Ben Freeman on AI, Procurement and Scaling Omnea

Today I'm joined by Ben Freeman, co-founder and CEO of Omnia, the leading AI native intake and orchestration platform that helps companies like Spotify, Wise and the Adeca Group automate their procurement and supply management processes using AI. Ben founded Omnia in 2022 and has built the business into one of Europe's fastest growing technology companies. He's raised over $75 million from some of the best investors in the world including Axel, Kossler and Insight partners. Before building Omnia, Ben built cyber security business Tessian which raised over $130 million for the likes of Sequoia, SL and Bouldersen, before successful exit to proof point. Ben is a manchester and his early businesses began there and were not VC-Bat or tech companies. So without further ado let's get on with today's talent tools podcast. So thank you so much Ben for joining me on the show today, great to have you with me. Great to be here thanks for having me. So I'm really excited about today's episode because normally I have pure procurement practitioners come on the show talking about their procurement career and background. You come from a very different background and a very different story. So as someone that's never worked in procurement, how did you end up founding a procurement tech company? Yeah, so it's a good question and there is not there's probably an investor version of this answer that is very sort of shiny and it all fits together perfectly. But the truth is I'd been trying to start a business probably for maybe 18 months before I actually started Omnia and that phase for me was the hardest. I was very existential. I didn't know what to do. For me, what I don't know what to do at that's like the worst mindset to be in. And I'd had a good run building this company Tessian would raise lots of money. We were building, you know, dressing ourselves up for a pretty successful acquisition. And so the problem with that is I found fault with everything I looked at next and the sense, you know, I could find a floor with the market or the dynamic and it was actually my path to procurement. I can now connect the dots afterwards. But back in 2019, I became slightly obsessed with what was then price discrepancy and SaaS. So I used to see basically contractors have completely different prices depending on all these random factors. And I thought that was a problem worthy of solving. So I almost left Tessian at that point to build a new company. But I didn't because I couldn't really get behind the market. And I was still very excited by Tessians. I was torn. But for me, I realized back then I suppose three core things. One was that SaaS is just one category, you know, software spend fine. But there's all these other types of spend that matter just as much. So I realized there's no point building a point solution. I then realized actually procurement isn't just the money thing. Like, you know, how much you spend with the suppliers interesting. But so is kind of the risk and governance, you know, where's the data they say from secure? All of those other things you have to care about nowadays. And then finally, I realized it was kind of a horrors. It was a horizontal play. So you can't solve the thing for procurement. You have to solve it for legal finance, IT, the request, the exact everyone. And it's a collaborative space. And kind of what I realized that I realized actually, you needed a sort of connected system, a collaborative tool. I thought about it in a very different way. And that's what I realized how vast the opportunity could be. And I got excited behind it. At some point in that journey, sort of the year pre-omnia, I was frantically researching a few different markets actually. And I had investment offers for different things that really scuse me ahead because you've got optionality to do things. And you, you know, I didn't take them ultimately. It probably took me the best part of 300-ish user interviews. I was basically speaking to anyone, any procurement leader who would take a call of me, I was chatting to. I mentioned gathering and just understanding. Yeah, just reaching out. And I just realized there were so many obvious themes that came across that I realized, I could, this is it. This is the space. This is why. And actually, it all then connected in a really organic way, because I accidentally knew about it from building Tessian. Because we were an email security business. We sold to kind of mostly large enterprises, but really shiny customers, you know, most of the world's leading investment banks, raw firms, loads of tech companies, all use Tessian. So we had seen what you think would be procurement at its best. But it was totally shit. So I used to look and realize, well, you know, it was slowing down our business, which was painful. But these people on the other side of defense in those deals stood no chance. Because the general experience, which I knew so intimately and I only realized after, was basically, somebody in the business is like, yeah, I want to do this thing. Can we get it sorted? They throw it over the fence to procurement, who then have to, you know, rapidly do the sparring boarding. They're not in a position to negotiate because the supply has