Procurement strategy tested against real work.
Art of Procurement treats sourcing, supplier strategy, procurement technology, and operating models as practical management problems. Its conversations move from trends to the messy details of adoption, data quality, stakeholder trust, and business value.
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Art of Procurement is a long-running show about the work behind modern procurement. It treats the function as a strategic operating system, but it rarely lets that phrase float away from the day-to-day reality of sourcing events, stakeholder behavior, supplier information, and executive pressure. The show is strongest when it turns a broad market claim into a set of practical evaluation questions. What does AI actually change in the workflow? Which data becomes useful, and which data just sits in old files? How does a procurement team keep stakeholders from avoiding a tool and returning to Excel or Word? These are the kinds of problems the show keeps circling back to. The conversations cover disruption, forecasting, cybersecurity, procurement orchestration, ProcureTech products, design-to-source-to-pay platforms, and the expanding expectations placed on procurement leaders. They also make room for career stories, including the recurring question of whether people found procurement or procurement found them. That question gives the show a useful human baseline. Behind the terminology are people who entered the field through consulting, operations, supply chain, technology, or chance, and then had to learn how to create value inside complex organizations. The By the Way subseries adds another layer by focusing on incentives, purposeful buying, category-specific systems, and the limits of one-size-fits-all dashboards. Those episodes can be looser and more conversational, with callbacks and dry humor, but the underlying concern remains serious: procurement systems produce outcomes, and bad incentives produce bad behavior. Provider and startup-oriented episodes bring vendors and platforms into the feed, especially where technology claims need to be connected to cost, risk, resilience, and adoption. The show does not treat digital procurement as magic. It asks whether people can use the tool, whether the data supports the decision, and whether the organization can act on what it learns. Episodes on divestments and factory closures show the same pattern in a more sensitive setting, where supplier innovation, labor concerns, trust, and business continuity collide. Art of Procurement suits listeners who already understand procurement vocabulary but still want the concepts translated into consequences. It is analytical, interview-centered, and practical enough to be useful after the episode ends.
Made for: For procurement professionals, procurement leaders, category leaders, sourcing teams, and procurement technology watchers who want disciplined discussion rather than generic transformation talk. It especially suits listeners evaluating tools, operating models, supplier risk, and stakeholder adoption.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by connecting procurement trends to implementation questions: incentives, workflow, data quality, user behavior, and business trust. Its mix of interviews, practitioner conversations, By the Way episodes, and provider-focused segments gives the same market from several useful angles.
Learn from procurement experts. Host Philip Ideson talks with thought leaders who share the trends, strategies and tactics that you can lever to elevate the role of procurement - and your career.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Philip Ideson makes procurement legible as a designed practice shaped by incentives, usable systems, reliable records and trust.
Art of Procurement turns corporate purchasing into a close study of how organizations make decisions. Philip Ideson leads interviews and co-hosted conversations that connect incentives, technology and supplier relationships to the practical consequences of policy.
The RFP tool loses to Excel again, and your workaround finally gets taken seriously.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp look at how procurement loses the memory it needs to make better decisions.
Procurement's memory problem sits at the center of this By the Way to Purposeful Procurement episode, as Rich Hamm and Kelly follow what happens to sourcing-event knowledge after the work is done.
A practical discussion of orchestration, user expectations, and provider questions.
Art of Procurement centers this discussion on orchestration, with Philip Heidson joined by Kelly Barner to preview a new report on the state of orchestration.
A factory divestment story where trust matters more than the transaction.
Alessandro Camerci's conversation with Philip Heidson treats a factory divestment as a problem of trust before it is a problem of process. The episode stays closest to the human cost: job preservation, unions, labor laws, and the way an announcement can turn colleagues into…
A procurement chat that treats truth as a system problem, not a slogan.
By the Way to Purposeful Procurement turns to the blunt work of deciding what procurement systems are allowed to call true. Phil and Rich bring back Jason Bush, and the conversation moves from supplier efforts to shape AI outputs to a more practical question: whether spend…
A grounded look at how procurement visibility can support better shared decisions across the business.
Decision platforms come through as a practical way to make procurement visible beyond procurement itself. Philip Heidson's conversation with Thomas Wyman follows what happens when subscriptions, contracts, usage, and value generation are connected in one view.
A grounded procurement episode about why category expertise starts with finding and understanding the invoice.
Art of Procurement turns a request for one invoice per location into a sharper question: can a procurement team actually reach, read, and use the information it already has?
A season finale that turns procurement incentives into a broader argument about accountability, measurement, and time horizons.
Procurement's incentive problem gets treated like the season-finale question it is: not just whether teams make good deals, but what the business chooses to reward.
This episode explores how aligning incentives with desired outcomes in corporate procurement can lead to more purposeful results, featuring insights from David Loseby on behavioral architecture.
Data is not just numbers.
Charlie Munger supplies the frame.
This episode explores how flawed incentive plans in procurement and manufacturing extend beyond financial impacts to affect decarbonization efforts and climate change mitigation.
A clipboard note can turn into junk in 45 minutes.
This episode features an interview with procurement experts Amit Mahajan and Jon Jensen discussing how procurement teams can adapt to disruption, AI, and new operating models based on insights from a survey of 120 CPOs.
This episode features an interview with Adam Brown discussing the rapid evolution of digital procurement and the role of ProcureTech 100 in identifying innovative technology solutions.
This episode features an interview with Jim Cahalan, the new Director of Events at Art of Procurement, discussing his background, the company's event series, and how procurement professionals can engage with their community beyond traditional conferences.
This episode explores why one dashboard can't manage every expense category in procurement and discusses developing expense-specific systems with guest Brian Gamble.
Procurement orchestration gets a practical reality check.
Procurement found Alessandro.
Data is the practical constraint.
Procurement found the guest.
This episode discusses why procurement professionals should stop using the term 'savings' and explores better incentive systems to achieve more purposeful outcomes in corporate procurement.
This season finale episode of a procurement podcast features a roast-style discussion examining flawed incentive systems in corporate procurement and exploring better approaches for purposeful outcomes.
This episode explores how incentive structures in corporate procurement affect business outcomes, featuring an interview with procurement professional Kristine Morton.