Procurement organizations are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline purchasing, manage suppliers, and uncover savings. This report examines ten leading AI-powered procurement solutions – Suplari, Keelvar, Pactum, LightSource, Terzo, Zip, ORO Labs, Vertice, Tonkean, and Inventive AI – focusing on what these tools actually do today and the tangible value they deliver.
In the end of the article we offer key common trends about next-generation ProcureTech tools and how they use AI to elevate the impact of procurement professionals.
Top 10 AI-enabled Software Solutions
1. Suplari
Suplari is a procurement intelligence solution that helps businesses modernize procurement operations using AI. Suplari provides actionable intelligence to manage suppliers, deliver savings and manage compliance beyond the limits of traditional spend analytics. Suplari’s unique AI data management foundation empowers enterprise businesses to modernize procurement operating models with reliable, AI-ready data.
How it uses AI: Suplari applies machine learning to normalize data and generate over 175 prebuilt insights—for example, identifying contract non-compliance, unused vendor relationships, or inconsistent pricing across business units. One insight might highlight that a department is bypassing preferred vendors, while another might flag a vendor consistently increasing prices quarter over quarter.
Suplari’s recently introduced AI Procurement Agent blends generative AI with your own spend, contract and supplier data to help teams work smarter, faster and more strategically. Acting like a digital co-pilot, the agent turns plain-language questions (“Tell me why APAC costs spiked” or “Draft a 20 % savings plan for our Oracle renewal”) into automated analyses, step-by-step action plans and even scheduled meetings—no spreadsheets or BI dashboards required.
By codifying procurement best practices and continuously monitoring markets, risks and cash-flow impacts, Suplari’s AI Procurement Agent empowers VPs, category managers and buyers alike to uncover savings, reduce risk and boost spend under management in a fraction of the time.
Realized impact: Suplari's embedded AI functionality is used widely across different industries and business operations functions. Finance teams use these insights to adjust budget tracking and forecast spend more accurately. Procurement teams, meanwhile, can act fast—consolidating suppliers, renegotiating contracts, or redirecting purchases through the right procurement channels. Suplari’s customers have reported up to 10-15% savings on analyzed spend and major reductions in procurement risks.
2. Vertice
What it does: Vertice is a spend optimization platform focused on SaaS and cloud software. It helps procurement and finance teams track usage, manage renewals, and benchmark pricing against market data.
How it uses AI: Vertice leverages a proprietary database of $3.4B+ in SaaS spend to benchmark pricing and suggest negotiation targets. It also uses AI to spot redundant apps, optimize license tiers, and streamline the software procurement process.
Reported impact: Vertice customers report 20–30% savings on software spend, faster purchase cycles, and better visibility into upcoming renewals and budget exposure. It’s especially useful for IT procurement and CFO teams managing digital transformation.
3. Tonkean
What it does: Tonkean is a no-code orchestration platform that streamlines procurement intake and tail-spend management. It connects to existing systems and automates cross-functional workflows for procurement, legal, and finance.
How it uses AI: Tonkean uses natural language processing (NLP) to interpret plain-language purchase requests submitted via email, Slack, or forms. It classifies these requests, applies policy rules, and routes them into the correct purchasing workflows. Its generative AI engine, “ProcurementGPT,” can auto-generate RFPs, compare vendor options, and create compliant purchase orders—especially useful for tail-spend and one-off buys.
Reported impact: Companies using Tonkean report reducing procurement cycle times by up to 50%, increasing compliance, and saving significant manual effort—often 30+ hours per week. Its agent-based AI helps automate supplier onboarding and vendor selection at scale.
4. Zip
What it does: Zip is a unified intake-to-pay platform designed to simplify how employees submit purchase and vendor requests while enforcing procurement policies in the background.
How it uses AI: Zip offers an AI assistant that answers procurement policy questions and helps users start the right workflows. It automatically extracts key data from quotes or contracts and fills in request fields. The platform also uses AI to suggest the correct “spend channel” (e.g., direct PO, expense reimbursement) based on request details.