been told this or that. And it was just such a broken process. And the more you dig, the more you realize, well, they were destined to not have a great rep in this situation. Not only is the dynamic fraud. The tech is quite shit at all. So there were all these factors. So when you might, I could tell a story that makes it sound really kind of logical and you know, step by step. But actually it was a bit frantic at the start. And then once it clicked, I realized massive market could attract the right talent and money and you know, really build something that could be enduring and large. And that's what got me hyped by it. Yeah. So it tells you where we are today in 2025. Where's the business up to at the moment? So we are just over three and a half years old. We're about 150 people across London and New York. So just from like a scale perspective, we raised about $75 billion from Excel, Cozler and Insights. We've got a great cap table, like a good setup for the future. And we've been highly efficient actually, unlike a lot of our kind of venture-backed competitors who've liked to build on marketing and whatever. We don't really do that. So we're sort of in a spot where we punch well above our weight from a customer perspective. We work with lots of kind of every sector now, but you know, there's another bigger tech names. A sort of Spotify, Wise, Monzo all the way through to a traditional enterprise like a Deco, Albertsons, NetApp and so on. So we've got an array of customers. We're growing very quickly now, but trying to kind of keep that quality high and the density of that high. So we've got five X-revenue the past year or so. We're going through the Q4 as the busiest quarter of our year. So it's a super hectic time right now. But sort of scale wise, I'd say we're still like a, you know, small to mid-sized company. But this time next year we should look pretty at least three X larger. And so it's an exciting time, but not without its stress. I was also knowing that is rapid growth in three and a half years as a business. So how are you finding that? It's a CEO of this business that's growing, and legs that was growing everywhere in the new companies and also you've got harm lots of people. How are you? How are you finding that? Are you yourself personally keeping up to pace or what's the? Yeah, I think, I mean, how is it? It assures your life in a way that I expected and wanted. So that's not sort of a complaint. It's not my first business rights. My third company and my second venture backed one. So to an extent, I knew a lot of people talk about the chaos and the stress and everything goes wrong. It does, and that's true. But I kind of knew that and was up for that. And I think I kind of enjoyed that. I kind of thrive probably under that pressure. So I say, for me, I get my energy mostly around the people I'm working with, be that omelians, the people, you know, the employees as well, and our customers. So we've been very, very focused on like talent density, the relationships we've had a long-term perspective. So there are chaotic days and yeah, there's obviously stress with sort of hiring approximately a person a day right now. And I still interview everyone. So just from like a capacity standpoint, obviously you're stretched. But I think it's probably the most energizing it's been right now because there's so many people smashing an omnia, you know, doing great stuff. And that's exciting to see. And I don't want to say it's all coming together because I think I never really feel like I think we could 10x and I'd still feel it's, you know, there's a long way to go. But there's definitely that sense of momentum and customers being happy. And so like, you know, it's the hard work pays off if you keep going positive energy breathes, positive energy, and that's the fuel that allows it to continue growing. So reflecting back then in, you know, the first three and a half years of the business, what do you feel you've done right? And I know you're naturally a little bit self-critical. So but you've also done loads of amazing, really positive things. So what do you sort of proud of and feel you've got right? And maybe what did you sort of underestimate, I guess, with the market conditions and maybe just the business as a whole? Yeah. I'll try and do this one, and then, sizely, because yeah, there's a lot to it. And I think if you ask me this question every two weeks, the answer would be different because it just everything moves so quickly. Done right. Kind of, as I mentioned before, talent density, who we work with, we take that so seriously. There's so many kind of anecdotes to give here, but just to kind of put into perspective, we probably interviewed, I think about 10,500 for the first 45-ish roles. So it's that we were properly like, I often say to people, I'm happy to, if we spend 10 to 20 hours with somebody, and then concluding at the end, it's not the right mutual fit explaining why, helping them with that next step, but it's just not this one. That's more efficient than getting it wrong. And it's even though there are downsides to this that we can talk about because obviously we are capacity constrained, we need to high-faster, but I think that compounds in a really positive way. And you end up with people