Speeding Up Digital Procurement with AI

By CIOReview | Monday, February 25, 2019

While supply chain managers were slow to integrate digitalization in the procurement function, the trend has finally gained traction. Accenture's report, ‘The Next Generation Digital Procurement,’ states that many supply chain managers are trying to modernize that function, but they may not have the tools to start it. In this study, analysts examine how the equation is further supplemented by artificial intelligence and analysis and thereby speed up digital procurement to produce better informed buying decisions, open up new channels for suppliers to engage and enable smart automation to achieve further efficiencies. Greater transparency results in greater efficiency, but they need to build better firewalls while finding ways of keeping data safe.

However, few companies have adopted this type of automation to improve their procurement when it comes to the purchase of business services. Research indicates that business service purchasers can spend up to 20 percent of the time spent manually obtaining, checking, checking out and selecting new service providers due to the individual requirements for this type of procurement. This picture is changed by current developments in AI and machine-learning technology, empowering purchasing services to accelerate. The impact of AI on services procurement is not surprising since AI and automation penetrate practically every sector. There have been plenty of titles in recent years on machine learning for manufacturing and AI for making driverless cars a reality.

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Sophisticated, multifaceted services such as marketing plan development for special purposes, event planning, and logistics or custom software development may be required for more specialized corporate requirements. Projects such as these tend to be much more complex and fluid than those aimed at the purchase of goods and goods. In contrast to traditional assumptions, an AI-based platform can analyze a complex business brief, identify key demands and supplies, and can then select suppliers within the market that best deliver the services needed in accordance with corporate buyer criteria.

The future of procurement ought to be AI and is expected to remain in the lead by continuous development of AI technology in order to make the process from source to a solution more efficient.