About
Why Procurement Code exists
The function is changing, and most organisations don't yet have the operating model to match.
The founder
Procurement Code is led by James Belshaw. He has spent sixteen years in procurement, across some of the most demanding environments there are: the Ministry of Defence, Rolls-Royce, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Centrica and Primark. That span, from defence and aerospace to fast-moving retail, gave him a clear view of what good procurement looks like, and where the traditional operating model runs out of road.
The last decade is where his focus sharpened. Using an autonomous sourcing platform for the first time, he saw firsthand what new technology could do for a procurement team. He went on to rebuild a procurement operating model at scale, design a new functional strategy, and pioneer the use of agentic AI for spend analytics, taking intake and orchestration live across international markets and materially reducing supplier onboarding times. Across his career he has also led supply chain transformations and built procurement capability through global business services partnerships.
Crucially, he has worked with these tools at the coalface, not from a slide: autonomous sourcing with Keelvar, intake orchestration with Zip, and spend intelligence using enterprise knowledge graphs with Deducta. That hands-on experience is what lets him advise on technology honestly. He writes and speaks regularly on the future of procurement, with articles published through Proxima, ProcureTech and others, and CPO Strategy named him an AI and orchestration champion.
A note from James
I've spent my whole career in procurement, and I've never been more certain that the function is about to change for good. What's different now is that we finally have the means to take the mandate on, and to turn procurement into something far more valuable than it has been allowed to be. For me this was never about the technology. It's about giving procurement teams the room to do the work they're actually good at. That's what I want to help organisations unlock.