who deeply care, who want to be there, who worked hard to get into that situation, and it really does, yeah, it helps you tremendously and everyone you interact with and work with can feel that, and then it matters. So that's definitely a huge, like, something we did write. Another area is funny talking about positives. We don't do this very well at school. Because I was on that point, was that self-taught for you? Because that's quite, you know, that, you're really sort of filtering down to ensure you absolutely nail the right fit for the business. So is that from legacy where maybe you haven't done it in the past, or is that just in a, you've always been when you look to hire people and get talent into your businesses? Yeah, I'd love to say I always knew. I definitely didn't. It was learned to behave, yeah. The I mean, Tessie and had incredible talent density, particularly maybe the first 50-ish. It felt so elite. I was young when I was building that company, and I was really excited to be working with those people. And I think that business, by the time I left to build Omnia, we were probably 300-ish people. And I would guess, I actually haven't checked the examis, but I'm sure we'd hired over 1,000 and lots had come and gone over the many years of building. Attrition was normal, but people quit, because Facebook gives them a big offer for this or that, or whatever. And people come and go, and I think I realized to build an enduring company, it does just come down to the people, not only though they're academic excellence or how impressive they are on paper, it's how much they care, how much they want it, are they gonna work well together and collaborate? And that's what's about mutual fit. Sometimes I'll conclude a process with somebody saying, I really think you need to just go start a business. You've told me how much you want to, and I just, you're being held by fear or insecurity, whatever, I just go do it. And then if it, or I might say, you know what, I might spot that they actually just want an easy life, or a normal life. This isn't a normal life life. If you join, it's gonna be intense. It might be really fulfilling. So I think it's like, it's all about mutual fit and it took me a while to learn that, because when you're like a hypey company or you raised a bit of money and you can sell a good story, you could easily hype people and join it. You could easily sell them into a role. And that would be the most toxic, dangerous thing to do. So I realized that, because I think, if I'm honest about it, I think post series B Tessian would raise a big round from Sequoia, that kind of put a bit of a halo on us. And we could certainly attract great talent. I don't know, we weren't doing so maliciously, but I think people were hyped up into their roles, maybe being sold, that it would be an easier journey than it had been historically. I think it gets harder each chapter, like it's just, there's more, there's more, there's more problems, more pressure, bigger numbers. But so I think you've got to get people up for that, and yeah, definitely learned, but it's something now that I'm comfortable missing our hiring target, which is one of the flaws we'll come to, because the talent density is so high, that's a better equation than like, you know, we've got loads of people and the bars dropped. - Yeah. I think you got that danger as well, then I've experienced that where you have that sort of cash confidence that where you think you're almost a little bit invincible or certainly like resilient to, actually, you're gonna get your talent right, you've got a cup, for us personally, we got a couple of hires right early on. I think that was actually a bad thing that happened, because then I've thought I'd just presumed every good experience recruited at I-hi then, we're just gonna nail it, right? Look at the power, and be brilliant, and that's not reality, right? And I think sometimes that happens in businesses, and you know, the cliche line of you learn from or your failings of hiring than the ones that worked out well, is probably quite true, isn't it, to that? And getting it right, I think that's, that's the hardest bit, people. I thought, you know, everyone I ever into on this podcast, whether it's a procurement practitioner, an entrepreneur like yourself, wherever it may be, people, people is the greatest strength, and it also can be the greatest weakness sometimes. So it's a hard, and I'm saying that as a recruiter, it's not easy to hire. - Yeah, no, it's a totally little, I guess. - So I guess the things you perhaps underestimated then, or? - Yeah, actually, so I go back to the question, 'cause I digressed that. I think other areas we've done well, we had a patience round product that in the end is served as well, but there's a lot of the time when you're building a startup, shit fast and break things is what they'll tell you, and iterate quickly all of the sudden, it's not that it's wrong, but actually if you're serving highly regulated enterprise customers, and if you're not first to market, it's worth mentioning, we weren't first to market, so we had to be best in market. And it's something we used to talk about a lot, 'cause I think that's, it's a good position to be in, but you need to know, you need