Reported impact: Zip helps procurement teams speed up request approvals, reduce policy violations, and eliminate back-and-forth on incomplete submissions. Customers like Miro report smoother purchasing processes and higher adoption among business users.
5. Keelvar
What it does: Keelvar is a sourcing automation platform with a strong focus on complex sourcing events. It provides both human-guided optimization tools and autonomous sourcing bots.
How it uses AI: Keelvar’s bots can autonomously launch RFQs, invite suppliers, collect bids, and recommend optimal awards based on pre-set rules. The platform also uses optimization algorithms to evaluate bids on both price and qualitative factors.
Reported impact: Coca-Cola, Mars, and Siemens have used Keelvar to automate spot buys and tactical sourcing, enabling up to 90% reduction in manual effort and 10–25% cost savings. Procurement teams can run more sourcing events without increasing headcount.
6. LightSource
What it does: LightSource is designed to help procurement teams manage strategic sourcing events with speed and precision especially in direct material sourcing. It supports RFQs, supplier discovery, and collaboration in one platform.
How it uses AI: LightSource uses AI to recommend sourcing templates, identify suppliers based on technical requirements, and standardize quotes from various formats. Its platform also analyzes bid responses and tracks supplier interactions.
Reported impact: Customers like HelloFresh and Canada Goose report 30–50% faster sourcing cycles and 5% average savings per RFQ. The AI accelerates supplier engagement while reducing manual data handling.
7. Pactum
What it does: Pactum automates supplier negotiations using an AI chatbot. It’s designed to manage long-tail spend or smaller contracts that often go unoptimized.
How it uses AI: Pactum negotiates directly with suppliers via a chat interface, working within rules set by the buyer. It proposes trade-offs, handles counteroffers, and reaches agreement without human involvement.
Reported impact: Walmart used Pactum to negotiate with over 2,000 suppliers, achieving 3% average savings and extending payment terms by 35 days. Suppliers report a positive experience, with 75% preferring AI-led negotiations.
8. ORO Labs
What it does: ORO Labs provides a no-code platform that orchestrates procurement workflows from intake through contract execution. It aims to make the buying process easier for business users while enforcing policies and routing approvals.
How it uses AI: ORO’s GenAI capabilities include intent recognition, category classification, channel routing, and supplier recommendations. When a user submits a purchase need (e.g., "I need to hire a contractor"), ORO’s AI detects the request type, suggests preferred suppliers, and generates a pre-filled purchase requisition or PO.
Reported impact: ORO helps reduce errors, rerouting, and non-compliance by ensuring requests are “right the first time.” It has been deployed in highly regulated sectors to enforce complex procurement rules behind a user-friendly interface.
9. Inventive AI
What it does: Inventive AI is an AI-powered RFP response platform that solves one of procurement's persistent bottlenecks: slow, inconsistent, and non-compliant supplier responses. Unlike tools built for buyers, Inventive AI focuses on the supplier side automating how vendors create and submit proposals for RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires.
How it uses AI: Inventive AI's RFP Agent automatically drafts responses using verified company data stored in a centralized knowledge hub. The AI Content Manager monitors for outdated or conflicting information, flagging issues before submission. A proprietary Win Themes feature guides suppliers to align responses with buyer evaluation criteria, producing targeted answers instead of generic templates.
Reported impact: Suppliers using Inventive AI submit responses up to 10x faster with 95% accuracy and zero hallucination. Procurement teams report up to 90% reduction in evaluation delays, fewer clarification cycles, and higher-quality submissions that are ready for comparison on day one. Customers include enterprise teams across technology, healthcare, government contracting, and finance.
Key differentiator: By improving supplier response quality at the source, Inventive AI eliminates downstream friction for procurement teams. Buyers receive structured, compliant, evaluation-ready proposals, reducing manual review workload and accelerating time from sourcing to contract execution.
Best for: Procurement and sourcing teams that rely on high-quality supplier input to make informed, timely decisions—particularly in industries with complex RFP processes requiring compliance, accuracy, and stakeholder coordination.
