‍akirolabs and Sourcing Champions have announced a strategic partnership to help procurement organizations build smarter, faster, and more impactful category strategies.

The partnership brings together akirolabs’ next-generation category management technology with Sourcing Champions’ hands-on procurement consulting, coaching, and implementation expertise. Together, the two companies aim to support organizations in moving beyond static category planning toward a more strategic, structured, and scalable approach to procurement transformation.

What the partnership brings together

akirolabs provides a collaborative, AI-powered platform for category management. The platform helps procurement teams develop, align, manage, and evolve category strategies in a structured digital environment.

Sourcing Champions complements this technology with procurement consulting expertise, working hands-on with clients to tailor strategies, build internal capabilities, support stakeholder alignment, and accelerate procurement maturity.

The Sourcing Champions partnership page describes the collaboration as combining deep category management expertise with akirolabs’ AI-powered platform to deliver transformational category strategies. It also highlights the shared mission of turning sourcing and procurement into a competitive advantage for companies.

Together, akirolabs and Sourcing Champions support procurement teams in:

• building stronger category strategies
• improving stakeholder alignment
• increasing adoption of digital category management
• developing internal procurement capabilities
• scaling category management practices across teams, regions, and spend areas
• tracking, measuring, and acting on category initiatives

From strategy creation to successful adoption

The strength of this partnership lies in the combination of technology and enablement.

akirolabs supports strategy creation and long-term value by giving procurement teams the digital foundation to structure category work, integrate insights, collaborate across stakeholders, and continuously steer initiatives.

Sourcing Champions enables adoption by guiding teams through implementation, coaching, governance, and strategic activation. On its partnership page, Sourcing Champions outlines programs including full implementation, strategic activation / proof of concept, and roll-out support for scaling category management across organizations.

This creates a clear joint value proposition:

akirolabs leads with technology.
Sourcing Champions extends it with expertise and guidance.
Procurement teams gain the support needed to turn category management into a more strategic, measurable, and value-driven discipline.

Enabling next-gen category management

Category management is becoming increasingly important as procurement teams are expected to create value beyond savings. Organizations need strategies that are aligned with business priorities, supported by reliable insights, and adaptable as markets change.

Yet many procurement teams still manage category strategies through disconnected documents, manual processes, and fragmented workflows. This makes it difficult to scale best practices, measure impact, and keep strategies continuously aligned with business goals.

The partnership between akirolabs and Sourcing Champions is designed to address this gap. By combining AI-powered category management technology with hands-on consulting and enablement, the collaboration helps organizations strengthen both the strategic and operational foundations of category management.

Looking ahead

Strategic procurement transformation requires more than software alone. It also requires methodology, coaching, stakeholder alignment, and practical implementation support.

That is why the partnership between akirolabs and Sourcing Champions is a strong fit. akirolabs unlocks the digital foundation for smarter category strategy. Sourcing Champions helps organizations embed, scale, and sustain the change.

About Sourcing Champions

Sourcing Champions is a procurement consulting firm based in the Netherlands. The company supports organizations across procurement strategy, category management, procurement transformation, sustainability and risk, cost optimization, capability development, and digital procurement. Its services include full implementation, strategic activation, and roll-out support for category management programs using akirolabs as an enabling platform.

About akirolabs

akirolabs is an AI-powered category management platform for strategic procurement. The platform helps procurement teams develop, align, manage, and continuously evolve category strategies through a collaborative digital environment. By combining AI-powered workflows, stakeholder collaboration, market intelligence, business requirements, and value tracking, akirolabs supports organizations in turning category management into a strategic driver of business value.

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