Walk the floor of any major ProcureTech event right now and you will hear the same words from every vendor. Agentic AI. Intelligent orchestration. Autonomous procurement. The language has homogenised faster than the technology has differentiated. For enterprise buyers trying to evaluate platforms, it's genuinely hard. The pitch sounds identical.
For those that follow us, you'll know that we launch our new functionality at DPW. And this year was no exception. We went to DPW New York not just with something new, but something different. Not just a term. A demonstration.
We stepped on stage with Roche. The topic was "Beyond Efficiency to Procurement Value." So, if you were thinking that Axiom was just a catalog solution, then this is the update you need.:
Our journey and where it all started
In 2021, Roche had a broken catalog environment. Multiple supplier punchouts with different interfaces, no cross-catalog search, no pricing control, procurement teams drowning in admin. Buyers routing around the system entirely.
They scouted 65 solutions. None of them addressed the problem as it actually existed.
When the market cannot answer the question, you have to think differently.
So, they brought it to us. We started with a blank sheet and co-created something new. Launched at DPW Amsterdam in 2023. A completely new MarketPlace capability - reimagining a tired old legacy challenge that S2P systems haven't been able to solve for years. Putting Procurement 'up-front and centre', with unprecedented controls and never seen before levels of automation.
What came next has been a 5-year continued co-creation journey to full Tail Spend automation, through a number of integrated modules each addressing a real customer problem that nothing else was solving.
Where we are now
Four modules. Three audiences. One Platform. Across 35 countries. And achieving close to 90% automation across all transactions for our most mature clients.
Four Modules Explained:
MarketPlace handles catalog and content-based sourcing. Category agnostic. Products & Services. Agentic powered cross-catalog search, contract-aware pricing, basket optimisation. Governed by your policies and guiderails
MarketSource delivers end-to-end autonomous sourcing for the Tail. From a Request for Quotation when a buyer needs something that is not in catalog, to fully interactive, Axi agent led RFI, RFP and eAuction capabilities.
MarketMaterials surfaces inventory and material master data alongside catalog results. Stops duplicate purchases before they happen. A full range of functionality from master data creation to complete Inventory management.
MarketPay handles the tail of the tail. Payment orchestration for one-off orders and new suppliers. KYC and KYB completed in under five minutes. Full compliance. Deloitte-validated legal structure. The commercial relationship stays directly between the client and their supplier. Axiom never touches the funds.
Built to deliver an extraordinary buying experience, complete control, automate admin, unprecedented reporting and next-gen Insight to its three key audiences via the Buyer Portal, the Procurement Control Centre and the Supplier Content Hub.
This is not four tools stitched together. This is a single end-to-end Tail Spend automation solution. It's a beautifully connected & interacting ecosystem - intelligently built off the back of customer problems every time.
But it doesn't end there.
In New York, cutting through the general 'noise' around agents, we took to the stage with Roche and described a new future of Autonomic Sourcing - a procurement layer that listens to transactions, learns from buyer behaviours, adapts and executes - so your team doesn't have to.
What Autonomic Sourcing means
"The term Autonomic sourcing is reflective of something that we all experience every day. The autonomic nervous system in the body controls the rate we breathe, our heart rate, the amount we blink. We do it without thinking. That is exactly where we want to take the platform - so procurement does not have to worry about the data coming out of the platform. Let the platform analyse, understand, create insight, actions and outcomes."
Alistair Cane, Co-Founder, Axiom
Here's a sneak peek of how it works in four steps, as unveiled at DPW:
Step 1: Alert fires. The platform detects a price spike on a frequently ordered SKU. A "hex bolt" ordered at approximately 380 units a month has jumped +10.9% against its baseline, past the alert threshold. The system flags it instantaneously. No one had to notice it. No report needed to be run.
Step 2: Review evidence. The platform presents a 90-day price trend with the spike isolated. Baseline price: $49.10. Current price: $54.20. Annualised exposure: approximately $23,300. And critically, it tells you why: no commodity-index move explains this. Three qualified alternates list comparable items. A quick RFQ should re-anchor the price.
Step 3: The Platform nudges the Buyer to Launch RFQ, inviting three suppliers to quote on the SKU. The incumbent is included for a like-for-like comparison. Seven-day window. Sealed quotes. No manual outreach. No spreadsheet.
Step 4: Outcome. Alternative Supplier won RFQ #2204 at $49.10. Back to baseline. The incumbent matched on a 12-month agreement, locking the rate. Alternative Supplier added as supply contingency. Cost avoidance: $1,938. Price change: -9.4%. Measured over 30 days. Saved to contract record automatically.
This is not AI as a chatbot that answers questions. This is not Agents automating tasks. This is AI as a system that detects patterns, surfaces evidence, recommends action, executes, and records the outcome - without procurement having to go looking for any of it.
This is the future. This is Autonomic.