Role
Procurement
How long is the road from a need being raised to an order being placed? If it is two weeks, then with an urgent need nobody takes that road - they call a trusted supplier and ask about the price later.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
How long is the road from a requisition to an order?
That time decides whether the purchasing process is used or worked around. Purchases worked around in a hurry are more expensive but faster - and that is why they win.
What happens when a requisition arrives imprecisely described?
Usually: a round of questions that takes several days. Or worse - you order what you understood and find out about the mistake at delivery.
How many people touch one purchase before an order exists?
The requester, purchasing, the approver, sometimes an engineer. With four people the lead time depends on calendars rather than on the supplier.
Where do the quotes you received and rejected go?
If they go into an inbox, then at the next purchase of the same thing you start from zero - even though the price from six months ago would be very useful.
We take over the handling, you keep the negotiation
Collecting requisitions, sending enquiries, bringing quotes into a comparable form and chasing fulfilment can be taken off the desk. The negotiation, the choice of supplier and the risk assessment stay with a person.
- The choice of supplier always goes through a decision. - The system brings the quotes into a common form and shows the differences - including those beyond price, such as lead time, terms and the history of working together. A person chooses.
- Comparability does not mean flattening. - If the quotes differ in scope, the system shows that rather than reducing everything to one number.
- The purchase history stays. - The price, the terms and who won - at the next purchase of the same thing you do not start from a blank page.
Scope
What can be taken off a buyer
Twenty example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to your process.
Requisitions from the business
- Taking in a requisition in one form, whatever the department
- Pointing out descriptions too incomplete to send an enquiry
- Linking a requisition to earlier purchases of the same thing
- Checking whether the item is covered by a framework agreement
- Checking the budget and the approval level required (decision: an authorised person)
Enquiries and comparing quotes
- Preparing the enquiry from the requisition (sent by: the buyer)
- The list of suppliers to approach together with the history of working with them
- Reading the quotes and bringing them into a comparable form
- Pointing out differences in scope, lead time and terms (assessment: the buyer)
- Reminding suppliers about the quotation deadline
Negotiation and decision
- Material for the negotiation: price history, volume, alternatives
- What you paid for this item before and to whom
- The reasoning for the choice of supplier, with the decision recorded (decision: the buyer)
- Pointing out cases requiring a competitive procedure
The order and tracking fulfilment
- Preparing the order from the agreed terms (approved by: the buyer)
- Checking the supplier has confirmed the order
- A signal about an approaching delivery date with no confirmation
- Detecting delays affecting production
- Deliveries not matching the order, set out
- Feedback to the requester about the status
A day's work
Today
- Requisitions arrive by email, in a spreadsheet and verbally in the corridor
- With an unclear description a round of questions to the requester begins
- You compare the quotes by hand, retyping them into a spreadsheet
- With an urgent purchase the process is worked around and you find out afterwards
- You look for price history in old emails
- You learn about a late delivery from production
With AI assistance
- Requisitions come in one form, and the gaps are pointed out straight away
- With a requisition you see whether you have bought this before and on what terms
- The quotes wait brought into a comparable form, with the differences in scope
- An urgent purchase can be handled faster than by working around the process
- The price history is at hand at the moment of negotiation
- A missing confirmation and dates at risk report themselves
- Time from requisition to order
the process stops being worked around for urgent purchases
the road through purchasing is faster than the road around it
- Comparable quotes
the decision rests on the full picture rather than on price alone
differences in scope and terms are shown rather than flattened
- The risk of a stoppage
a late delivery surfaces before the date, not after
missing confirmations and dates at risk are monitored
- A record of the purchasing decision
it is known why that supplier was chosen
the reasoning is recorded with the decision
We start with one purchasing category, not with the whole process.
- Step 1
We measure the road of a purchase
We take the last dozen or so purchases and measure how many days each stage took. It usually turns out the most time goes on clarifying the requisition rather than on negotiating.
- Step 2
The form of a requisition
One form for every department, with completeness checked. It removes most of the round of questions.
- Step 3
Enquiries and comparison
Sending enquiries and bringing the quotes into a common form. This is where the time saved becomes visible.
- Step 4
Tracking fulfilment and history
Watching confirmations and dates, and the price archive. Last, because it rests on the data from the earlier steps.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Should the purchasing department be smaller after this?
In most companies purchasing does not handle all the spend - it handles what it has time for, and the rest happens outside it. Taking over the enquiries and the comparisons does not shrink the team, it widens what comes within its reach at all. The categories bought today with nobody overseeing them are usually the first thing to appear.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Commercial purchasing is not a high-risk use. Public procurement is governed by separate rules on how a procedure runs, and it is those, not the AI Act, that set the limits of automation.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
How many of your purchases happen outside the process, because going through it would take too long?
We will show you what a purchase looks like when the requisition comes in complete and the quotes wait brought into a comparable form.