What We Heard at DPW Amsterdam 2026: The Questions Procurement Leaders Asked Most

At DPW Amsterdam 2026, we heard the same terms across the floor: agents, autonomy, AI-native. More than one visitor told us every vendor was starting to sound the same. At our Glass House, we let the work speak instead. We had just announced five autonomous workflows that Ranger, Levelpath's autonomous procurement platform, runs end to end, and for two days we ran them live, one request at a time.

Our team ran more than 400 live demos during DPW. When people asked what makes Levelpath's Ranger different, Stan Garber, our Co-Founder and President, usually answered with a question of his own: "Can I show you?" Visitors came back for second looks, including one who returned on day two after touring the other booths to tell us Ranger felt really different, and several brought their teammates. Many arrived already familiar with Ranger's features from our bite-sized demo videos, so conversations could start with their own workflows.

Thank you to the entire DPW team for another outstanding event, and to everyone who visited us at our Glass House.

AI Is No Longer the Story. Execution Is.

DPW Amsterdam 2026 ran September 30 to October 1 at RAI Amsterdam under the theme Recode, a call to redesign how procurement and supply chains work. The procurement leaders we met had moved past asking whether AI belongs in procurement. They wanted to know which work AI can run today, and how much of that work it can run on its own.

That focus marks a shift from last year, when AI agents for procurement shaped the conversation at DPW Amsterdam. The conversations at our booth skewed senior, from chief procurement officers to heads of procurement operations, sourcing, and digitalization. They were not looking for another assistant. They were looking for workflows that run from request to result.

The Questions Procurement Leaders Asked Most at DPW Amsterdam 2026

Our team logged notes from conversations at the booth and over dinner. Sourcing came up most often, followed closely by questions about working alongside legacy systems, and about how easy Ranger is to build on. Here are the questions we heard most, and how we answered them.

Can Ranger run a sourcing event on its own?

Yes, from the first request to an award recommendation. A stakeholder describes what they need, and Ranger builds the questionnaire, pricing sheet, and weighted scorecard, invites suppliers, and scores every bid with a written explanation of each score. The sourcing manager makes the final award decision. Sourcing interest came from both directions at the booth: teams with no sourcing tool yet, and teams already running events who wanted something simpler to operate. Watch Ranger build a full sourcing event.

Do we have to replace SAP, Ariba, or Coupa to use Ranger?

No. Several teams we met run SAP, Ariba, Coupa, or another suite today, and they wanted Ranger to work alongside it. Levelpath integrates with ERPs including SAP, Oracle Fusion, and Workday, offers prebuilt connectors for platforms such as Coupa and Oracle Fusion, and provides an open API and webhooks for other systems. With the Coupa connector, a purchase request submitted in Levelpath goes straight into Coupa for approval, so approvals stay exactly where they are. See the Coupa connector in action, or read more about Levelpath integrations.

How hard is Ranger to build on and administer?

Ranger is configured in plain language. Describe a workflow, and Ranger builds the steps, approvals, and owners from one prompt. Describe the outcome you want from an agent, and Ranger builds it with the right tools and instructions, with no engineering skills required. When one team asked about ease of administration at the booth, we built a workflow and created a dashboard from an uploaded image on the spot. See how to build a workflow from one prompt and build a dashboard from an image.

Should we build our own agents with general-purpose AI instead?

Several teams we met are already experimenting with general-purpose AI assistants, and one asked us for build versus buy material on the spot. The difference with Ranger is everything around the agent. Ranger agents act with your organization's context, from policies and playbooks to approval thresholds, each one is tested before changes ship, and every action is logged and attributed. Teams can build their own Ranger agents in plain language, and teams that prefer their own assistant can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to Levelpath through MCP. See Levelpath and MCP in action.

Can intake be self-service for routine requests?

Yes. One team told us they want the business to self-serve requests below a set value so procurement can focus on high-value work, and intake came up in several other conversations. In the AI Front Door, a requester can drop in a quote, contract, or invoice, and Ranger builds the request: it reads the document, picks the right workflow, and fills in the supplier, value, dates, and scope. It answers policy questions for each requester's team and routes requests to third-party risk, legal, security, and finance based on threshold, risk, and policy. See intake in 20 seconds.