everything you shit needs to be better, and the customers start to believe that, and your prospects start to see that, and they think, okay, this company takes themselves very seriously when it comes to product. So we were patient there, and I think it's starting to build a bit of a rep for product quality, and not just kind of hype and bullshit, and whatever widget you can sell next week. And then the flip side, this is, I'd say still a strength, but it doesn't look like it today, we're highly efficient, and that's because we've been first to hire, which is meant we've been slightly slower than we probably would have liked to hire. We've been really efficient. We've burned, from an efficiency perspective, we've burned a similar amount of cash to our annual recurring revenue today. So we're highly efficient, and that's pretty unusual for eventually. - And your work and in the procure tech world. - Oh, massively, yeah. Right now people are getting very good away with how much money you can raise, and so on. So I think efficiency doesn't seem to matter in markets today. I think I like to, you know, I've been for a couple of cycles now, and a few different businesses where it has mattered. I think it will become incredibly important once the froth of the market, you know, disappears, and we'll be really well positioned from that strong foundation. Now, on the flip side, where has been tougher or where could we have done better? I'll try and limit myself here, so we don't take the whole Amazon tool to my list. But I think brand awareness is pretty shit. We're not a famous company, nor do we need to be, but we should be better known within procurement circles. And there's a really interesting start that I was presented recently where, if we look at our RFP win rates, so if we look at all of the competitive deals we're in, we win 86% against the closest competitors we have. And there's no flukes, you know, these are like, you're selling into procurement leaders, they do their diligence, they're very discerning. So we have the right product and team composition, and we're doing it in a way that leads to high win rate. Amazing. Then we look at, on that basis, then, you know, you should get in more deals, you should be busier, but I look at the ones we're not winning, and we just weren't in them. And the most painful course for me, where I'll have an amazing call with a cheap procurement officer, or somebody, and we clearly resonate with each other's problems and solutions, and it's like, "This could be a good fit." And then we missed it, and they've, they were one of our competitors or whatever, and they just didn't know. And often we'll win them back the next cycle, we're quite good at that too. But for me, that's a brand awareness problem. If more people knew about us, would be growing faster. And I guess some of your competitors go back to sort of, from a revenue perspective, and do they invest in marketing, which you talked about earlier? We see it, we go to these events, you've got these stands, and all this big, hullabaloo about certain businesses, and they're clearly pumping a lot of money into that. But it can be counterintuitive if they don't land it, and your conversion rate is very high. So it's, it's a sickle of egg, isn't it? It's a hard balance to have. - It is. - Yeah. - I think, I'd love to work this out one day when I have time, but I'm sure there'll be some sort of inverse correlation between booth spend conferences, and, you know, enduring success, 'cause I-- - I'd love to rail that number, is. - Honestly, it's wild. I look around these conference halls, and it's like, we know the stats of most of our competitors. It's like, why are they spending two and a half of the ground when we're spending 10 on the cheapest package? - Well, they're not, you know, anyway. So the market will, you know, sort itself out in the future, and hopefully, that becomes our strength. - Yeah. - But yeah, the other area, I'd say, to move on to the next, I think it's gonna become a strength, but right now, we build some great stuff. We've had some big AI releases recently that are like, properly exciting game changing, like when you shift them for customer, they are hyped. And we don't do a very good job at communicating it, even to our existing customer base. - Right, okay. - So that's probably a function of product marketing, or just cons, but we often have these scenarios where they're like, I would love it if you did this, this way, and this way, and we're like, oh no, we specifically do that. Here it is, let's demo you. And they're like, we'll use that. So it's happened organically, which is nice, but we now need to professionalize that and have a system where it's like, you know. - Yeah, some more case studies out, presumably into the mile here, referencing the sale, because yeah, so I know a few of your clients that are actually loving what you're providing. So it's just, I guess, amplifying that and sharing the message. But I think some of those is hard, isn't it? Because you wanna, we've thought of our fair, and I find this as well, you wanna have that level of humility and confidence also in your product. You don't need to do too much of the real, cheesy sale stuff, which you clearly don't do. But then it's like, well, I