Key Tools Using AI to support your Supplier’s Relationship Management (SRM)

Have you ever thought that dealing with your vendors is a tough one?

Well, if you have, perhaps you are not yet aware that there are various tools that utilize AI specifically to enhance collaboration with vendors.

This is a guide to introduce you to the 4 main tools for improving suppliers’ relationships employing Artificial Intelligence according to Dost:

1️⃣ Contract Analytics Tools

2️⃣ Predictive Analytics

3️⃣ Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

4️⃣ Natural Language Processing (NLP)

But before we dive into the tools, let’s take a quick look at:

• What is Suppliers Relationship Management (SRM)
• The increasing role of AI in leading technology and business transformation

What is Suppliers Relationship Management (SRM)?

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) refers to the strategic approach and practices implemented by an organization to effectively manage its relationships with its suppliers. SRM encompasses various activities and processes aimed at developing and maintaining strong, collaborative, and mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers.

The goal of SRM is to optimize the value derived from supplier partnerships by enhancing communication, fostering trust, and driving continuous improvement. It involves aligning the organization’s objectives with the capabilities and goals of its suppliers to achieve operational efficiency, cost savings, innovation, and risk mitigation.

SRM involves a range of activities, including:

• Supplier Selection: Carefully evaluating and selecting suppliers based on criteria such as quality, reliability, capacity, financial stability, and alignment with the organization’s values and goals.
• Contract Negotiation: Negotiating favorable terms, conditions, pricing, and service level agreements with suppliers to ensure mutual benefits and mitigate risks.
• Performance Monitoring: Regularly assessing supplier performance against predefined metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This includes tracking delivery performance, quality, responsiveness, and adherence to contractual obligations.
• Relationship Building: Establishing open and transparent lines of communication with suppliers, building trust, and fostering collaboration. This involves maintaining regular dialogue, addressing concerns, and jointly identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Continuous Improvement: Encouraging suppliers to innovate, streamline processes, and enhance their capabilities. This includes collaborating on product or service development, sharing best practices, and implementing joint improvement initiatives.
• Risk Management: Identifying and mitigating risks associated with suppliers, such as supply chain disruptions, quality issues, compliance concerns, and financial instability. This involves proactive risk assessment, contingency planning, and establishing effective risk mitigation strategies.

The increasing role of AI in leading technology and business transformation

As the world rapidly embraces digital transformation, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become increasingly crucial in driving technological advancements and business transformation. AI is revolutionizing industries by leveraging advanced algorithms, data analytics, and automation to optimize operations and unlock new opportunities for growth.

This powerful tool enhances process automation, and workflow streamlining and helps to optimize resource allocation. By exploiting machine learning and predictive analytics, it enabled organizations to gain valuable insights from vast amounts of data, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, AI proficiency in natural language processing and computer vision has facilitated the development of intelligent systems that enhance customer experiences, automate customer interactions, and provide personalized solutions.

Finally, this powerful tool excels in collaborating with cross-functional teams to identify business challenges and align with strategic goals. BCG Group states that companies that have successfully implemented AI across their organization and gained substantial value from their investment typically allocate their AI budget as follows: 10% for algorithms, 20% for technologies, and a significant 70% for integrating AI into business processes and adopting agile working methodologies.

Nowadays, maintaining strong and mutually beneficial relationships with vendors is crucial for the success of any organization. However, managing these relationships can be a complex and time-consuming task. Fortunately, the advancement of artificial intelligence has revolutionized the way businesses interact with their vendors, offering innovative tools that streamline processes and enhance collaboration.

By leveraging AI-powered solutions, organizations can significantly improve their relationships with vendors, fostering better communication, increased efficiency, and greater transparency. In this article, we will explore 4 remarkable tools that utilize AI to enhance vendor relationships, enabling businesses to optimize their operations and achieve long-term success.

Let’s dive in and discover the transformative potential of AI in vendor management!

1. Contract Analytics Tools

Contract analytics tools are software solutions that leverage AI to extract and analyze information from contracts. AI algorithms enable automated data extraction, interpretation of contract language through NLP, risk assessment, performance monitoring, and contract intelligence. These tools enhance efficiency, provide insights for effective vendor management, and improve contract terms, strengthening vendor relationships.

More specifically, contract analytics tools can help improve vendor relationships by:

1. Enhancing Compliance: These tools analyze contracts to ensure vendors adhere to agreed-upon terms, reducing the risk of non-compliance and fostering trust.
2. Optimizing Terms: By identifying patterns and trends in contracts, these tools provide insights for negotiating favorable terms, minimizing disputes, and promoting mutually beneficial relationships with vendors.

