Procurement's evolution into a growth engine

What finance and procurement can teach us about the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) of 2030. With Michael Bryant, Senior Director of Finance at Cencora 3PL and Romain Geny, Global Procurement Manager at PharmaLex.

What would it take for procurement to become a stronger contributor to business growth?

To explore that question, we spoke to two people who approach procurement value from different sides of the table.

Michael Bryant is Senior Director of Finance at Cencora 3PL. During his five years with the business, he has worked closely with operational and procurement teams while overseeing financial planning and analysis, pricing, profitability, and financial services delivered on behalf of clients.

Romain Geny brings the procurement perspective. As Global Procurement Manager at PharmaLex (also part of Cencora), he has helped build a global vendor management function across a growing group of local entities. His experience shows what it takes to turn strategic ambition into common processes and useful data which ultimately lead to stronger supplier relationships.

They come at the question from different directions, but agree on one central point: procurement earns a wider role by helping the business make better decisions.

That starts with cost, but doesn't end there. A saving on a contract can quickly lose its value if the new supplier delivers a weaker service, creates disruption, or transfers cost and workload elsewhere in the organization. A higher initial price may prove to be the better commercial decision if it protects continuity, improves performance, or gives the business access to a capability it needs to grow.

So, how should procurement demonstrate that wider value, and what should today's leaders start building for 2030?

Define what value looks like before going to market

The balance between cost and risk is already changing. In a 2026 survey of 425 global supply chain professionals, 71% said balancing the two now drives procurement strategy. Yet only 45% believed their organizations were prepared for supply chain disruption.[1]

Michael’s advice is practical: establish what the decision needs to achieve before beginning a sourcing exercise. “There needs to be an upfront definition of what you’re trying to achieve,” he explains. “Is it purely cost savings, or are you also looking to improve some measure of the operation?”

That improvement might relate to throughput, service quality, continuity, error reduction, capacity, product integrity, or access to new capabilities. Setting clear measures at the outset gives the business a stronger basis for assessing the options and, later, determining whether the chosen supplier has delivered genuine value.

This requires agreement across the business. “The partnership has to be there between procurement, finance, and operations,” says Michael. Each function can contribute a different perspective on value and agree who will remain accountable once the contract is signed.

Understand how the business makes money

A sourcing decision doesn’t operate in isolation. The same reduction in invoice cost can produce very different results across business models. It may lower costs in one part of an organization while reducing revenue, service quality, or operational capacity elsewhere.

Michael’s finance team works across pricing, profitability, and operational performance, so he sees those connections every day. For him, procurement builds credibility by showing that it understands how a proposed decision could affect the wider business. “If you can demonstrate that you understand our business, that goes a long way toward building the credibility we need,” he says.

Before looking for suppliers, procurement should understand how the product or service being purchased affects revenue, customer commitments, quality, and operational performance. Finance and operations can help establish the starting position and agree how the resulting benefits will be measured. This prevents one function from recording a saving that another later absorbs through additional costs or disruption.

Earlier involvement also gives procurement an opportunity to shape what the business needs. Michael describes procurement contributing during the concept stage of a major distribution center project, before the business case or supplier decisions had been fixed. With the options still open, the team could consider automation, buying power, future capacity, and the balance between upfront investment and long-term productivity.

For CPOs who want greater influence, this is an important distinction. Strategic involvement doesn’t come automatically with a new title. Procurement earns it by understanding the business well enough to improve decisions before they become difficult or expensive to change.

Build consistency without losing business context

Romain's starting point was very different. PharmaLex had grown through the acquisition of consulting businesses, each with its own ways of working. Procurement activity often sat with people who were also managing administrative, regulatory, or operational responsibilities. Supplier information lived in different places, and local teams had varying levels of procurement experience.

The first task was to create enough consistency to give the group better oversight. “The main need was to harmonize practices and organize procurement activities with external companies,” Romain says.

He puts process and governance ahead of technology. Teams need to agree how decisions will be made, what information they need, who owns each supplier relationship, and where local flexibility should remain. The system should then support that way of working.

A central enterprise resource planning (ERP) system made the benefit tangible. Previously, Romain had to request separate spreadsheets from local finance directors and wait several weeks to build a group-wide view of supplier spend.

“Once you have a central ERP system, you're able to have data that drives better decisions,” he says. “You shift from gut-feeling decisions to data-driven ones.”

The lesson isn't that every organization needs the same centralized model. The right balance will depend on what is being purchased, where the business operates, the level of supply risk, and local business needs. The practical starting point is to identify the decisions that need to become more consistent, then build the governance, information, and skills around them.

Look to suppliers for capability as well as capacity

Procurement's contribution to growth becomes clearer when it helps the business find expertise or technology it doesn't have internally. That calls for an active view of the supply market rather than waiting for a completed specification to arrive.

Michael sees procurement as the organization's window into emerging capability. “Procurement can be the growth engine by being the expert, knowing what capabilities are out there, and bringing new ideas and new options to us,” he says.

Procurement can be the growth engine by being the expert, knowing what capabilities are out there, and bringing new ideas and new options to us.