do also wanna showcase the really cool stuff we are doing. So it's the balance. - We always talk, we're a bit too British about it. - Yeah, that's what we often say. What we mean is like, the American version of us is like, noisier, spends more, in market, and to be fair, like, look, if you believe it, there's a long-grave opportunity that's a very sensible way to behave. What we're seeing in the market is, we can take customers from our competitors, be that zip or others, and based on that, you know, you don't necessarily have to get to every account first in a very efficient way. The market is being educated by our cumulative spend of this whole category. And so sometimes it's okay to rock up second, take them and give them a better experience. So it's two sides of a coin, but obviously I think the investor perspective in this market is grow faster, faster, faster. But, you know, the investors we have on the in Excel were the same as with my last business test. And so there's a sort of sense of trust and patience there of like, we're doing it a certain way and this will be more enduring in the long term. - The Talent Talks podcast is delighted to be sponsored by Omnia. Omnia is an AI native intake and orchestration platform that lets procurement teams focus on strategy and not systems. It creates a single front door for requests, orchestrates integrated processes across sourcing, approvals and third party risk management is a source of truth for supply data and connects every corner of the procurement tech stack with no code, drag and drop workflows. Omnia is trusted with procurement teams such as Spotify, MongoDB and Synthesia to deliver an amazing experience, time, and cost savings and efficiency. Now let's get back to today's episode of the Talent Talks podcast. - You sort of reference, you speak a bit already, but you know, from my perspective, it's quite noisy market, a lot of people out there proclaiming they can do. What you guys do and indeed what your competitors do. So you speak a bit about how you sort of differentiate yourself from them, but what do you generally make of the procurement tech market landscape at the moment? - Yeah, so there's two, sides to this because one is very exciting markets being I think there's probably more innovation in the past three, four years than in the previous decade or two. There's more venture money flowing in, there's more talent flowing in. There's a lot of very exciting kind of bits and metrics you can look at way like wow what a space to operate in, exciting future. With that though comes all of the downsides you'd expect there's so much bullshit, there's so much like marketing nonsense AI agent for this and for that and that's tiring when you're in the market and trying to operate with integrity and deliver of the product it pisses you off to read it because it's just like you know you'll read some of these releasing things what complete bullshit that is but there'll be a certain maybe type of company that chooses to believe that and gets hyped. So I think the market goes both ways but generally I'm seeing a flight to quality in large enterprise. I think this is kind of the AI age, buyers are more discerning than ever now, the proofs in the pudding you can look at stuff, you can test it, you can do customer references, you can dig deep and I think the days of these one stop shops that say we'll solve all of it for you. You know you had a rebar, then you had Cooper and now you've got others who are essentially selling this sort of shinier Cooper and you could categorize that and say it's P to P and you know that's the market this is a shape and size but I'm typically seeing customers now and larger companies voting for sort of best of breed, they want an AI native architecture, they want this idea of orchestration where you can connect into the rest of the stack and that gives them an ability to scale like they never have never done before, ability to automate manual work like they've never done before and it actually puts the pressure on the supplier in this case us to deliver a high quality experience through both tech and the people. So I think the market's quite healthy but I think they'll be a shake out because if I look at segments of the market we do third party risk management as well so that's like a great area for us but if I look at the legacy incumbents like I don't think the future looks that bright. If you are doing third party risk management pre AI it was sending receiving and manually scoring risk questionnaires and storing them and taking it from email and doing this and reading that one it's so manual it shits you work it's so automatable and so with I think there'll be like a roll-up I think P will have a field a rolling some of these companies together. We've looked at a couple as opportunities but they don't look compelling. So I think there are certain segments of the market that will be completely redefined but the broad strokes will be it's more about user experience, connectivity, AI native and actually being able to deliver on ROI there and I think or I would like to believe probably be wrong I've said this but I'd like to believe that the market will catch up with the marketing nonsense and some of these companies that continue