The Hackett Group® and Zycus Release the Inaugural "Agentic AI in Procurement Adoption Index - 2026", Establishing an Annual Benchmark for Source-to-Pay Transformation
A new annual benchmark helps CPOs quantify readiness, prioritize investments, set risk thresholds, and benchmark ROI
Princeton, NJ— [3rd February’26] — Zycus and The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading Gen AI consultancy and enterprise digital transformation firm, today announced the inaugural 2026 release of The Hackett Group® Agentic AI in Procurement Adoption Index – 2026, the first annual benchmark that tracks agentic AI adoption in procurement and the rapidly evolution of source-to-pay (S2P). Designed as a trusted, independent reference point for procurement executives, the Index measures industry progress and help organizations assess where they stand as the landscape evolves.
Agentic AI redefines S2P with clear leaders and laggards emerging. Many organizations are still forming a shared understanding of what agentic AI can do, what governance it requires, and which use cases deliver the highest returns. The new Index provides an evidence-based baseline to guide CPOs through what The Hackett Group® and Zycus describe as one of the most significant technology shifts the function has faced in a generation.
Why this Index matters to CPOs now
With Agentic AI moving from experimentation into the enterprise roadmap, procurement leaders face a common challenge: making high-stakes decisions without reliable benchmarks. The Index was created to close that gap — providing a consistent, year-over-year yardstick to evaluate readiness, manage deployment risk, and align stakeholders around a pragmatic adoption path.
“Agentic AI will not be optimized from isolated pilots or without strategic intent,” said Richard Gardner, Senior Director, Advisory Market Intelligence, The Hackett Group. “CPOs need a clear baseline and a trusted benchmark to prioritize where to start, how to govern risk, and how to invest for measurable outcomes. This Index is built to be that annual reference point.”
“Procurement leaders are seeking clarity: which architectures scale, where ROI appears first, and what risks must be managed,” said Aatish Dedhai, Founder & CEO, Zycus. “The Adoption Index brings structure and comparability to decisions that many teams are making for the first time.”
What the 2026 Index reveals
The inaugural Index surfaces clear signals about where procurement stands today — and where it’s heading:
- The Readiness Baseline: Only 60% of procurement executives are confident their teams understand Agentic AI capabilities — establishing a starting point for industry-wide maturity.
- The Architecture Direction: 65% say their end goal is orchestrated Agentic workflows, and they strongly prefer pre-built, interoperable agent sets that work together across the S2P ecosystem—even as many organizations start with task-specific agents.
- The ROI Priorities: The top expected return areas include spend analytics, PO processing, market/pricing intelligence, supplier onboarding, and contract management — highlighting where leaders anticipate early value.
- The Risk Map: The highest perceived implementation risks are fraud detection, autonomous negotiations, contract management, payables, and stakeholder management — emphasizing where governance and controls are essential.
- Tail spend gap: 86% are likely/very likely to use AI agents for low-risk tail spend negotiations, yet only 36% are satisfied with current tail spend management — becoming an early proving ground.
- The Investment Trajectory: Procurement organizations expect to allocate 12% of procurement technology budgets to Agentic AI within three years — underscoring urgency and the need for disciplined investment planning.
A practical benchmark procurement leaders can use immediately
Beyond insights, the Index is intended to support executive action: calibrating readiness, shaping an adoption roadmap, informing governance, and aligning procurement, finance, IT, and legal leadership on where to deploy autonomy — and where to keep tighter controls.
Access the report
About Zycus:
Zycus delivers procurement outcomes and not just transactions. Its leadership in Source-to-Pay is independently recognized by leading analysts, and customers worldwide.
By moving beyond Source-to-Pay to Intake-to-Outcomes, Zycus is defining the next generation of procurement. Its unified platform uniquely combines native Intake, Agentic AI, and an end-to-end S2P core in a single architecture.
The Merlin Agentic AI Platform brings this vision to life – guiding every request through Merlin Intake, unlocking hidden savings through Autonomous Negotiation, and continuously executing toward outcomes, not workflows.
About The Hackett Group
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is a Gen AI strategic consulting and digital transformation firm that enables Digital World Class® performance. Using Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™, AskHackett™ and Quantum Leap® platforms, the company’s experienced professionals and engineers help organizations realize the power of Gen AI from ideation through implementation to achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results with unprecedented speed, allowing it to be key architects of their Gen AI journey. The company’s expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from enterprise performance benchmarks from the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100. Visit us at www.thehackettgroup.com.