Michael Bryant

Senior Director of Finance, Cencora 3PL

Teams can put that into practice by identifying where the business has capability gaps, scanning the market for credible ways to close them, and bringing promising options into early discussions with finance, operations, and quality. Supplier discovery then becomes part of business planning rather than the first step in a tender.

Romain adds the relationship dimension. Some PharmaLex suppliers have recruited people in new locations, developed dedicated resourcing models, and invested to support new business needs. Those commitments grew from established relationships in which both sides understood the opportunity and had confidence in the other's intentions.

“Reliability is a keyword,” Romain says. “Longstanding partners deliver beyond the contractual arrangements and make efforts to solve your problems.”

That doesn't make price irrelevant. It changes the comparison. Procurement needs to weigh price against delivery confidence, quality, and the consequences of failure.

For Romain, that can justify a higher initial cost. “I'd prefer a partner that we know will deliver the quality expected, even if it's a little more expensive, rather than always going to the cheapest option,” he says.

I'd prefer a partner that we know will deliver the quality expected, even if it's a little more expensive, rather than always going to the cheapest option.

Romain Geny

Global Procurement Manager, PharmaLex

Closer supplier relationships create a further trade-off. Consolidating activity can improve leverage, simplify oversight, and make performance easier to manage. It can also concentrate dependency and make a future exit harder. Teams should segment suppliers by business impact and supply risk, set the relationship model accordingly, and preserve credible alternatives where continuity would otherwise rely too heavily on one provider.

Give technology a clear job to do

By 2030, procurement teams will have access to faster analysis, more automated administration, and a greater flow of supplier and market information. The real opportunity lies in connecting those tools to specific decisions.

PwC's 2025 survey of 610 U.S. operations and supply chain leaders illustrates the gap. Although 57% had integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into selected functions or across their organization, 92% cited at least one reason technology investments hadn't fully delivered the expected results. Integration complexity was selected by 47%, while 44% cited data issues.[2]

Romain sees immediate potential for AI in supplier due diligence, negotiation preparation, contract drafting, and database maintenance. Automating that work could give procurement professionals more time for commercial conversations, emerging risks, and supplier relationships. He's equally clear about where the boundary should sit.

“AI will support, but there'll always be a human taking the decision,” he says. “It shouldn't replace the judgment and business instinct of experienced leaders.”

Michael approaches the same issue through the business case. If a supplier promises productivity improvements, greater reliability, or future savings then finance needs to understand where those assumptions came from. Reference data, simulations, pilots, and scenarios can all help teams test whether the expected benefit is credible before building it into a financial plan.

Digital fluency will therefore sit alongside established commercial skills. In the CIPS Global State of Procurement and Supply Survey 2026, 432 respondents identified the skills or behaviors they most wanted to improve. Technology and risk management were each selected by 47%, followed by negotiation at 42%, relationship management at 37%, and being strategic at 36%.[3]

Five actions procurement leaders can take now

Agree the value equation with finance and operations
For every major sourcing decision or investment, start by defining the outcome you want to achieve. Establish the current baseline and agree how any financial benefit will be measured. Decide which operational metrics matter most and who will be accountable for the result. Keep negotiated savings, cost avoidance, and wider business benefits separate so each can be evaluated on its own merits.
Earn earlier involvement
Map the decisions where procurement can add value before requirements are fixed, including capital projects, technology selection, operating model design, and new service development. Build regular links with the leaders who own those decisions.
Prioritize suppliers by business impact and supply risk
Identify which relationships protect continuity or provide distinctive capability. Match governance, executive engagement, performance evidence, development activity, and contingency planning to their importance.
Connect every technology investment to a decision
Name the decision or process the tool will improve. Assess the data, establish human oversight, and measure whether the investment changes outcomes rather than producing more information.
Stay accountable after implementation
Keep procurement involved once the contract is signed. Review whether promised improvements were delivered, work with suppliers to resolve shortfalls, and use the evidence to strengthen future sourcing and investment decisions.

Start the conversation with an unmet need

Procurement will still be expected to manage cost in 2030. Its wider influence will rest on whether it can show how commercial decisions improve or protect the performance of the business.

Michael believes that requires a change in mindset across the function. “They're part of the business,” he says. “They're key to the success of the overall business and need to think of themselves that way.”

In life sciences supply chains, that mindset should also shape how logistics partners are evaluated. Procurement needs evidence of reliable execution, specialist expertise, proactive risk management, usable data, and the ability to improve the operating model over time. It needs partners who'll stay involved when conditions change or a promised outcome is at risk.

World Courier supports those decisions through reliable specialty supply chain solutions, expert-led guidance, proactive end-to-end management, and continuous improvement informed by data. Those capabilities create value when they help procurement protect continuity, make a stronger decision, or access expertise the organization can't build quickly on its own.

The most useful conversation between procurement and finance may therefore start with the business's unmet needs rather than its next savings target.

Michael suggests two questions to open it: “What investments have you not made because you haven't found the right supplier or the right technology? What knowledge does procurement have that finance may not be aware of?”

Those questions give procurement somewhere concrete to begin. Growth engine may be the headline. The story behind it is one of closer partnerships, better evidence, and decisions that stand up long after the contract has been signed.