Start Me Up: MVK’s Guide to “Start Small, Fail Fast” with AI

The procurement technology market has exploded. What used to be a landscape dominated by two or three major players 15 years ago is now a crowded field of thousands of solutions, ranging from massive end-to-end suites to niche AI point solutions.

For procurement leaders, this creates a paralysis of choice. How do you build a tech stack that actually works? How do you avoid the “shiny object” trap?

In this week’s jam session on Proc & Roll, we sat down with Michael Van Keulen (MVK)—Chief Customer Officer at Green Cabbage and former CPO at Coupa, Lululemon, and VF Corporation—to get his masterclass on navigating the tech landscape.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• The Verdict: Platform vs. Point Solutions: MVK settles the debate with a hybrid approach. He argues that you absolutely need a core platform to act as your “single source of truth” for spend—trying to stitch together 10 different systems is madness. However, you should augment that core with “best of breed” apps for specific needs like risk or intake, rather than being a “prisoner” to one vendor.
• Stop Writing 500-Question RFPs: One of the biggest mistakes procurement makes is treating software like a commodity. MVK advises against massive RFPs that ask generic questions (“Can you do a PO?”). Instead, narrow your field to 2-3 vendors and ask them to solve a specific business problem in a demo.
• Don’t Let IT Select the Technology: This is a golden rule. While IT is a critical partner for security and integration, they should never lead the selection process. Their agenda is different from the business’s needs. Procurement must be in the driver’s seat, while bringing in stakeholders like Finance, Legal, and ESG early in the process.
• Solving Business Problems, Not Procurement Problems: When MVK was at Lululemon, he didn’t pitch a new system to “improve spend visibility.” He pitched a solution to help store managers run their stores better and improve customer experience. The lesson? Frame your tech investment around the business value (e.g., speed, risk, growth) to get executive buy-in.
• AI: The Great Enabler: The group predicts that AI will eventually automate 50% to 80% of tactical procurement work. Far from being a threat, this is the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for—allowing us to finally escape the “under-resourced and overworked” cycle and focus on strategic relationships.

Watch now or read the transcript below.

Transcript: Proc-N-Roll | Start Me Up: MVK’s Guide to “Start Small, Fail Fast” with AI

Zach: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to Proc and Roll. Today, we have a very special guest: Michael Van Keulen, known affectionately as MVK, the Chief Customer Officer at Green Cabbage and former CPO at Coupa. Michael, welcome aboard.

MVK: Thanks for having me. Let’s rock and roll.

Natasha: Let’s start with your observation of the last 15-20 years. Are we maturing? Is technology taking over? You’ve seen different shades and angles of everything, so what’s your state of the union assessment?

MVK: 10-15 years ago, there were only two or three options, like Ariba and Coupa. Now, especially after the pandemic catapulted procurement to the boardroom, the amount of investment and technology available is greater than we honestly need. We’ve seen investments from private equity and VCs like never before because procurement has become more relevant. What normally would have taken 10 years has happened in 24 months. Procurement has never been more relevant, and it’s up to us to drive value and remain at a competitive advantage.

Zach: What is the strategy then? Is it an integrated core system or point solutions? How do procurement functions navigate this proliferation of tech?

MVK: I fundamentally believe you need a platform—a single source of truth for your spend, no different than your ERP. You can’t run AP in one system, inventory in another, and your general ledger in a third. That’s crazy. But no platform does everything perfectly at the level a sophisticated function requires. So you need a core platform to bring spend together, augmented with applications that drive more value—whether that’s downstream, upstream, or around risk and ESG.

Zach: AI changes the game too, especially generative AI. It allows for designing workflows and integrating things yourself. Do you think we should stick with the LLMs provided in these tools or bring our own?

MVK: As a practitioner, you always want optionality. You don’t want to be a prisoner to your technology partner. I believe in bringing your own agents and LLMs and plugging them into your suite . We need to ensure we can trust the underlying data and understand how algorithms are governed and controlled, which is where we still have unanswered questions.

Natasha: How should companies select these solutions? I see companies buying systems way too big for them or systems that can’t scale with their growth objectives.

MVK: First, define what you are trying to solve for. Don’t run a massive RFP with 500 questions; it’s like buying a car and asking if it has four wheels. That often turns into a pricing exercise, which is not how you should buy technology. Second, think long-term: where is your company growing? What if you do five acquisitions in the next 18 months? Is the system single-tenant or multi-tenant? Third, selecting procurement technology is not a procurement project; it is a business project. Don’t let IT select the technology, or we are screwed, because they have a different agenda than business needs.

Natasha: I love that. Do not let IT choose, but do engage them. Who else needs to be brought on board?.

MVK: Legal, Finance, ESG, and Risk. Bring your head of ESG in to show how you can help execute their objectives faster. Bring in Risk to improve contract compliance and supplier onboarding . Ultimately, you need to go to the executive team because this impacts everybody.

Natasha: If not a 500-question RFP, what methods are available to select providers effectively without getting bogged down?

MVK: Go back to the business problem. At Lululemon, we had 12 different platforms for stores, poor visibility, and store managers managing budgets line-by-line in Excel. That wasn’t just a procurement problem; it was a business problem about customer experience, profitability, and health and safety. Once you define that business problem, you don’t need 20 suppliers. You narrow it down to three, call your friends for references, and ask vendors to solve that specific business case. I’ve never run an RFP with 20 companies in my entire career.

Zach: What about AI? Will it automate people out of their roles? How much of procurement will be automated?.

Natasha: I think everything that should be automated will be automated. Tail spend and low-value roles that don’t require deep subject matter expertise should not be touched by humans. But deep category knowledge, market expertise, and understanding enterprise processes will always require human thinking.

MVK: AI is probably going to take over 50% to 80% of what procurement is doing today. And that is great because every leader I talk to is overworked, under-resourced, and tired. This allows us to finally break that cycle, remove tactical non-value-added work, and focus on driving competitive edge—innovation, better lead times, and quality.

This transcript has been edited for clarity while maintaining all substantive content