• AI visibility

Guide · AI search

How do you sell procurement software to buyers who run RFPs for a living?

With evidence they can verify, placed where their research starts, because AI answers increasingly shape which tools reach the longlist that a formal request for proposal (RFP) then tests. Procurement teams are among the most disciplined software buyers there are, and in one 2025 survey every organization reported using AI in procurement. That combination rewards source-to-pay, spend and supplier management vendors whose claims are documented by others, and quietly excludes vendors who rely on their own marketing.

By Underneath Team Guide Updated

The short version

  1. The field is crowded: The Hackett Group’s (opens in a new tab) fall 2026 assessment covers 122 procurement technology vendors across 16 source-to-pay categories.
  2. Procurement buyers already use AI: in ProcureAbility and ProcureCon’s 2025 survey, every organization reported some AI in procurement, and 72% rated their AI maturity “moderate.”
  3. Many are open to switching: 36% of the same respondents were not satisfied with their AI-powered supplier selection and risk tools, and procure-to-pay automation had a 19% dissatisfaction rate.
  4. The stakes are large: 64% of the companies surveyed manage $250 million or more in spend, and 34% more than $1 billion.
  5. Budgets are tight: the Hackett Group’s 2025 study (opens in a new tab) found procurement workloads rising 9.8% while staffing and budgets rose only 1%, so every purchase must prove its return.

Who buys procurement software, and what makes them different?

Procurement leaders buy it, and they are professional evaluators who apply their own methods to your sale.

The buyers are senior and control large budgets. In the ProcureAbility and ProcureCon survey, respondents worked in procurement (35%), supply chain (41%) and risk management (24%), and 18% sat in the C-suite. Most of their companies (64%) had $250 million or more in spend under management. ProcureAbility sells procurement services, so it has an interest in the topic.

Their method is the RFP. The Hackett Group’s SolutionMap (opens in a new tab) shows how formal procurement technology selection has become: it scores vendors against more than 500 functional and capability assessments, with mandatory demos and verified customer ratings, to help buyers “shortlist options faster, de-risk selections, and separate real capability from marketing narrative.” Hackett sells this assessment, but the description shows what buyers expect.

They also shape everyone else’s software purchases. Forrester’s 2026 study of business buying (opens in a new tab) found procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles. A procurement leader who uses AI to vet vendors for their company will use it to vet you, we infer.

The pressure on them is to do more with less. The Hackett Group’s 2025 study found workloads expected to rise 9.8% with staffing and budgets up only 1%. Generative AI entered their list of top 10 improvement initiatives for the first time, alongside spend analytics, contract management and third-party risk.

Where does AI search sit in procurement technology buying?

Before the RFP: in the research that frames the problem and builds the longlist. No public study measures this for procurement teams alone.

Procurement teams are heavy AI users at work. The ProcureAbility and ProcureCon survey found all surveyed organizations reported some AI implementation in procurement, with maturity “moderate” at 72%, “early” at 22% and “advanced” at only 6%. A University of Mannheim and Institute for Supply Management study (opens in a new tab) found 80 percent of organizations still in exploration or pilot phase. Teams that are actively piloting AI tools, we infer, are also comfortable asking AI assistants about the market.

The wider software market already leans that way. When the review platform G2 (opens in a new tab) polled 1,076 software buyers in March 2026, 51% said they start research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google. That sample spans every kind of software purchase, not source-to-pay tools, and G2 sells visibility to software vendors.

A procurement lead who types a category query into Google will usually meet an AI answer first. Across the 1,248 US searches in our study, B2B software and technology keywords triggered an AI Overview, Google’s AI summary above the regular results, on 96.0% of searches.

The formal process still matters. An assistant does not run the RFP. But Gartner Digital Markets, surveying 3,500 software buyers across industries, found the initial informal list is “the list that 81% of buyers end up making a purchase from most or all of the time.” If AI research shapes that list, it shapes the RFP.

Which questions do procurement teams ask AI assistants?

Questions that sound like an RFP: scope, fit, total cost, risk and replacement. We wrote the sample prompts below to show how a sourcing or procurement technology lead might phrase them; none were collected from real buyers.

