The benefits of organizing the purchase of goods and services into categories in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, whether it’s related to component parts or finished products, can be game-changing. Artificial intelligence presents a powerful set of tools to get on top of it the most common problems.

Lack of visibility across the category management lifecycle. Cross-team visibility means there needs to be detailed information about orders, and the complexity means spreadsheets just don’t cut it. It’s critical to generate a collaborative environment where everyone has the same version of the truth. AI offers powerful, real-time tools to do so.

Absence of real-time market insights. Being able to monitor and incorporate multiple parameters and components allows you to better manage your position. An AI tool from a third party gives a wealth of information, analysis and predictive data from a huge range of sources. 

Inability to create optimized category strategies. With an advanced tool, you get additional perspectives outside just that of the category manager, incorporating across-the-enterprise knowledge and perspectives from outside your company. 

No orchestration capabilities to execute and track category strategy. Orchestration is the next step after harvesting market intelligence and developing a category strategy. This requires a backbone — a core platform — to give signals, feedback and transparency, so that orchestration can happen. 

No intelligent, end-to-end tool for category management. Procurement intelligence is not just about AI feeding you updates on price and cost fluctuations, but how procurement organizations manage the whole process. Ideally, you’ll implement a fully integrated, source-to-pay platform.

Another benefit is retaining workers, who want the latest and greatest technology that allows them to orchestrate the strategy cleanly, monitor the results, and to show they’re bringing value to the company.