At the dawn of 2026, it feels fair saying there has never been a more exciting time to be working in procurement technology.
A combination of deeper and more dexterous integrations, more capable and controllable AI, plus better ways to coordinate work across systems has finally made it possible for procurement technology to meet the demands of the function.
There is, in turn, a renewed sense of anticipation within procurement about the potential of technology to elevate the function, and to improve how procurement operates day-to-day.
Out is the perception of procurement as purely a back-office cost center. In is the understanding that procurement is a strategic, operational nexus of business value.
Perhaps no other procurement technology category has done more to drive this shift than orchestration.
Certainly no other emergent technology in recent memory has so powerfully captured the imagination of either analysts or practitioners. Dr. Elouise Epstein, in her 2023 Spider Map, foretold that orchestration platforms could become “the one app to rule them all.”
In her 2024 and 2025 Spider Maps, orchestration platforms were smack-dab in the center once again. Gartner, in several of its most recent procuretech Hype Cycles, rated orchestration’s potential benefit to procurement teams as, indeed, “transformational.”
The reason for the hype boils down to impact. I’ve spent the last two years building orchestration capabilities inside real enterprise procurement environments as Tonkean’s Principal Product Manager. Late last year, I was named General Manager of ProcurementWorks, Tonkean’s agentic orchestration solution for enterprise procurement teams.
I’ve seen first hand what orchestration can do for procurement.
Orchestration recognizes and enables procurement teams to better meet procurement’s cross-functional demands.
A typical procurement process starts with an intake request, which needs to be routed to security and legal for reviews. It then requires supplier data to be pulled from an ERP. It needs to check policy and budget, then move into contracting and purchase order creation.
Orchestration is what keeps that chain moving across systems and stakeholders without manual handoffs or lost context.
That’s critical. It’s also new and still pretty rare.
But this is why the state of procurement orchestration is worth talking about right now.
The state of procurement orchestration in 2026 is exciting, yes.
It’s also messy, on account of the crowded market and confusion over what constitutes orchestration that’s adequately enterprise-grade.
Historically, procurement organizations have lacked the capacity to seamlessly connect the many systems, teams, and decisions their processes and business potential depend on. This has had its consequences. Processes were stitched together manually. Data disappeared into silos and had to be extricated painstakingly after the fact. Time was lost. Focus and money were, too.
The first wave of “orchestration” providers promised to connect this work end to end.
But the market often delivered only partial versions. In practice that meant orchestration that only allowed you to orchestrate intake, suite-bound automation, or ‘agents’ that were really chatbots with limited reach.
As actual real-life enterprise procurement teams began trying to orchestrate agents and processes inside their organizations, one thing became clear: these limited types of orchestration don’t cut it.
On the other hand, such learnings reinforced what the future of procurement orchestration technology needed to look like. They clarified what procurement teams should demand from orchestration.
So what does that sort of orchestration look like?
That’s the future of orchestration procurement needs, in particular in the agentic era.
Good news: this kind of orchestration is here.
But to leverage it, you need to know what to look for.
My team and I at ProcurementWorks have been building end-to-end, execution-level orchestration for several years. My focus as GM of ProcurementWorks this year will be to help procurement teams execute this kind of orchestration reliably, with strong controls and real adoption, in a way that truly equips procurement for the agentic era.
We know how to do that. Over the past two years building ProcurementWorks, I’ve seen where orchestration succeeds in procurement, where it breaks, and what changes when agents are introduced. Before that, I led product and services teams building and scaling enterprise software in regulated environments.
I’m stepping into the GM role with a clear view of what procurement orchestration uniquely demands, what it takes to move from vision to adoption, and also with a keen awareness of how the technology has evolved.
But procurement leaders, too, need to understand the stakes of sticking with the status quo versus adopting orchestration that can run end to end across systems.
They need to understand the difference between orchestration partners who can deliver this kind of orchestration safely, with governance and accountability, and those who only offer orchestration that’s bolted on to pre-existing data systems or siloed tools.
As GM of ProcurementWorks, my focus heading into 2026 is to be that kind of partner.
I aim to make ProcurementWorks the enterprise platform procurement teams rely on to execute agentic work with confidence, and to help procurement leaders move beyond experimentation and into sustained, governed AI‑driven execution.
That, at any rate, is the kind of orchestration platform procurement leaders should demand heading into this year: orchestration that’s completely connected across systems, tightly governed, and capable of running real work with agents and people together.
In 2026, procurement organizations that lean into this kind of orchestration will leave behind those still stuck doing things the old way.
