Procurement is hard work. In theory, procurement leaders are focused on strategic goals: identifying the service providers best placed to drive value and negotiating deals to secure that value at the most competitive price. In practice, many procurement functions are ground down by excessive documentation and manual workflows, from generating purchase orders to managing invoices.

Spendflo thinks it can help. The San Francisco-based start-up, best known for its suite of software-as-a-service (Saas) management tools, is pivoting into the procurement sector. It’s launched an autonomous procurement platform that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) agents to do much of the hard work.

The platform, dubbed Flo, was a natural progression for the company, reflects Siddharth Sridharan, co-founder and CEO of Spendflo. “We’ve been managing the software spending of around 200 companies and that has given us a real feel for the pain points of procurement,” he says. “In addition, a growing number of those companies have looked to us to manage procurement more broadly.”

In effect, the data and experience that Spendflo has gathered in managing SaaS subscriptions – and increasingly other types of enterprise spending – has provided the market intelligence required to launch a procurement management platform. “If our agents can help customers with all the repeatable tasks involved in procurement, it will free up procurement leaders for those strategic initiatives,” Sridharan says. “Leaders should be focused on how to be business enablers, ensuring they’re driving as much value as possible from partners.”

There’s no reason why AI agents can’t be trusted to handle procurement process work such as intake, approvals, contracts and accounts payable, says Sridharan. That should leave the procurement team free to concentrate on aspects of the job that require their expert judgment, such as vendor strategy and commercial negotiation.

So far, around 50 of Spendflo’s existing customers have begun using the Flo platform, with the company hoping to accelerate growth as it launches the platform commercially this week. It’s certainly an interesting pivot for the business, reflecting a broader conversation about the evolution of the SaaS market.

I first profiled Spendflo in 2022 when it raised its first funding, a $4.4 million round that helped it get its SaaS vendor streamlining solution off the ground. Since then, the company has onboarded more than 200 enterprise customers and seen its revenues grow 10-fold. The business’s original value proposition – offering tools that enable customers to get on top of their sprawling SaaS subscriptions, reducing cost while ensuring they’re getting value – has clearly resonated.

Now, however, Spendflo faces a potentially challenging market environment. The seemingly relentless march of AI is increasingly seen as damaging to traditional SaaS providers. Why buy in endless software solutions if you can configure AI agents – and teams of agents – to do the jobs for which you’re currently paying SaaS providers?

Some analysts are forecasting a “Saas-pocalypse”. They point to February’s market correction, which saw $300 billion wiped off the value of SaaS, data and software-heavy firms, amid fears about the rise of AI.

In fact, the influential market researcher Forester thinks the outlook is more nuanced. In a recent blog, it concluded: “Enterprises spend tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars on SaaS for core capabilities across front-, middle-, and back-office workflows, and global SaaS spending is projected to rise from $318 billion in 2025 to $576 billion in 2029, underscoring that the enterprise core isn’t vanishing, even as it transforms.”

Instead, Forrester expects the SaaS market to change radically, with vendors of horizontal point solutions poorly embedded into enterprises’ workflows coming under particular pressure. Still, it does predict a “SaaS-to-AI transformation”.

For Spendflo, that could spell bad news. “SaaS spending has not dropped back but enterprises’ expectations of software have got much higher,” Sridharan reflects. “SaaS will effectively be replaced by new-age native AI tools.”

In which case, the key for the start-up is to surf this wave rather than being knocked down by it. Spendflo sees the launch of a broader procurement management platform, enabled by AI agents, as a vehicle for supporting enterprises that are also changing how they think about sourcing. “It’s a shift that everyone is going to have to deal with,” Sridharan concludes.