Making Purchasing Departments AI-Ready
Analyst Perspective
There have been a multitude of potential use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) dreamed up over the past 18 months. ISG-Ventana Research describes AI as the development of systems and software capable of automating tasks that have previously required human intelligence. It encompasses machine learning (ML), deep learning and GenAI to deliver capabilities including predictions, recommendations, personalization, speech and visual recognition as well as translation and summarization. Purchasing is ripe for the application of AI because there is a great deal of rote, repetitive work that can be automated or assisted by the technology, from sourcing to processing invoices to making payments. ISG-Ventana Research asserts that by 2027, almost all procure-to-pay software suites will use AI and optical character recognition (OCR) to automate data ingestion from external documents and emails, saving time and ensuring all necessary information is captured accurately at the source. For now, the snag is that while the practical use of AI technology has made remarkable advances over the past year, there’s still a lot more that needs to be developed and field-tested. And purchasing departments must prepare to make full use of AI as the technology matures.