As much as some may resent the over use of buzzwords in today’s technology focused world, words like “Procurement Analysis” “AI” and “Machine Learning”, particularly when discussing the best software as a procurement solution, the trend in industry is that to AI powered platforms.
AI procurement platforms assist procurement teams – they do not replace them. In fact, the procurement solution Robobai do not just quickly, efficiently and accurately process the analytical data from your ERP system (in particular P2P and AP data), but they have learnt how to detect trends and patterns within your spend based on this data. RobobAI in particular offers suggestions on where and how savings can be made. There is always the need for human oversight to work out the exact details of how to apply these suggestions in the real world – but this is how man and machine work in harmony.
In reality, these programs and platforms should not really be seen as “Man vs Machine”, but more as “Man + Machine”. In fact, people are only as good as the data supporting them, ready to implement changes in line with the AI suggestions. In this way, the machine focuses on the time consuming data analysis, and the humans spend time making meaningful decisions and the execution of the benefits.
It doesn’t matter what industry you work within, having a well-structured, cost effective supply chain in today’s world can be the make or break between a highly successful company and one that fails, in turn providing the edge against your competition. As harsh as that sounds, its frighteningly accurate, and as a result, your procurement team must be focused as much as possible in analyzing all the relevant data that could lead to your next major insight of how to cut costs in your supply chain.
These “saving insights” are crucial to streamlining your procurement function, however, in order to cover all possible avenues of savings, great care has to be taken to accurately and efficiently analyse the data and without this accuracy, insights are meaningless. Ability to ensure Classification accuracy drives everything when choosing the right procurement solution, if it’s not right, procurement folks get frustrated, spend more time fixing the data and less time making savings. If only there was a way to effectively and accurately automate the process of analysing this data.
Well luckily, thanks to the advances in AI technology and Deep Machine Learning, RobobAI AI platforms effectively and efficiently process all procurement spend data stored in your companies ERP systems, it then classifies all data to a higher degree of accuracy than any of our competitors (up to and above 90% accuracy across the board). RobobAI is an easy, hassle free software platform that classifies your data with no IT integration required. After a standard file extracts from your system/s, RobobAI will classify and accurately display the analysis of your entire organizations spend and highlight the various savings insights for investigation. Procurement teams are able to make informed and measurable decisions and actions in order to cut costs across your supply chain.
Supplier contract compliance within procurement has always been a complicated measure for the profession to master, unfortunately it is also an extremely important measure of any procurement function, ensuring that your company is spending with the right contracted suppliers at the contracted rates.
This effects all industries. Procurement have seen a dramatic shift in responsibilities for their teams, moving from transactional to strategic, and realizing the benefits and importance of having longer term agreements with their suppliers, securing price, delivery, service, quality and KPI’s – not just a PO!
Contract Management is all about managing the contract, ensuring the business directs it’s spend to the preferred contracted suppliers. Procurement call it “keeping the money” that has been agreed and contracted by procurement with the preferred suppliers. This ensures the business shores up its bottom line, as well as buying to the appropriate standards for its goods and services.
This can often be quite a labor intensive task and these days many companies are leveraging their procurement systems with additional analytical platforms to help their procurement teams keep track of their companies’ compliance. RobobAI goes one step further and leverages it’s AI technology to help quickly and accurately assess where spend leakage is occurring, providing recommendations, insights and actions to procurement teams so they can address and re-direct spend to the agreed source. This helps your procurement team save time by providing actionable information based on accurate date, leaving them with more time to address any issues.
Contract life cycle management is the backbone of the supply chain, ensuring suppliers adhere to their contractual obligations and pricing. That being said as much as people may bemoan it, it is never the less a vital part of day to day operations of any business, and is a much more complicated task than simply ensuring the a supplier contract is valid and doesn’t need renewing.
Even a small business, at any given time could be in contract with dozens of different contractors and suppliers in order to provide their goods and services. Now imagine what a large company’s contract management requirement’s look like. Not pretty right?
It’s about managing current contracts still in play and whilst planning and deciding on what action to take on contracts nearing expiry. By planning the expiry of a contract depending on the complexity can take time, renegotiating, understanding market changes, finding a better deal elsewhere, takes time, and if you don’t plan, you get the same or worse results.
So our AI powered procurement solution provides insights and alerts to owners based on when contracts are coming to an end, making sure that your analysis and negotiations are never rushed and always properly considered.
RobobAI now has it’s own contract life cycle management app, available to companies that don’t have one. We will either connect to your contract life cycle management, or, should you be without, you can use the RobobAI contract life cycle management app. Our team will load all your legacy contracts into the contract life cycle management app to get you started. Our initial bulk load of contracts has been a perfect cost effective solution for our clients that have always managed their contracts on legacy file drives.