Buying stageIllustrative prompt
Scope“Should a $2 billion manufacturer buy a full source-to-pay suite or best-of-breed tools?”
Category“What are the leading intake-to-procure tools for a company on SAP S/4HANA?”
Replacement“Alternatives to Coupa for a mid-market company with a small procurement team?”
Comparison“Ivalua or GEP for direct materials sourcing in automotive?”
Total cost“What does a supplier risk management platform cost per year for 5,000 suppliers?”
Risk and compliance“Which spend management tools have SOC 2 Type II and EU data residency?”
Proof“What savings have companies reported after moving to an e-sourcing platform?”

Price questions deserve care. When we checked the prices four assistants quoted for 45 software products, only 61.9% of plan prices fully matched the vendor’s own pricing page. Procurement buyers, of all people, will notice a wrong number.

A single question about e-sourcing tools rarely stays single. Behind an AI Overview or AI Mode answer, Google may use a “query fan-out” technique (opens in a new tab), and behind a ChatGPT answer about spend software, OpenAI’s search rewrites the question (opens in a new tab) into targeted queries. In our hidden-searches study, ChatGPT ran a search comparing options in 33.8% of its answers and one aimed at a platform or directory in 31.2%. For procurement software, we infer, those searches would reach analyst assessments, review sites and procurement media.

How does AI visibility turn into procurement software revenue?

Through the longlist that feeds the RFP, then through expansion across source-to-pay modules.

The path, as we read the evidence:

  1. A chief procurement officer or procurement technology lead asks an assistant to frame options, often months before an RFP.
  2. The answer names vendors and cites sources: analyst assessments, review platforms, trade media.
  3. The team checks those names against advisors, peers and assessments such as SolutionMap.
  4. Shortlisted vendors get the RFP, scripted demos and reference calls.
  5. The winner signs a multi-year contract and, if it performs, adds modules.

Expansion is where the value grows. SolutionMap spans 16 source-to-pay categories, from sourcing and contracts to invoices and supplier management. A vendor that wins one category, such as spend analytics or intake, has a path to others. No public filing we found breaks out contract values for procurement software, so we do not estimate them.

Dissatisfaction creates openings. In the ProcureAbility and ProcureCon survey, procure-to-pay automation and automated contract management had low “very satisfied” ratings of 31% and 30%, with dissatisfaction rates of 19% and 11%. Teams unhappy with a tool tend to ask what else exists, which is exactly the alternatives question an assistant answers, we infer.

Expect the effect to show up as RFP invitations, not tracked clicks; our guide on what lost clicks mean for pipeline shows how to connect AI visibility to procurement deals.

Why does an assistant list one source-to-pay vendor and not another?

No platform documents how it chooses; studies point to independent sources, which professional buyers also trust most.

Documented by the platforms. Ask Google or ChatGPT about sourcing suites and, by their own documentation, each searches first and links the pages it drew on. Neither explains how one spend management or sourcing vendor gets picked over its rivals.

Observed in studies. Looking at US software questions, Chen and colleagues (opens in a new tab) found that AI search drew 72.7% of its sources from earned media, that is, reviews and articles written by others, against 45.4% for Google, whose results leaned more on vendor sites. Software answers are also relatively stable: in our consistency study, B2B software had the most stable brands of any industry, with an average overlap of 0.708 across repeated runs.

What procurement buyers weigh. The ProcureAbility and ProcureCon survey shows what slows their technology decisions:

Barrier to procurement technologyShare rating it a top barrier
Budget limitations49%
Strategic misalignment49%
Security and compliance44%
Technical challenges26%
Human capital, such as digital literacy22%

So a vendor needs a business case that survives finance, and security proof that survives IT.

Our inference. Procurement buyers check claims against independent assessments and references. Assistants appear to lean on the same kind of sources. A reasonable expectation is that vendors with public, specific, third-party proof give both readers more to work with. No study has tested this for procurement software.

What does it cost a procurement software vendor to be missing?

Lost places on longlists, in a market where formal evaluations exclude latecomers. No study has yet priced that loss for source-to-pay vendors.

