Artificial intelligence is sweeping across enterprise functions. Yet procurement continues to fall behind, even as pressures mount. New data from SAP Taulia’s AI in Procurement Report shows a widening gap between procurement’s rising workload and leadership’s limited investment.

Only 35% of global leaders see procurement and supply chain management as a priority area for AI investment. Finance, data analytics, and cybersecurity each attract more attention, leaving procurement at a strategic disadvantage.

This mismatch comes at a difficult moment. Procurement teams report heavier demands, tighter risk environments, and growing operational complexity. Yet AI funding remains slow.

Rising Pressures, Slow Progress

Procurement teams feel the strain. Seventy-two percent say demands increased during the past year. They face complex supplier ecosystems, volatile markets, and expanding compliance requirements. Although 44% believe AI will solve many of these challenges, executive prioritization remains low.

Leaders agree on AI’s potential impact. They highlight risk detection, data-led decision-making, and spend analysis as major opportunity areas. They also expect AI to streamline sourcing, accelerate tendering, and automate invoice processing. These improvements could shift procurement toward more strategic work.

However, interest levels vary sharply by region. Just 20% of UK leaders prioritize procurement AI investments, compared with 44% in Australia and 41% in Singapore. U.S. leaders sit at 37%. These gaps show a global function moving at different speeds.

Procurement Teams Use AI, Even Without Leadership Backing

Despite limited investment, procurement teams are not waiting. Many already use AI-powered procurement platforms such as SAP Joule, JAGGAER, and Ivalua. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are also widely deployed.

This early adoption is paying off. Ninety percent of leaders using AI say automation lets their teams focus on higher-value work. They report stronger supplier relationships, better risk oversight, and more strategic impact. Moreover, 87% say AI insights strengthen procurement’s influence in business decision-making.

These numbers show a function willing to modernize, even when broader enterprise strategy lags behind.

Barriers Slow Enterprise-Wide Adoption

Leadership concerns continue to slow AI uptake. Data security and compliance worries top the list. Limited internal AI expertise and misaligned digital strategies add further friction. Practical issues such as poor data quality and workflow integration uncertainty follow close behind.

A deeper cultural barrier persists. Thirty percent of leaders still view procurement as an operational unit rather than a strategic one. This perception makes investment harder to justify, despite the function’s growing importance.

Experts warn that this mindset puts organizations at risk. Volatile supply chains demand predictive intelligence, not manual firefighting.

Industry Voices Call for Faster Investment

SAP Taulia Chief Product Officer Danielle Weinblatt argues that procurement sits at the center of business resilience. She notes that AI can transform how organizations manage risk, relationships, and working capital. She calls for investment that balances immediate needs with long-term vision.

NTT DATA’s John Roberts reinforces the urgency. He says AI is already elevating procurement from back-office support to a strategic business partner. For him, automation unlocks time for deeper supplier collaboration and stronger risk detection. He warns that procurement cannot afford to fall behind in this new industrial revolution.

TELUS Director of Procurement Ashifa Jumani highlights another key issue: mindset. She says leaders must position AI as an augmentation tool, not a threat. When AI handles repetitive tasks, teams gain time for negotiation, relationship-building, and long-term value creation.

The Road Ahead

Procurement knows where AI can deliver value. Teams are already using tools that enhance performance, reduce risk, and improve decision-making. Yet investment continues to trail behind other functions.

The report reveals a clear paradox. Procurement professionals understand AI’s potential, but many leadership teams remain hesitant. Without a shift in perception, organizations may miss a critical opportunity to strengthen resilience during uncertain times.

The companies that close this gap first will shape the next era of procurement—one defined by intelligence, automation, and strategic influence.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Applause, the global leader in digital quality engineering and crowdsourced testing, is set to spotlight its expanding AI capabilities at Tech For Retail 2025, happening November 24–25 at the Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles. Now in its fifth year, the event will bring together more than 13,000 retail and tech leaders focused on how generative AI, automation, and data continue to reshape modern commerce.