to invest heavily and marketing stunts and make it so noisy I think will build reps for being a bit vacuous like that and quite and there'll be quite transient in the market. So let's see how it plays out but that's my current sense. Yeah I'll agree with that one. So you also talk to a lot of CPOs every day every week naturally in your role what are you seeing as there sort of challenges is there some real patterns of kind of feedback that you're getting around yeah what those challenges are as a CPO at the moment today's market. I think so yeah I think it depends on the CPO and the company that company contact so many things but like general themes there's always a difficulty I think communicating kind of business value in a way that the executives understand and listen to. I think that's like the age old problem that every CPO talked to you about but you know it can be told through the lens of how to get budget for a project or to invest in innovation or headcount whenever that might be but generally elevating procurement to the right level is hard. I think one of the difficulties is is almost just dumbing it down and speaking in really normal terms and there's no silver bullet here where if you say this then everyone you'll be elevated and everyone will listen but sometimes I'm working with a COO at the moment who has built out a procurement function of a pretty large company and in that case the COOs and like wicked smart very sharp you know like they this guy can understand whatever's thrown his way but I think when I look at the decks and the business case is sent over there's there are two complexes too much like procurement lingo and it should just say simple statements like I had a coffee and was like do you realize if your procurement team see spend earlier on the go shape more they'll save more money it's not rocket science. Of course. You know all of these things are like fundamentals so you've got to figure out is it about cycle time efficiency risk or just savings and then I think you're going to talk in a really simple language and get people bought in and ideally have some business champions so I think the best procurement leaders on the flip side of that you know it's challenging the best ones seem to get to know the business partners whoever the key stakeholders are in a business almost just like as a concierge initially or socially they just know them and both it goes both ways so then they're involved earlier yeah so I'd say that's one area is like I'd loosely call it social capital how do you gain that if you have good social capital in the business you can get budget you can have influence you can drive change yeah rather that carrot stick mentality or you know we're procurement with a you see the old narrative or with a cost police or we're here to govern your spend and you just the disengagement just drops off a cliff for exactly for the COOs and CFOs of the world they're just not going to be interested in that at all because yeah it just feels very transactional so exactly that and it's it's probably my my last business Tessian we were in the info sex space of a cybersecurity company and up in 2017 info sex was today where procurement is now like back then so GDPR was coming in and that kind of put it into the spotlight and you could see that the CFO the chief information security officer was going to get way more important but there was a bit of a talent gap the tech had been shit it was a market of enforcement not engagement like change your password do this will lock you out you know security was annoying it was in the way and now that's transformed and like CFOs are you know high profile often on boards they're very important in the business they're much better paid they have more influence etc I think exactly the same will happen in procurement or is happening but you're dealing with all of those kind of both macro and micro effects are like there is a bit of a talent gap that's then tough for the the CEO that's across all board on the talent gap do you see that at the C suite level of procurement or do you see that are the more kind of cashier manager level or buy is it across the whole board do you think I think both in life perspective yeah I think there's a lot the roles I'm seeing there's like you need to be tech savia then you historically might have done but weirdly it's easier to be tech savvy now than ever before like omni as an oakode platform it's not you know you can you can pick it up pretty fast so I think yes people we need to attract better talent to the space we're trying to play a role in that but we see I'm probably asked weekly by typically a CFO could be a CFO could be a CFO depends who procurement runs up to but for help hiring somebody and it is hard I think so and on the flip side there's a lot of amazing procurement people that should be in those roles that aren't always sort of pushing their profiles in the right way and I think the other problem if we just look at you asked before you know what are the problems for procurement leads in market it's the reputation yeah that is the reality like and I think the the best ones go in and just sort of say look people haven't like the way it's done it's shit I'm going to fix it we need to fix it through engagement