Episode 9: The SaaSpocalypse Is Here — Why AI Breaks the Old Procurement Playbook (w/ Dr. Elouise Epstein, Kearney)

Your inbox is full of AI pitches, but your team is still living in email, spreadsheets, and an ERP that hasn't changed how work gets done. So what happens when the old SaaS playbook actually breaks?In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains, Andrew Stroup sits down with Dr. Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, author, and one of the sharpest critics of procurement technology. Elouise built the spider maps that became a public service for anyone navigating the procurement tech landscape. She's now retired them, and the reason why is the thesis of this episode.Elouise walks through her non-traditional path from the San Francisco Opera to a dot-com procurement startup to nearly 26 years at Kearney, why she felt compelled to call out the "conjoined triangle" of vendors, systems integrators, and analysts propping up a broken model, and what an AI-native procurement organization actually looks like when you stop thinking in suites and start thinking in outcomes.They get into:Why the spider maps are retired and what that says about the end of legacy SaaS categoriesThe vendor-SI-analyst feedback loop that produced inflated ROI cases and widespread implementation failureWhat Procurement 4.0 means in practice: outcome-based, not process-coded, built around AI platforms instead of monolith architecturesAI employees vs. agents vs. copilots, and why mid-market teams should think about renting AI labor instead of buying more transactional systemsHer advice to every leader: stop buying tech, do one-year renewals, learn AI yourself, and get on the bus or get out of the wayWhy governance in the AI era is a way of operating, not a policy document nobody readsThe people and culture gap that's wider than the technology gap, and why failure is the metric that matters mostHer message to younger professionals: believe in yourself, because nobody else is going to hype you upIf you're a mid-market supply chain or procurement leader caught between doing nothing and signing the next seven-figure suite contract, this conversation gives you a framework for what comes next.🔔 Subscribe to Leveraged Supply Chains for more real-world conversations on AI, supplier performance, and operational excellence.