Unleashing the Power of AI to Strengthen your Procurement Plan

AI is a technology that is redefining our way of living. Artificial Intelligence enables us to rethink how we integrate information, analyze data, and use the resulting insights to improve decisionmaking. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, industries such as agriculture, pharma and manufacturing become less labor-intensive.

The AI systems are efficient enough to reduce human efforts in various areas. It is predicted that AI is offering fantastic solutions for procurement and supply chains. For AI to add value in purchasing, organizations must create a technological foundation and use the full spectrum of IT tools.

According to McKinsey, the application of AI spans across many corporate functions. Starting from improvement in forecasting to optimization and automation of operations, including the development of target-marketing and pricing initiatives, AI is a big boon that can bless user experience tremendously.

Using Artificial Intelligence in Procurement–

Artificial intelligence allows solving procurement-related complex problems more efficiently or effectively using smart computer algorithms. From locating new markets and monitoring exchange rate volatility to managing risks and identifying the best suppliers, businesses all across the globe are utilizing AI to leverage big data to streamline processes and improve procurement policy. Using Artificial Intelligence in procurement can uncover new business insights that are not just interesting, but actionable. Through the use of AI, procurement teams can remove human error, increase efficiency and realize greater value from spend data.

Elements of AI that are Highly Useful for Product Procurement-

• IoT asset tracking big data benchmarking
• Purchase order processing
• Supplier risk identification
• AI chatbots supporting sourcing
• Spend classification with machine learning

Automation of Procurement Tasks–

AI will help bring more purchases under direct control by facilitating the creation of requisitions from free-form data. Alexa and Siri will play a pivotal part in changing the requisition and approval process. Today, procurement technology vendors are creating cognitive procurement advisors (CPAs) and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) that use natural-language processing (NLP) and natural-language generation to further increase automation and efficiency.

The global supply chain is constantly moving and any error or breakdown that could have been prevented costs for both the company and the customer. Procurement data has exploded because procurement has evolved into something called “intelligent spend management,” which oversees all corporate purchasing processes including direct and indirect purchases, travel and external labor. A business’s procurement team can use machine learning to identify and fix any shipment and fleet management issues.