Vodafone's VP&C rolled out AVA, an AI-driven sourcing and procurement platform, across global operations, handling about 600 sourcing projects and €3 billion in competitive sourcing since its deployment in early 2025.

Change management was central to AVA’s success, with category managers involved in design, weekly progress and adoption reviews, NPS tracking, and a structured change-request system that generated 380 user requests in six months.

Operational speed improved markedly: sourcing cycle times nearly halved, contracting time fell by 43%, and supplier onboarding plus risk assessment dropped from seven days to two, contributing to a 56% faster overall delivery cycle.

AVA’s development used a co‑development model with a specialist startup, keeping ownership of IP and enabling rapid iteration and governance distinct from traditional integrator-led approaches.

Key AI procurement lessons: scale requires purpose-built architecture, practitioner co-development boosts adoption, independent validation strengthens credibility, and aligning procurement with technology strategy can transform procurement into a strategic capability.

Independent verification showed outcomes: AVA delivered 15% additional savings above projections in year one, with all new sourcing events run through AVA and engagement of more than 10,000 suppliers globally.

The two-year plan targets further cut manual effort by about 30%, boost speed by 40%, and achieve an additional 15% savings from GenAI across IT, corporate services, networks, and commercial services.

AVA’s architecture is open and interoperable, supporting the full sourcing-to-pay cycle and integrating with ERP systems like SAP S/4HANA and Ariba, with 40+ AI use cases in development or live and a roadmap of 200+ potential use cases.

Deployment across Vodafone extended AVA to over 9,000 purchasing users and roughly 90,500 annual purchase orders, signaling that procurement is becoming a platform-centric function.