"The Disappearing World of Procurement"

I came across this article that was published about a year ago: https://commitmentmatters.com/2015/05/20/the-disappearing-world-of-procurement/ It paints a rather pessimistic view of the procurement function, with suppliers seeing them as an "enemy" and internal stakeholders seeing them as an "obstacle." The author goes on to say that "the future lies in the strength of relationships, in research and innovation, in creative ideas and insights – the attributes that machines find hard to replicate." For those of you in the trenches, do you feel like anything has changed in the past year? Have you done anything in particular to develop your function? And most importantly, do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about where the function is going in your organization or in general?