AI Quality Takes Center Stage

At booth B132, Applause will demo its AI Training and Testing Solution, a fully managed service suite designed to boost the reliability, safety, and accuracy of AI-driven retail experiences. The offering spans fine-tuning, red teaming, model evaluation, bias detection, data sourcing, and UX research — all essential as retailers scale AI across customer service channels, websites, apps, and IVR systems.

With generative AI now embedded in everything from product discovery to shopper support, the pressure to deliver safe, trustworthy outputs is rising. Applause says its platform helps retailers mitigate risks tied to hallucinations, bias, toxic responses, and inconsistent model behavior — issues that can erode customer trust and damage brand equity.

Backed by 1.5 Million Testers Worldwide

Applause supports some of the world’s earliest and largest AI adopters, leveraging a global community of 1.5 million independent testing experts and end-users to validate real-world performance at scale. This human-in-the-loop approach ensures LLMs are trained, evaluated, and refined using diverse, scenario-rich datasets that reflect how actual shoppers behave.

The company’s crowdtesting services are fully managed, giving retailers a combination of strategy, execution, and continuous feedback needed to maintain high-quality omnichannel experiences. Applause partners with leading global retailers to test and optimize websites, apps, payments flows, conversational AI, and accessibility touchpoints long before launch.

Award-Winning Momentum in Retail Tech

The company enters Tech For Retail 2025 with fresh industry recognition. Earlier this year, Applause earned the RetailTech Breakthrough Award for “e-Commerce Infrastructure Solution of the Year” and a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year (Computer Software – Large) at the 2025 International Business Awards.

These accolades highlight Applause’s growing influence in retail technology as businesses increasingly demand scalable, high-assurance testing for AI-enabled experiences.

Consumers Leaning Into AI-Assisted Shopping

Adding to its momentum, Applause recently released its 2025 Holiday Shopping & Payments Survey, which shows consumers are warming to AI-assisted shopping while continuing to encounter friction in checkout and payment experiences. Persistent gaps in payment reliability and user experience remain major conversion killers — reinforcing the need for rigorous testing across digital retail ecosystems.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Clootrack just crossed a threshold that few enterprise AI platforms can claim: more than 100 billion OpenAI tokens processed across its customer base. The milestone signals a shift in how global organizations approach Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics, pushing beyond dashboards and sentiment scores into real operational impact.

The spike in usage follows two major upgrades. In 2024, Clootrack migrated its patented unsupervised thematic analysis engine to OpenAI. Then, in early 2025, it launched an Agentic Workflow Builder designed specifically for VoC teams. Combined, these enhancements have turned customer feedback—long treated as a noisy afterthought—into a high-resolution decision system.

Clootrack CEO Shameel Abdulla frames the achievement as a trust signal rather than a technical one. “This achievement is not about token volume; it is about trust at scale,” he said. According to Abdulla, enterprises are rebuilding their decision loops around AI, and Clootrack’s accuracy claims of 98% or higher make that shift possible.

And the outcomes are hard to ignore. Brands report double-digit reductions in ecommerce returns, NPS improvements within a single quarter, and threefold acceleration in product development. Contact centers have lowered average handling time by as much as 15%, while some teams cut agent churn by 20%. Private equity firms have even shortened diligence cycles by weeks. These gains illustrate a broader trend: enterprise AI is now graded on business results, not novelty.

Reaching the 100-billion-token mark didn’t come easy. Clootrack rebuilt core algorithms, workflows, and internal development systems to meet enterprise expectations for transparency and control. Abdulla said the team “hit walls almost every day,” but precision remained non-negotiable. The milestone suggests the rebuild paid off.

The platform now blends unsupervised thematic analysis with agentic AI workflows to interpret emotion, context, and intent across 55+ languages and more than 1,000 data sources. Retail giants, SaaS leaders, banks, healthcare providers, and private equity firms rely on Clootrack to unify scattered feedback into real-time intelligence that supports faster decisions and measurable growth.

