ProcureCon's twin U.S. gatherings book-end the procurement calendar: Indirect West (PIW) each spring in Las Vegas and Indirect East (PIE) each autumn in Orlando. Together they form a diagnostic loop—West surfaces the year's pressures and opportunities, East tests the remedies. This report synthesizes three full days of transcripts from PIW 2025 and maps the implications forward to PIE 2025.

Overview and Quick Snapshot of PIW and PIE

Procurement leaders arrived in Las Vegas with optimism, but they were emerging from a challenging procurement environment. While inflation had retreated, market unpredictability remained a concern. Also, enthusiasm for AI had reached its peak, but return on investment cases were still developing.

Over three days of sessions and extensive networking, the attendees at ProcureCon Indirect West identified several key themes that have risen to the top of the CPO agenda. Orlando's autumn program directly addresses these priorities, indicating that East will serve as an implementation-focused follow-up to West's strategic discussions.

Both conferences share the ProcureCon design, blending main-stage debates, classroom breakouts, and CPO-only cohorts, with strategic format adjustments that enhance the learning experience.

Five Hot Topics Emerging from ProcureCon Indirect West

1. AI & Predictive Analytics

At PIW this year, the keynote panel's discussion of "Is AI the new Coke or the new iPhone?" yielded important insights as delegates demanded concrete evidence over theoretical possibilities. The conversation had evolved significantly since previous years, when AI discussions centered on future potential rather than present performance.

Three critical signals emerged from the Vegas conversations that will shape Orlando's approach:

• ROI expectations have shifted from years to quarters. Anthropic's Head of Finance Operations, Adam Dix, framed shorter payback periods on invoice-triage bots as the new threshold.
• Closed-domain models are proving more effective than generic LLMs for contract analytics because "hallucination kills CPO careers," warned Umpqua Bank CPO Bryan Redmond.
• Pilot fatigue is widespread. A significant portion of audience poll respondents had shelved at least one AI proof-of-concept in the past year.

PIE's agenda directly addresses what speakers and attendees revealed about AI at Vegas. If this topic is of interest to you, you won't want to miss a keynote entitled "An AI Check-Up: Practical Applications Today."

You can also expect much more detailed demonstrations of AI’s capabilities rather than theoretical discussions about the future.

2. Supplier Risk & Resilience

At PIW, Marc Koehler, a leadership expert and former U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Officer, used a submarine analogy to demonstrate the constant state of risk businesses operate in. "We're 40 seconds from crush depth every day,” he said.

This captured the heightened awareness around supply chain vulnerabilities that dominated PIW's risk-focused sessions. The conference devoted substantial attention to risk management, from Avetta's workshop on supply-chain resiliency to deal-maker roundtables on contingency planning.

PIE will explore two new areas of risk. These are fourth-party visibility and the tariff "snap-backs."

Fourth-Party Visibility

Fourth-party visibility emerged as a critical concern, jumping from nice-to-have to top-three priority after a live demonstration of AI-driven SOC-2 analytics uncovered numerous hidden subcontractors for a single SaaS vendor. This revelation highlighted how traditional vendor management approaches fail to capture the full ecosystem of dependencies that modern organizations face.

Tariff Snap-Backs

Tariff snap-backs, especially on electronics, triggered real-time re-pricing scenarios inside classroom sessions, demonstrating how quickly global trade dynamics can impact procurement strategies. These discussions foreshadowed the dedicated tariff management track that would anchor PIE's agenda later in the year.

3. Talent, Culture & Change Management

Day 3's theme at PIW 2025, "Putting People First in the Age of AI," brought procurement's human challenges into sharp focus through compelling stories:

• Crossover attrition has increased significantly, with a substantial portion of indirect procurement talent migrating to product or revenue roles, reflecting both the marketability of procurement skills and the ongoing struggle to retain top performers.
• Multi-generational management challenges have increased, with procurement teams now managing five generations simultaneously—from Boomers to Gen Alpha interns.

A high-energy panel invited delegates to identify theme songs for their cohorts, ranging from Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" for Boomers to Kendrick Lamar's "HUMBLE." for Millennials. While the exercise was fun, it also underscored the reality that motivational levers differ dramatically across generational lines.

PIE will reprise the workshop "Generational Differences in the Workplace: Revisiting Assumptions," but layers a retention design sprint facilitated by TikTok's Sarah Kaye.

4. Procurement Tech-Stack Modernization

Linda Chuan, Chief Procurement Officer of Box, captured the prevailing sentiment with her assessment of the "State of the P2P Union" at PIW 2025. She argued for the need to "rethink core tech before 'bolt-ons' become Franken-stack."

This observation resonated throughout multiple sessions as procurement leaders grappled with technology sprawl and integration challenges.

Here are some of the key observations from PIW about improvements to the procurement tech stack:

Intake Experiences Matter on the Front-End Too

Intake orchestration tools are leap-frogging legacy e-RFx upgrades, with a substantial portion of PIW attendees planning to fund a procurement request intake layer in the near future. This shift reflects a recognition that front-end user experience often matters more than back-end processing sophistication.

The movement toward better intake management acknowledges that spend is like water—it will find the path of least resistance, and organizations need to make compliant procurement that path.

CLM Rationalization is a Priority Again

Contract lifecycle management rationalization has returned as a priority, driven by the discovery that a significant number of organizations run two or more contract repositories simultaneously. This fragmentation creates visibility gaps and compliance risks that AI tools are beginning to address through automated contract analysis and cross-repository intelligence.

Procurement Teams Are Getting Comfortable with DIY Programming

DIY dashboards built on Power BI and low-code applications are increasingly filling gaps left by suite vendors, suggesting that procurement teams are becoming more comfortable with citizen development approaches. This trend toward self-service analytics reflects both the limitations of traditional procurement technology and the growing technical sophistication of procurement professionals.

Orlando's "Intake Management & AP Automation" sessions will push practical showcases of these topics.

5. ESG & Supplier Diversity

Political headwinds have not dampened procurement's commitment to environmental and social goals, but they have forced a strategic reframing of messaging and metrics. The panel "Delivering Supplier Diversity When DEI Is Being Discontinued" addressed head-on the challenges facing procurement organizations in politically sensitive environments.

Shifts in KPIs

Key performance indicators have shifted from simple spend-through-diverse-suppliers metrics to more sophisticated risk-balanced value creation measures that incorporate cost, continuity, and carbon considerations. This evolution reflects a maturation in how organizations think about supplier diversity, moving beyond compliance-driven approaches toward business value integration.

Scope 3 Reporting

Scope 3 reporting expansion represents perhaps the most significant operational challenge ahead, with a majority of morning poll respondents indicating plans to expand carbon footprint reporting into indirect categories in the coming years.

This shift will require new supplier onboarding processes, data collection capabilities, and performance management frameworks that many organizations are still developing.

Sessions at ProcureCon Indirect East 2025 will highlight renewable utilities sourcing, new scoring methods, and other sessions on the future of diversity initiatives.

ProcureCon Indirect East: A Testing Ground for New Ideas

PIW 2025 demonstrated that indirect procurement has evolved beyond its traditional efficiency role to become a frontline resilience function. Orlando's PIE will not reset these conversations but rather advance them, providing a testing ground for the strategies and tools discussed in Las Vegas.

The transformation from tactical cost management to strategic value creation continues, with each ProcureCon gathering marking another step in procurement's evolution. As industry expert Michael Takyi said at ProcureCon Indirect West this year, "Procurement's brand used to be price; now it's possibilities."