How do we prove value before we commit?

Start with a proof of value on your own documents and workflows. New customers can complete a proof of value or a proof of concept before deploying, and Ranger is offered to existing Levelpath customers at no additional cost. More than one team we met wants to start with contracts: load a set of agreements and ask questions across all of them with Contract Discovery, which reads each contract and shows the evidence in the document. Watch 1,000 contracts answer one question.

Why We Rebuilt Levelpath for Autonomous Procurement

Once people watched Ranger run a workflow on its own, the next question was usually why we rebuilt Levelpath. We built Levelpath three years ago with AI at the core, and it worked well. As agents began doing real jobs, we saw that autonomy needs a platform designed for it from the ground up, so we began to rebuild Levelpath around that idea. The result is Ranger, the first AI platform built for autonomous procurement.

How Ranger Gives Procurement Teams Their Time Back

Ranger gives procurement teams their time back for negotiation, supplier relationships, and complex deals. That is the part of the job people were hired to do, and the part that moves results for the business. For decades, procurement software recorded the work and waited for people to do it. Ranger does the work itself, taking on the routing, the copying, the chasing, and the status checks that fill a procurement team's week.

These are the five autonomous workflows we announced on DPW's opening day and ran live at the booth:

• Sourcing events built from a single request. A stakeholder describes what they need, and Ranger builds the questionnaire, pricing sheet, weighted scorecard, and supplier invitations. As bids arrive, Ranger scores each one and recommends an award, and the sourcing manager makes the final decision.
• Contract renewals that start on time. Ranger computes each contract's notice window and opens the renewal review 30 days before expiration, or earlier when a supplier's quarter end or a drop in usage creates leverage. It recommends one of four paths (renew as is, renegotiate, terminate, or take no action) with a scored rationale, and teams choose which paths need a person.
• Suppliers onboarded and ready to pay. Through a guided supplier onboarding experience, suppliers enter their own banking, tax ID, and contact details. Ranger validates the details, routes approvals by category, spend level, and business rules, and sends verified supplier records to accounts payable, ready for the first payment.
• Risk reviews that start themselves. When supplier data changes, Ranger rescores the supplier's third-party risk across financial, operational, compliance, and cybersecurity factors, explains each score against your risk framework, and creates an action plan that shows the team what to watch.
• Invoices matched, approved, and sent for payment. Ranger checks for duplicates and verifies each invoice against the supplier, the contract, and the purchase order, flagging any purchase order that is burning too fast or nearing its limit. Clean invoices for low-dollar spend can be approved without a person and routed to payment through the ERP, such as NetSuite. Every exception needs a person to clear it, with a written reason and a full audit trail.

Ranger also handles continuous cleanup in the background, keeping supplier records, contract data, accruals, and contract burndown alerts current without anyone having to chase them.

Procurement teams set the autonomy ceiling for every workflow, which means they decide how much of each workflow Ranger runs on its own. Thresholds, approvals, and guardrails stay with the people who own the process, and every agent action is logged and attributed. An agent can say yes on a person's behalf, but it can never say no.

Executive Dinners Took the Conversation Beyond the Booth

Our DPW week began on the evening of Tuesday, September 29, with an executive dinner at Toet, where 16 procurement executives, from chief procurement officers to heads of sourcing, operations, and digital, joined Alex Yakubovich, our Co-Founder and CEO, and Stan Garber for an open conversation about where AI is taking the function. Several of them stopped by the Glass House during the show to see Ranger run for themselves, and over the next two nights our team kept the conversation going over smaller dinners with customers and procurement leaders across Amsterdam.

Back at the booth, there was a very busy claw machine. It drew a crowd at our Glass House for two days straight, and our onsite team enjoyed it as much as the attendees.

What Stuck With Us: Procurement Leaders Came Ready to Recode

Recode is the right word for what comes next. We believe the next decade will rewrite how procurement works, and we rebuilt Levelpath so our customers can be the ones writing it.

The energy in Amsterdam told us procurement leaders are ready. They came with real workflows in mind, and they left having seen workflows like theirs run on their own.

To see Ranger run sourcing, renewals, and invoices end to end, book a personalized demo. For the full story behind the rebuild, read our manifesto.

Tot ziens, Amsterdam. We will see you next year.