet, this performance will be tested in 2026 as the average headcount is forecast to shrink by 1.8 percent.
With staff making up almost 70 percent of functional costs, CPOs are looking to digitalisation and automation to maintain productivity. Technology gaps and lack of digital skills are now procurement’s top internal barriers, even as organisations continue to underinvest in tools and training.
ESG, by contrast, has slipped to last place on the priority list – a sharp downturn from previous years. This “ESG backlash” is driven by both political retrenchment in the US and regulatory uncertainty in Europe. However, mature procurement functions (those managing over 90 percent of spend) continue to treat sustainability and supplier innovation as long-term value levers, rather than optional extras.
Externally, 74 percent of leaders rate geopolitical tension as the most likely disruptor, closely followed by economic volatility and regulatory change. The result is a pivot towards localisation, multi-regional sourcing and efficiency-driven automation.
Credit Safe & Amex
Procurement leaders face a pivotal moment as late payments, digital adoption and payment automation converge in 2025.
The Cost of Late Payments study underscores how overdue invoices drain cash flow for 86 percent of companies, with up to 30 percent of monthly sales often arriving late, directly exposing supply chains and procurement-driven operations to risk.
Equally, 32 percent of businesses lose up to 30 percent of yearly revenue to bad debt, highlighting why financial due diligence must become a procurement standard, not an afterthought.
Meanwhile, new research from American Express shows eight in ten businesses plan to upgrade their payments process in 2025, with 91 percent of decisionmakers agreeing that streamlined, secure payments fuel business growth.
Yet, despite the recognised upside, only 17 percent have fully automated payments, with late or slow payments prompting 26 percent to stop working with partners.
Key benefits of automation – fewer errors, better cash flow and tighter relationships – are juxtaposed with concerns around cost and security, creating a clear agenda for tech-savvy procurement teams.
Virtual cards are now emerging as a strategic solution. Forecasts suggest 2025 could be their breakout year, delivering fraud reduction, real-time spend control and seamless, digital supplier payments.
As adoption rises 300 percent, cards offer regulatory compliance, cut processing costs by up to 50 percent and grant transparent, agile payment cycles built for modern procurement challenges.
ORO Labs
The ORO Labs 2025 State of Enterprise Procurement Agility Report states that half of procurement executives say pressure on their teams is higher than usual, with one in six describing it as the most intense in three years.
External pressures – especially tariffs and inflation – top the list of challenges, forcing 86 percent of organisations to onboard or offboard suppliers in response. Yet, agility is uneven: while 16 percent can replace a supplier within a week, a third still cite supplier loss as a top concern.
The report reveals a paradox in risk management. 24 percent of executives have tightened supplier vetting, but 25 percent have loosened standards to maintain pace – a sign of how complexity and urgency push teams in opposite directions.
Amid this volatility, procurement’s technology foundations are buckling. Two-thirds of large enterprises now manage over 10 procurement tools, yet only eight percent say most deliver expected ROI. Over half need IT support for even basic changes, creating a drag on agility that stifles collaboration, erodes visibility and slows decision-making.
Artificial intelligence offers promise but not yet payoff. 85 percent of procurement leaders are piloting or using AI, yet only half clearly understand how agentic AI works. The leading use cases – automating tasks and analysing supplier data – reflect value at the margins rather than at the strategic core. With just 39 percent offering formal AI training, scaling the benefits remains elusive.
The report suggests that agility is now the defining capability. Future-ready teams will focus less on adding tools and more on orchestrating them – connecting workflows, ensuring data accessibility and integrating AI with human judgment.
World Commerce and Contracting
‘Smarter Contracts, Better Margins’, a World Commerce and Contracting (WorldCC) research report, finds that 70 percent of organisations still treat contracts as compliance tools instead of strategic financial assets, resulting in value erosion averaging five percent of contract worth.
Only one in ten finance teams now play an active role in contract management, a sharp decline from two decades ago. This misalignment between legal, procurement and finance functions weakens agility, delays deal cycles and obscures the true financial impact of contractual terms.
The report suggests that contracts should deliver measurable performance, not just protection.
Embedding finance in every stage – from negotiation to performance monitoring – can safeguard margins, reduce disputes and unlock up to eight percent of hidden value through leakage recovery and efficiency gains.
Digitally integrated CLM and ERP systems, supported by AI, now make real-time financial visibility possible, connecting commitments directly to forecasts and cash flow.
The authors lay out that a plan should be to build shared ownership: finance must speak the language of contract performance and procurement must embrace financial acumen.
Shift governance from siloed oversight to joint accountability across commercial, legal and finance teams. Redefine contracts as adaptive tools, not static templates, with clauses that respond to policy shifts, price swings or supply disruptions.
As always, reach out to discuss more. I’m always happy to hear your thoughts.