people and changing user experience we're going to make this a strategic function that positively impacts the business but you've got to acknowledge where it is because a lot of it is people really pissed off at the arena or the Cooper process or would all the no process whatever it was and it was a thing you have to do not what you wanted to do so we've had to redefine this with some of our customers like if you look at modern companies we weren't like say Spotify or Monzo they're obsessed with user experience so their employees are probably on the younger side or you know average workforce age and they need it to be easy and nice and helpful and they're not the type of company to use the stick so it's the carrot approach you have to make it easy but I think even if you're a legacy enterprise who've been around a few generations the principles are still true if you make it nice for people they'll follow it and if you engage them there's an element of just having to acknowledge that it hasn't been done historically well and that's it's not like cpos are shy of saying that because they've had a really tough time with it where it's crazy that they get to blame for so much of the slow pace or the brokenness but it's it's not really their fault they're just you know in that place at that time couldn't agree more and I think it's almost I think the cpos that do well are the ones that have active listening to start with I like your bit almost being that sort of social champion and understanding each each need of the stakeholders I think the ones where it's failed is they've tried to rush into quickly and just do it the way that they've always done it before and it just falls over people disengage they lack process and it isn't done in the most effective way so I think that listening understanding and as you say sort of understanding the businesses needs to start with can allow them then to make the changes effectively but we I would agree I think this year has been an interesting year I suppose a lot of people about this I think what's also happened is because when the economy has been tougher in certain markets there's always this temptation for certain c switch of a track back to Jesus we need to make cost savings we need to strip money out of business and ironically it impacts procurement sometimes this is mental because they are a wife procurement we all know is is a may I think and they're stripping back and getting rid of procurement headcount or maybe not hiring a new CPA or a new procurement director to go and grow the team and then you sit they're going well the business needs to find some money and in a very tactical level it's going to be there to drive cost savings and yet you're stripping out talent so it's probably a bit of an upskilling and a bit of a marketing piece there for procurement as well I would agree because it does get a bad rep sometimes and it is what was focused on they've not delivered so we're going to you know not grow the team or not not invest in it and it's just as I say it's counterintuitive so I agree it is I was it is changing because now there's enough leaders out there who have witnessed it being done well. - Definitely. - It's a new market, right? How do we, we're building in, I don't know, let's say three, four years old. And so there's enough that have now seen it and can retell the story. So I think it's when a good spot, but we're definitely going to catch up to that sentiment. - But I think, and I agree, and I think procurement, the procurement leaders that are really embracing technology and partnering with people like you, good self, are the ones that are really thriving now. If they can get their tech stack joined up with the procurement, the commercial activity, the businesses doing, get the stake as on board, they're thriving, and that's the business that's we're seeing do well and they're growing and they go through transformations and the board are going, oh my God, procurement, why have we not seen this yet? And it's going, the ones that aren't doing it, the ones that aren't engaging with, with Omnus the world and general tech businesses to help partner them to grow. They're the ones that are struggling at the moment. But it's been a good, I think, I don't know how you're feeling into Q4, but I think for us, we're fitting quite optimistic about 2026, I think there's been some really positive noises both in terms of procurement and wider business activity. And I think 2026 should be a really positive year for the sector, that's my take on it. I don't know how you, if you feel that, sir. - Yeah, no, I'm very, very optimistic about this market. Honestly, it's from every metric you can look at, we're in a good spot. It's funny that the flip side, by the way, is procurement, if you map out the data, it's historically be undecickable. So when markets are bad, procurement should be invested in. As you've said, it's not always as directly correlated as it should be, but we are now seeing this trend where procurement is seen as a strategic growth driver. Even we have a lot of the world's most successful companies use our platform, they're not sure of cash, but they still do want the savings. And they still want to make sure they've consolidated as that have the right suppliers. Maybe it's from a risk perspective, or an efficiency perspective, or maybe it is just see if it doesn't want to be wasteful and believes in that efficiency. So I think, yeah, everything's in place now for 2026 to be really strong for our whole market for the profession as well. So definitely optimistic. - Yeah, and I can't finish the pod without talking about AI. So what's the reality you're seeing in that? 