Contract analytics tools that you can use are Juro, a contract automation platform that empowers your team to create, sign, and monitor routine contracts at scale without ever leaving the browser, and ContractNow, a contract management platform designed to help sales, legal, IT, procurement, operations, and vendor management teams create, negotiate, consolidate, and renew contracts. Features include data extraction, renewals reminder.

2. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analysis, also known as predictive analytics, involves using data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning to predict future outcomes. AI plays a crucial role in this process. It helps in data collection by automating the collection and preprocessing of large volumes of data from various sources. AI algorithms then analyze the data to uncover patterns and correlations that may not be apparent to humans. These patterns are used to develop predictive models, which are trained and optimized using historical data. The trained models can then be used to make predictions on new data, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights and make data-driven decisions. Predictive analysis using AI is an iterative process, with models continuously updated as new data becomes available. It has applications in various areas, including sales forecasting, risk assessment, fraud detection, and customer behavior analysis.

In the context of vendor relationships, predictive analytics can play a crucial role in helping businesses proactively identify potential issues with vendors before they become problems. By analyzing historical vendor data, such as delivery times, quality metrics, and customer complaints, predictive analytics tools can detect patterns and trends that may indicate declining vendor performance. With the aid of AI algorithms, businesses can establish models that learn from past data and identify early warning signs of deteriorating vendor performance.

3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that utilizes software robots or «bots» to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks within business processes. RPA bots mimic human interactions with digital systems, such as entering data, manipulating applications, generating reports, and communicating with other systems. RPA aims to streamline operations, reduce errors, and enhance efficiency by automating routine tasks that were traditionally performed by humans.

By implementing RPA solutions, organizations can streamline vendor-related processes such as order management, invoicing, and data entry. This not only increases operational efficiency but also minimizes errors and ensures timely and accurate execution of tasks. As a result, organizations can build stronger relationships with vendors by demonstrating reliability, promptness, and adherence to agreements.

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on the interaction between computers and human language. It involves teaching machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language in a way that is meaningful and useful.

AI is used in NLP to develop algorithms and models that enable machines to process and analyze text or speech data. These algorithms can perform various tasks, such as sentiment analysis, language translation, information extraction, question answering, and text generation.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools automate and enhance communication with vendors through chatbots and virtual assistants improving efficiency and responsiveness.

• Chatbots are AI-powered tools that can help businesses communicate with vendors more efficiently. Chatbots can be used to answer common vendor questions, provide updates on the status of orders or shipments, and even handle basic negotiations. By using chatbots, businesses can free up their staff to focus on more complex tasks and ensure that vendors receive timely and accurate information.
• Virtual assistants are AI-powered tools that can help businesses manage their vendor relationships more effectively. Virtual assistants can be used to schedule meetings, send reminders, and even provide recommendations for vendors based on specific criteria. By using virtual assistants, businesses can ensure that they are making the most of their vendor relationships and maximizing their ROI.

Dost makes use of NLP technology when processing invoices and delivery notes: when we receive a document (invoice), as human beings, we notice that there is text and we are able to extract and classify most of the information we read. Dost do the same following these steps

• with computer vision, the software is able to recognize where text is located on the file and and label it based on what type of information it is (information on the vendor, information on the client, address, invoice ID, total amount, etc…)
• natural language processing enables the understanding of the text previously identified and labeled making also use of NER technology (Name Entity Recognition).

Do you want to know more on how to improve your business with the power of AI? Explore our guide on «How to use Artificial Intelligence to scale your business»:

So… Why investing in AI is so crucial for enhancing vendor relationships?

As businesses face increasing complexity, effective vendor management is crucial. Fortunately, there are many AI-powered tools that, step by step, are revolutionizing vendor relationships, streamlining processes, proactively identifying issues, and maximizing results. These tools automate tasks like contract analysis and performance monitoring, provide valuable insights for decision-making, enhance communication through chatbots and virtual assistants, and optimize vendor performance. Adopting AI tools for vendor management can revolutionize the way businesses interact with their suppliers, leading to improved collaboration, increased efficiency, and better outcomes. With the power of AI, organizations can streamline processes, leverage data-driven insights, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance communication with vendors. By embracing these AI tools, businesses can unlock the transformative potential of technology, optimize their vendor relationships, and position themselves for long-term success in today’s complex business landscape. Stay ahead of the curve, harness the power of AI, and pave the way for a thriving vendor ecosystem that drives your business forward.

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