  • A crowded field. With 122 vendors in one assessment, an assistant naming a handful leaves most out. We infer that a vendor missing from AI answers depends more on advisors and paid channels to get invited.
  • Long contracts. Source-to-pay platforms run for years. A vendor missed in one selection may wait for the next renewal, we infer.
  • Narrow AI claims. With 36% of buyers unhappy with AI-powered supplier selection tools, a vendor whose AI capability is misdescribed in AI answers may be ruled out on the very point buyers care about.
  • Wrong facts. Wrong prices or features in AI answers cost credibility with buyers trained to spot them. Our guide to fixing wrong brand information in AI answers covers how to correct a misquoted price or module.

What can a source-to-pay vendor do to show up in AI answers?

Make your savings, security and integration proof easy for assistants to find and repeat; nobody can guarantee a recommendation.

For a procurement software vendor, generative engine optimization (GEO), earning accurate mentions in AI answers, comes down to six areas:

  1. One clear identity. State which source-to-pay categories you cover, for which company sizes and spend types, and which systems you integrate with, the same way everywhere.
  2. Proof in public. Publish customer results with numbers, such as savings, cycle time and spend under management, plus security certifications on plain web pages.
  3. Independent assessments and coverage. Take part in analyst and advisor evaluations, earn coverage in procurement media and speak at industry events. Assistants search for evaluations like these by name. Our piece on how brands build authority for AI search explains how that coverage is earned.
  4. Reviews and references. Detailed reviews from real customers on platforms buyers use, and reference stories that name the problem solved.
  5. Content for RFP-style questions. Honest pages on suite versus best-of-breed, total cost, implementation time and replacement. Third-party lists matter more than your own, as we explain in which pages to target.
  6. Measurement across assistants. Put the same RFP-style questions to ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude more than once, and log which procurement vendors each one names.

Procurement tools are one corner of enterprise software; the broader picture is in how B2B SaaS companies earn revenue from AI search. Contract and legal tools sold to lawyers face their own checks, covered in how legal software wins law firms through AI.

What don’t we know yet about AI search in procurement software buying?

Nobody has yet measured whether appearing in AI answers wins source-to-pay contracts.

  • No study of procurement buyers’ AI research habits. The surveys measure AI use inside procurement work, not AI use to choose procurement software.
  • Interested sources. ProcureAbility and Hackett sell procurement services and assessments; G2 sells review visibility.
  • No public contract values. We found no public data on typical procurement software deal sizes.
  • Little proof on sales outcomes. When Martinez (opens in a new tab) reviewed 45 studies of AI search optimization, traffic and conversions were the least supported area, a gap that matters for vendors judged on signed contracts.

How can a procurement software vendor see where it stands before the next RFP cycle?

Put the questions procurement leaders ask before an RFP to AI assistants, and record which vendors get named.

Cover scope, category, replacement, total cost, security and proof. Ask each question more than once in each major assistant, because the vendor list can shift between runs. Record which vendors appear, which sources are cited, and whether your source-to-pay categories, prices and customer results come through accurately. Where you are absent, the cause is usually thin independent proof: assessments, reviews and references written by others.

To get that picture without building it in-house, ask us to review your RFP-stage visibility. We will map which longlists AI answers put you on or leave you off, and which missing proof most likely costs you RFP invitations. That follow-on work, from publishing customer results and security proof to tracking the questions procurement leaders ask, is laid out on our generative engine optimization service page.

Frequently asked questions

Do procurement teams trust AI answers when choosing software?

They use AI widely but verify. Every organization in the ProcureAbility survey reported some AI use, and Hackett’s assessment exists to separate “real capability from marketing narrative.”

Does a formal RFP make AI visibility irrelevant?

No. The RFP tests a list made earlier, and 81% of software buyers in a Gartner Digital Markets survey usually buy from their initial list.

Should procurement software vendors publish prices?

At least ranges and cost drivers. Only 61.9% of software prices AI assistants quoted in our study were fully faithful, so publish facts to quote.

Which procurement categories are most open to new vendors?

Where satisfaction is lowest: 36% were not satisfied with AI-powered supplier selection and risk tools in the ProcureAbility survey.

How long before GEO affects procurement software pipeline?

Expect quarters. Selections pass through RFPs, demos and references, and budgets are tight, with staffing and budgets up only 1% in Hackett’s 2025 study.

Sources

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