Better, Faster, Smarter: How we used AI to transform procurement

Our client is in the midst of a cost transformation programme intended to make operations more efficient and sustainable. As a global business with an extensive supply chain, our client has established extensive standards and guidelines for the purchase of goods and services.  

‍

Such compliance requires the issue of tenders, multi-stage evaluation of all responses, elimination of proposals that do not meet the selection criteria, and detailed comparison of shortlisted companies and their ability to fulfil the requirements of the tender.  This process takes anywhere from 6 weeks to 20 weeks and is performed by staff in the procurement department.  Each year, our client issues over 150 RFPs worth over €500 million in value.  

‍

To streamline this process to cut time and reduce effort, our client brought in Accellor to develop an AI-powered automation process that would read, assess, compare, and summarise tender responses. The result? 18,000 hours per year of human effort saved by achieving a 3–12-week reduction of processing time per tender, near total automation of notices sent to suppliers, and summarised comparisons presented to buyers to aid faster selection turnaround.  

‍

These results would not have been possible without being able to harness the summarization and generative power of Generative AI technologies.  

‍

Using a 5-step approach, Accellor provided a solution which:

‍

1. Analyses criteria from the tender request for services document to create a selection evaluation matrix
2. Reads and compiles supplier responses to create a highly performant data repository that can be queried and ranked  
3. Evaluates responses against selection criteria and identifies non-compliant responses, checking publicly available company records where needed
4. Provides a comparison of compliant responses to the procurement team for faster assessment
5. Automates the generation of communications to both selected and eliminated suppliers in prescribed formats

Reducing processing time from a week to minutes has not only set our client on a path to saving circa €500,000, but also helped improve the end-to-end buying process with an 80% reduction in processing time per tender, maintain 8% less out-of-contract purchasing, and focus key staff on higher value procurement functions.  

‍

With the AI foundation in place, our client can continue to redefine their processes, deliver better experiences to end users, and drive breakthrough savings for the business.