John Everett joined Novonesis in 2024 as CPO just as Denmark's largest-ever merger was taking shape. This was a significant and complex transformation of bringing two companies together (policies, systems, tools, teams, supply relationships, etc.). During the successful execution of the merger, and whilst ramping up sustainability focus, the team also leveraged and rolled-out an AI-based tool to massively improve the internal user (stakeholder) interaction and satisfaction with procurement. It eliminates transactional noise that keeps category managers from doing strategic work, and breaking down the barriers that have made procurement difficult to engage with. John will share: • How Novonesis built AI into the tools people already use – a policy-aware assistant that handles the complexity so people don't have to • What this frees procurement to actually do – less time on "how do I buy this?" questions, more time on supplier relationships and stakeholder partnerships • Why transformation doesn't require stability first – delivering results during major organisational change, not after it