While many AI-powered CX tools still offer surface-level sentiment snapshots, Clootrack’s trajectory shows where the market is heading. Enterprises want clarity, impact, and systems that scale without breaking. Surpassing 100 billion tokens is less a victory lap and more a preview of what the next generation of customer intelligence will look like.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Qlik is tightening its grip on the data quality race. The company unveiled a fresh set of AI-powered capabilities in Qlik Talend Cloud, designed to make governed, trusted data easier for enterprises to use wherever work happens. The update offers what many data teams have long wanted: faster publishing, cleaner datasets, and fewer hours swallowed by tedious documentation.

The headline feature is a one-click ability to publish secure, standards-based API endpoints for governed data products. This unlocks a wider ecosystem, letting teams push the same curated data directly into Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Salesforce, and custom internal apps without creating duplicate pipelines. For organizations already drowning in data silos, that alone is a lifeline.

The platform also introduces automated dataset documentation through a feature Qlik calls auto-describe. It generates field-level descriptions at scale, improving data discoverability for business users and eliminating the manual busywork that data stewards have endured for years.

But the biggest productivity kicker may be the AI-powered data quality assistant, which analyzes datasets and proposes validation rules based on their profile. Instead of manually crafting checks, teams can now cover far more scenarios while spending far less time building logic.

Qlik didn’t stop at cleanup tools. The release includes agentic, sprint-style remediation workflows that bring domain experts, analytics leaders, and data stewards together. Rather than funneling issues through endless tickets, teams can collaborate in real time to validate fixes, raise trust, and accelerate delivery.

“Customers want flexibility. If your best data is stuck in one tool, it becomes a bottleneck,” said Drew Clarke, EVP of Product & Technology at Qlik. He emphasized that standards-based APIs reduce friction across the stack, while AI-driven stewardship “removes repetitive tasks and helps teams deliver trusted outcomes faster.”

Eva Chrona, CEO of Climber, put it more bluntly: “Qlik has turned stewardship into a team sport.” Her team has already seen time savings from auto-describe and AI-generated quality checks, and she expects AI-guided workflows to deepen that impact.

Qlik says the new Data Product APIs are available today. Auto-describe and the DQ Rule Assistant are rolling out, and an early access program for enhanced data stewardship features is open now. The move puts Qlik in a strong position as enterprises push for unified, governed data that can move across tools without losing trust—or time.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Skybeam, Simulmedia’s self-serve TV advertising platform, just made one of the industry’s most stubborn barriers disappear. The company launched Traditional TV Advertising inside its platform, allowing users to run broadcast and cable campaigns alongside streaming—without the old maze of rate cards, ad reps, and minimum budget requirements.

The move brings digital-style simplicity to linear TV, a channel that still commands significant attention. More than 40% of U.S. viewers continue to watch traditional television, especially for local news, primetime entertainment, and live sports. Yet smaller advertisers have rarely been able to tap into that audience because linear TV has long favored large brands with deep pockets and specialized teams.

A Unified Path to Streaming and Linear

Skybeam now positions itself as the first self-serve platform to merge Streaming + Traditional TV buying in one workflow. Users simply pick their market, set a schedule, define a budget, and upload a spot. The platform then handles planning, placement, and optimization—tasks that previously required expertise or expensive intermediaries.

The update leverages Simulmedia’s 15 years of national TV buying experience, turning what used to be a complex transaction into a straightforward campaign setup. For many local advertisers, that shift could unlock audiences they’ve never been able to reach.

Closing the Accessibility Gap

Until now, traditional TV buying created four persistent hurdles:

• Complex negotiations with reps and opaque rate structures

• High entry budgets that sidelined local players

• Limited expertise to plan and optimize linear campaigns

• Fragmentation between streaming and linear buying tools

Skybeam’s streamlined experience removes these friction points and gives local businesses real access to premium TV inventory. It also helps agencies consolidate workflows that previously required juggling multiple vendors.

