Elevate+ Zurich 2026: Best-of-breed night

We kicked off Elevate+ Zurich on the shores of Lake Zurich, welcoming 120+ procurement leaders, customers, and partners for an evening dedicated to how people, technology, and decision-making evolve when AI agents do the work.

The evening brought together some of the sharpest voices in the field for four conversations before dinner, drinks and new connections.

Designing dsm-firmenich's procurement landscape

Andrea Sordi, SVP Global Indirect Procurement at dsm-firmenich, opened with a clear-eyed view of procurement's digital evolution: from rigid digital suites, to a complex portfolio of SaaS solutions, to where we're heading now, a best-of-breed architecture centered on a core agentic orchestration platform. He walked through how dsm-firmenich has designed its source-to-pay landscape around task-specific engines and agents that connect rather than consolidate.

His closing message resonated with the evening's theme: it's not about the technology, it's about the choices made around it. Design your process future-back from real business pain points, choose the architecture that fits your context rather than chasing a tool, run parallel pilots and scale the winners quickly, and remember that orchestration connects workflows, not functional domains, while amplifying human potential and demanding new skills.

Navigating volatility with Xeneta

Patrik Berglund, CEO and Co-Founder of Xeneta, took the room through the structural forces reshaping global freight. Against a backdrop of a decade of shocks, from COVID and the Suez blockage to Red Sea disruption, tariffs, and typhoons, he laid out the three problems Xeneta set out to solve: no transparency, with shippers negotiating blind; price volatility driven by supply and demand shocks; and a lack of trust, as carriers push surcharges when rates spike and shippers walk from contracts when they fall.

He showed how market structure compounds this, with the top ten carriers now controlling around 85% of capacity, and made a striking point with the data: large volumes don't automatically guarantee the best prices. Patrik closed on what Archlet and Xeneta deliver together, with live ocean benchmarks already inside Archlet today, and more on the way, from peer rate comparison and forecasting to surcharge evaluation and spot-versus-long-term visibility.

What would you let AI decide? with SpendHQ and The Adecco Group

SpendHQ's Chief Product Officer Pierre Laprée joined Alexander Pilsl, VP Procurement Strategy at The Adecco Group, for a fireside chat on navigating AI in procurement together. Their conversation distilled into four principles. Connect, don't consolidate: build a connected operating model rather than a collection of tools. Pick the right AI for the job: the right kind of AI depends on the work and the decision it supports.

The third and fourth principles cut to the heart of the agentic question. Autonomy is earned, not switched on, decided per decision rather than granted wholesale. And if you can't see the outcome, it doesn't count, focus AI where it moves business outcomes, not just process efficiency. Connect, control, earn, impact: a memorable framework for deciding what to actually hand to AI.

When AI moves faster than the organization with Bayer

Diana Herold, Procurement Strategy and Transformation Director at Bayer, closed the evening with its most human argument. People are adapting to AI faster than their organizations: 70% of people feel personally ready to use AI, but only 27% of leaders believe their organization is ready for the shifts required. The constraint isn't the technology, it's competing priorities across silos, slow decisions, and the difficulty of moving skills and capacity to the work that matters.

Her answer was a way of working built on three behaviors, align around one shared outcome, decide with authority close to the work, and act by moving capacity in 90-day cycles. She brought it to life with Bayer's Dynamic Shared Ownership model and a procurement hackathon that went from idea to a global build day with 150+ onsite and 1,000+ online participants in six weeks. Her parting challenge: don't wait for your organization to be redesigned. Start with one outcome, and follow it for the next 90 days.

An evening on the lake

Setting the tone for the full-day event to follow, guests enjoyed flying dinner and drinks while meeting or reconnecting with peers.

What's next at Archlet

Elevate is more than just an event — it's a conversation shaping the future of sourcing and procurement. With events happening across Europe and the U.S., each gathering brings fresh insights, new perspectives, and meaningful connections.

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