'Cause there's this nervousness for some people around, is it I'm going to replace people? And you've probably seen that narrative, I'm sure many, many times, but what's your take on AI and it being embedded into procurement? - So there's a few different angles to this. I think firstly, where I'm seeing it impact the most, just in a really tangible way, like team structure and growth plans, are really scaled businesses that have hundreds of people in procurement that were successfully managing most of the spend. Let's, I don't want to say they're in steady state, but they were very mature, or, and that could be like our customers, we've got like Albatons, large procurement to be in a 300,000 employee business retailer, very mature function in many ways. And then you've got companies where they're building out Greenfield, but have resource, who's a good exact, why is one of our customers? Amazing fintech, but kind of rebuilding or building out a procurement function is an a risk function with it. And I think those are the two areas where it's just completely game changing. If this ends up, I look at how they use on the, and you know, the opportunity head, like why is we'll hire differently because of AI? The roles will be different, probably leaning on the more senior side, where it's more strategic, and they're using the system to automate the manual work. And their role is just elevated. So it's kind of then more around the relationship side, and you know, how to leverage that. So I suppose I see a great future. I think procurement, just fundamentally, if I zoom out maybe, it's a process with lots of data points, you know, how many suppliers do we have? Who are they? Do we like them? How much do we pay them? When do they renew? You could keep going on, right? There's all these data points. So inherently it's perfect for AI and a lot of the work with manual. There's all this manual shepherding of chasing them for that, and asking them why that's up to. All of that can be automated. So from a macro perspective, it's a very exciting industry to be innovating with AI. That being said, as with all frothy markets and hype cycles, there's so much bullshit. And I think the risk is people buy AI for AI's sake. The reality is, if your process is shit and you automate it, it's an automated shit process. You didn't make it better. So I think you need to fix the process and use experience first. Then there's better data throughput. And then you're at a maturity point where you can do incredible things with AI. And that's what we're seeing. Our most advanced customers are doing incredible things. Jobs that were previously manuals aren't being done. Like, it's completely changed the landscape for those professionals and for those companies. But if you try and do that prematurely, for AI's sake, you're not actually going to get the outcome. And then you're not building from a strong foundation. So you sort of band-aid, you know, the problems in an unhealthy way. And I think the market needs to correct to some degree. Like I'm, as you'll probably sense through this quite cynical generally, on these market trends, valuations and so on. But I just think too much who's being sold, too little has been delivered. I encourage everyone who's, you know, doing these AI strategies to initiatives be that procurement of the spaces. You've got to look at what metrics is it actually impacting? Is your savings target going up? Is your cycle time coming down? What's the efficiency metric we're tracking? It should be like for our customers, we present that every year in a business review. And the metrics are amazing. That's where we have almost no churn. Like retention is incredible because they look and think, shit, this is great. So I think you have to have that approach. Maybe that's less hypey and a bit less inspiration. But I think that's going to happen today. To put the numbers, I reckon it's kind of 55% substance, 45% bullshit today. Just from like, you know, looking at what's out there, the marketing, what people are adopting. I reckon we're on a good track and by end of 2026, it'll probably be 70, 30 or 75, 25 in the favor of substance. So I'm excited by it, but it's triggering as well. Yeah, about kind of through the noise. Ben, thank you so much. I could spend longer, but I'm conscious of your time, but look really, really appreciate you coming on the pod. Love to hear about your journey. Omnia Lawsie doing fantastic things. Congratulations on the growth and the rapid success of the business. And I look forward to watching how 2026 goes for you and your team. Great, thanks for having me, Martin. It's been great. Thanks, Ben, thank you. A big thanks again to our sponsor Omnia. If you want to check out more about Omnia, please go to the website www.omnia.com. Many thanks and look out for the next episode coming to you soon.