A Level Playing Field for TV

Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan described the launch as an overdue shift. “For years, access to traditional TV advertising was limited to large brands with big budgets,” he said. Skybeam now extends that reach to smaller businesses “with the same power and precision we’ve provided national advertisers for over a decade.”

For advertisers still chasing trust and high engagement, traditional TV remains hard to beat. The channel continues to hold some of the most attentive audiences in U.S. media. Skybeam’s update brings that value within reach of local brands that have long viewed TV as off-limits.

The platform is available now. Users can sign up, set up a campaign, and get their brand on-air in the same market as major national advertisers—no negotiations, no contracts, and no steep buy-ins.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

FICO is pushing credit scoring into new territory. The analytics giant revealed a strategic partnership with Plaid to introduce the next generation of the cash flow–enhanced UltraFICO Score, designed to give lenders deeper, real-time insight into consumer financial health. Instead of relying solely on traditional credit metrics, lenders can now tap live transaction data to make faster, sharper, and more inclusive decisions.

The move builds on FICO’s earlier UltraFICO Score, but this version raises the stakes. Plaid’s infrastructure connects to more than 12,000 financial institutions and processes nearly one million secure financial connections every day. By merging that reach with the reliability of the FICO Score—still used by 90% of top U.S. lenders—the two companies aim to deliver a unified score that strengthens risk assessment without adding operational drag.

Cash Flow Intelligence Becomes a Core Credit Signal

The enhanced UltraFICO Score analyzes inflows and outflows across checking, savings, and money market accounts. This gives lenders real-time visibility into stability, spending behavior, and liquidity—critical factors for understanding credit readiness, especially among consumers who fall outside traditional scoring models.

FICO’s vice president and general manager of B2B Scores, Julie May, highlighted the market’s demand for broader credit perspectives. She said the partnership represents nearly a year of work focused on creating “the foundation for more comprehensive lending decisions.” The collaboration marks a shift toward more responsible and inclusive scoring at a time when lenders are eager to expand access without compromising precision.

Easier Integration, Faster Adoption

The updated UltraFICO Score will be distributed through Plaid’s Consumer Reporting Agency, Plaid Check, which streamlines onboarding for lenders. The companies say the model aligns with the flagship FICO Score, allowing institutions to adopt cash-flow-enhanced scoring without lengthy testing or risk-model overhauls.

Lenders also gain universal compatibility, so they can use the enhanced model alongside the traditional FICO Score in any channel. This flexibility reduces friction and clears the path for faster implementation across underwriting workflows.

A Step Toward Smarter, More Inclusive Lending

Plaid’s head of partnerships, Adam Yoxtheimer, emphasized the rising importance of real-time financial data. He noted that high-quality cash flow visibility is becoming essential for lenders looking to capture a fuller picture of consumer credit readiness. The combined score gives institutions stronger risk signals while offering borrowers more ways to demonstrate financial strength.

With banks under pressure to innovate, modernize underwriting, and reach underserved markets, this partnership positions FICO and Plaid at the center of a major shift. The next-generation UltraFICO Score aims to make lending both smarter and fairer—without complicating the systems lenders rely on.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

VERB Products, the salon-quality haircare brand known for one accessible price point across its lineup, has selected Listrak as its unified cross-channel marketing partner. The move aims to boost e-commerce performance and deepen customer engagement through a single AI-powered platform for email, SMS, and web personalization.

The partnership has already delivered early wins. VERB reports a 300% year-over-year increase in automations and a 30% lift in SMS conversions since integrating Listrak’s tools. The gains reflect a broader shift among beauty brands toward data-driven personalization, where seamless communication across channels is now table stakes for growth.

