AI reshapes procurement and sales roles at Japanese firms

The report frames procurement and sales as two business functions where AI is changing how work is divided between people and software. On the procurement side, the emphasis is on AI taking over human tasks to raise both productivity and quality. On the sales side, the shift runs against the earlier expectation that sales roles would vanish; the report describes companies using AI to train sales staff more effectively and, in some cases, to expand their sales teams. The series places these changes under the ManAIgement banner, which Nikkei CrossTech uses to cover AI-driven management reform. Because the available text is a short introduction to a paid article, the specific companies and methods behind these examples are not detailed here.