Understanding the hype: Key takeaways on Autonomous Negotiation

Highlights from Beroe’s recent In the Know: Product Showcase webinar, Go Beyond the Hype – Your Playbook for Autonomous Negotiation 

As the role of AI continues to evolve in procurement, “autonomy” has quickly become one of the buzzwords of the moment. But what does autonomous negotiation actually mean in practice? Can technology really manage complex negotiations, or are we just seeing the start of another hype cycle? 

The latest In the Know webinar, Go Beyond the Hype: Your Playbook for Autonomous Negotiation, led by Dr. Christian Paul, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Beroe and the founder of nnamu, brought a grounded and candid perspective to what’s become one of procurement’s most discussed digital frontiers. 

This practical session unpacked where autonomous negotiation can deliver genuine value, where it can mislead, and how procurement teams can separate the killer features from the snake oil.

With procurement workloads expected to rise by nearly 10% in 2025, while teams grow by just 1%, attracting and retaining talent under that pressure is challenging, especially when day-to-day work feels constrained by outdated tools. Is Autonomous Negotiation a route that companies can look to take to address this challenge? 

Here are five key takeaways from the session: 

1. Autonomous ≠ Automatic 

One of the biggest misconceptions about autonomous negotiation is that it will replace human judgment. In reality, it enhances it. 

For high-value or strategic categories, full automation isn’t the goal. Instead, autonomous negotiation can augment human expertise, handling repetitive elements while freeing teams to focus on judgment, relationships, and strategy. 

For higher value or strategic categories, full automation isn’t the goal. Instead, autonomous negotiation can augment human expertise in selecting strategies and then handle the implementation of negotiations – freeing teams to focus on judgment, relationships, and strategy. 

2. The anatomy of a good autonomous negotiation 

There are a number of factors that must align for any autonomous solution to have real impact. These are: 

Negotiation technique × Autonomy level × Applicability 

Discussion during the session outlined how procurement teams can have the smartest technology in the world but if it only works for, say, one category every four years, the impact will be low. Likewise, ease of use is important, but if the system relies on oversimplified tactics, suppliers will detect predictable patterns, which limits negotiation leverage and value creation. 

The most powerful systems combine solid techniques, genuine autonomy, and the flexibility to apply them across diverse negotiation setups, whether these are bilateral or competitive, commercial or holistic. 

3. Look under the hood. The AI you’re using matters 

While generative AI (LLMs) has transformed how procurement teams onboard and train, they’re not built for live negotiation strategy. 

According to Paul “ChatGPT often still believes that in procurement you’re negotiating prices upwards, not downwards.”  

Instead, effective autonomous negotiation relies on machine learning, reinforcement learning, models that can recognize patterns, learn from outcomes and recommend optimized negotiation paths. Conversational AI may make tools easier to use, but it’s not a negotiation technique on its own. 

4. Ask better questions of your providers 

Reflecting on the evolution of the market, the session also highlighted important differences in what procurement leaders were asking of their suppliers, and what they should now be asking instead. 

Then: “What’s your integration roadmap with our procurement system?” 

Now: “Can I use it through Teams or my existing workspace and have it update everything in the background?” 

Then: “Can it optimize payment terms?” 

Now: “Where else can I apply it, and what negotiation elements does it actually cover?” 

Then: “Can GenAI just do the same thing?” 

Now: “How can GenAI use my solution as a negotiation agent to improve my outcomes and then update documentation in my ERP?” 

In short – focus more on the problem the solution can actually solve. 

5. ROI: The “quicker” and the “better” 

The business case for autonomous negotiation is strong, but only if adoption follows. You can have the greatest solution in the world but if no one wants to use it, it’s wasted time and effort. To illustrate the clear route to quicker and better ROI, participants were asked to consider the following equation: 

(Time savings + Incremental savings) ÷ (Solution cost + Implementation effort) 

While time savings matter, it’s the incremental improvements; better negotiation outcomes, not just faster ones, that deliver 5x to 10x (or even 100x) ROI. As Paul observed, few areas of procurement can measure success as clearly as negotiation.  

From hype to measurable impact 

The session closed with a reminder that autonomous negotiation isn't just implementing a new tool, it’s about selecting a long-term capability partner that will shape how your organization extracts value from supplier relationships. It isn’t about taking humans out of the loop, it’s about amplifying their effectiveness. In a function facing rising workloads and shrinking headcount, procurement negotiations have become the number one business application that AI professors are looking at because it delivers verifiable quantitative and qualitative feedback. This makes autonomous negotiation one of the few AI applications where impact can be seen, measured and celebrated.   

To view a recording of the webinar “Go Beyond the Hype – Your Playbook for Autonomous Negotiation”, click here. 

To learn more, download our complete guide An Introduction to Real Autonomous Negotiation here.