AI-Driven Personalization at Scale

Listrak’s platform brings data, identity resolution, and predictive intelligence under one roof. VERB now uses the system to power hyper-personalized experiences across email campaigns, SMS flows, and on-site interactions. That includes predictive product recommendations and dynamic content tailored to individual customer behavior.

The brand also collaborates closely with Listrak’s beauty industry specialists, using benchmarks and trend insights to sharpen campaign execution. This mix of platform automation and expert guidance helps VERB scale personalization without adding operational burden.

Nicole Johnson, VERB’s Digital Marketing Director, said the mission is simple: help customers feel confident while discovering products that fit their unique style. She emphasized the value of having both an integrated platform and a hands-on partner to deepen retention and CRM strategy.

A Collaborative Push Toward Loyalty

Listrak’s CRO, Jamie Elden, noted that VERB’s focus on individuality extends from its diverse product range to its online shopping experience. The company’s role is to elevate those journeys with smarter targeting and more cohesive messaging across touchpoints. As beauty e-commerce gets increasingly competitive, consistent personalization becomes a key differentiator for loyalty.

Fueling Growth With Creative Digital Campaigns

VERB’s momentum also stems from inventive digital campaigns that reinforce brand identity. One example is Ghost Month, an October-long interactive experience celebrating the brand’s cult-favorite Ghost Oil and the wider Ghost collection. The series blends storytelling, product education, and playful digital engagement—an approach Listrak’s tech now helps amplify.

As the holidays approach, VERB plans to roll out high-intent campaigns including Black Friday promotions and its annual December Mystery Box event. With Listrak’s automation and predictive targeting in place, the brand is positioned to drive stronger conversions during peak shopping season.

VERB’s partnership with Listrak signals a broader trend: beauty brands leaning into unified automation platforms that merge intelligence, creativity, and cross-channel execution. With early results already hitting triple-digit lifts, VERB appears set to scale faster while keeping personalization at the center of every customer interaction.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

MarketFully, the company positioning itself as the global leader in In Content Marketing, is launching its first-ever InContent Marketing Summit—InContent 2025—a virtual event designed to examine how AI-driven disruption is reshaping multilingual SEO, global discoverability, and the role of cultural intelligence in content performance.

Scheduled for December 4 at 11:00 a.m. ET, the free, executive-level session will bring together senior marketing leaders across industries seeking to improve localization outcomes, strengthen search visibility in global markets, and build scalable, culturally aligned content operations that still protect brand integrity.

A New Framework: InContent Marketing

The discussion, moderated by MarketFully CEO Evan Kramer, will introduce InContent Marketing, an inbound-driven multilingual content strategy that blends in-market expertise, linguistic accuracy, and cultural relevancy. The approach is designed to address long-standing friction in global content programs—particularly the gap between localization practices and marketing KPIs.

Kramer will be joined by multilingual marketing and content strategy experts who specialize in crafting culturally resonant content that drives measurable outcomes. Together, the panel aims to break down how AI, content workflows, and cultural intelligence intersect to deliver sustainable performance across regions.

Key Challenges CMOs Are Facing

The session will explore the pain points leaders are grappling with today, including:

• Weak visibility in multilingual SEO and AI-powered search

• Localization processes disconnected from core marketing metrics

• A shortage of authentic, reliable local content creators

• Misalignment between global headquarters and regional teams

• The ongoing struggle to convert localization spend into revenue impact

Panelists will also outline strategies for operationalizing brand governance in every market, implementing scalable workflows, and transforming localization into an ROI-positive function rather than a cost center.

High Stakes for Global Brands

"CMOs and marketers today face a tall order: They must scale content efficiently across markets without losing relevance or performance," said Kajetan Malinowski, VP of Product Management at MarketFully. He added that proving the ROI of multilingual content has become increasingly difficult, especially as brands face rising pressure to engage multicultural audiences both in the U.S. and globally. InContent 2025 aims to surface practical solutions and frameworks for teams navigating these complexities.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.