Procurement software solutions provider Ivalua is the latest in a string of organisations to launch procurement automation tools using conversational artificial intelligence (AI).
Increasingly, the legacy siloes that defined the procurement process are being broken down. The process has left the back office and, today, requires procurement teams to liaise with stakeholders throughout the business. Procurement teams must collaborate with Finance, IT, Facilities, Legal, HR, and Supply Chain teams to capture new value-creation opportunities.
At the same time, the frequency and risk level of disruption is on the rise. From political tensions and changing regulatory frameworks to economic pressures, procurement teams are being forced to navigate a complex landscape. The daily challenges procurement professionals face range from lack of technology to supply chain delays, and the function’s increasing importance to the business as a whole leads to rising pressures and employee burnout.
Pascal Bensoussan, Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Ivalua, identified this as a “persistent challenge in procurement: how to handle an increasing volume of intake requests at enterprise level, while ensuring transparency and compliance.”
He notes that managing the many, varied requests from stakeholders is often overwhelming for procurement teams. Requests frequently arrive through different channels and often lack the necessary details. This, he explains, can lead to delays and inefficiencies. As procurement becomes a more integrated enterprise service, it needs a user friendly, intelligent front end where employees submit requests. At the same time, it also requires back-end automation to manage and fulfill those requests efficiently and transparently.
Natural language AI onboarding
The AI-powered Intake Management solution, which launched this week, guides procurement professionals to “express their needs simply and efficiently while ensuring effortless compliance with procurement policies.” Using a built-in orchestration engine, the solution can fulfil each intake request across distributed systems, providing real-time updates on progress, status, and pending approvals. Ivalua claims the solution will foster “a new era of employee engagement, process scalability, and trust.”
Ivalua’s AI-powered Intake Management solution claims to bring “structure to this chaos.” Using AI, the tool provides a “conversational and collaborative experience” for procurement teams. By harnessing natural language processing capabilities, the tool enables procurement professionals to submit multiple types of request—whether related to suppliers, sourcing, contracts, purchases, or even cross-departmental needs like MRO or new employee onboarding—through one unified orchestration system and interface.
Key Capabilities of the Ivalua Intake Management Solution
The Ivalua Intake Management Solution has four main features that make it stand out:
- AI Guidance Throughout the Process. An AI assistant guides employees through the process, helping them provide relevant information by extracting key details from documents. It also asks follow up questions, and offers suggestions when they are stuck.
- Seamless Integration Across Systems. A robust event based integration layer to manage flows across Ivalua and third party applications.
- Actionable & Collaborative Tracking Interface. A dashboard supports teams as they track the progress of requests and collaborate with stakeholders.
- Flexible Configuration. Ivalua uses a no-code platform to help procurement teams set up and adjust intake forms and distributed orchestration workflows more easily.
“Our solution allows procurement leaders to scale up operations, by managing all intake requests efficiently, reducing risk, increasing their impact on company spending, and ultimately providing better service across the organisation,” Bensoussan adds.