Limitation: Focused specifically on supplier response automation; does not provide spend analytics, supplier discovery, or end-to-end Source-to-Pay capabilities.
10. Terzo
What it does: Terzo is a contract analytics platform that turns static contracts into actionable business insights. It focuses on helping procurement, legal, and finance teams manage supplier obligations, risks, and opportunities.
How it uses AI: Terzo uses AI and NLP to extract pricing terms, renewal dates, and key clauses from contracts, then maps that data to actual spend and supplier activity. It can flag underused services, missed volume commitments, or contracts with poor terms.
Reported impact: Terzo customers have saved up to 10% of third-party spend by identifying contract leakage, overlapping agreements, and unused services. It also improves audit readiness and helps avoid costly auto-renewals.
Key recent trends in AI-native ProcureTech software
As we can see from the examples above, AI is not a futuristic vision, it’s already embedded deep into modern-day procurement workflows and strategic sourcing practices. Let’s summarize some key recent AI-trends and how they impact procurement software.
AI-powered procurement tools rewrite manual procurement processes
Procurement tools are evolving fast. What used to be manual, reactive workflows are now being reimagined with intelligent automation. AI is driving this change by enabling procurement teams to streamline the entire procurement process—from intake and vendor selection to contract management and budget tracking. The result is faster cycle times, fewer errors, and greater alignment with business goals.
Modern platforms like Tonkean, Zip, and ORO Labs showcase how AI simplifies procurement processes. They offer a user-friendly interface that allows employees to submit purchase requests in natural language while AI classifies the request, recommends appropriate suppliers, and launches the correct workflow. This minimizes manual data entry and helps procurement professionals enforce policy without slowing down the purchasing process.
By automating intake management and approvals, these tools empower procurement managers to focus on strategic sourcing and supplier relationship management, rather than chasing down forms and approvals. The impact is measurable: companies report faster delivery time, reduced procurement risks, and improved supplier performance visibility across the board.
Procurement automation software can augment your existing systems
One of the major challenges procurement leaders face is deploying new tools without disrupting established systems. Leading procurement automation software platforms have responded by building seamless integrations with accounting systems, ERP platforms, and vendor portals.
Tonkean, for example, layers automation and AI on top of existing systems, acting as an orchestration layer rather than a replacement. This enables procurement teams to customize purchasing workflows without needing to rip and replace legacy tools.
Zip and Opstream offer similar value by acting as the front door to procurement. Users can initiate requests in one place, while the software connects behind the scenes to finance systems, contract repositories, and supplier databases. These unified platforms help businesses streamline the procure to pay cycle while maintaining data consistency across tools.
AI unlocks value in your contract and supplier data
Traditional contract management systems often fall short when it comes to visibility and compliance. AI-powered platforms like Terzo are changing that by automatically extracting supplier data and contract terms—then connecting that information to real-time spend and performance.
With advanced analytics and predictive analytics, procurement teams can now identify cost saving opportunities hidden in contract clauses or missed volume discounts. They can also track whether suppliers are meeting service level agreements, billing accurately, and adhering to renewal timelines.
For procurement managers, this unlocks complete control over contractual obligations and allows for informed decision making. No more hunting through PDFs or spreadsheets—AI surfaces actionable insights from every contract, supporting vendor management and strategic decision making.
This type of contract intelligence is particularly valuable when managing large supplier ecosystems or dealing with complex sourcing events involving multiple external suppliers and stakeholders.
Procurement management for complete control and strategic visibility
AI-powered procurement management tools are allowing procurement professionals to move beyond administrative tasks and play a more strategic role in their organizations. Platforms like Suplari and Vertice bring together spend analytics, supplier management, and performance tracking into one unified platform. The result is enhanced transparency over spending patterns and actionable insights that support smarter procurement strategies.
These tools help procurement managers and finance teams stay ahead of budget overruns by using predictive analytics to forecast future spend. For example, if a category’s spend is trending above budget, the system alerts the user and recommends corrective actions—such as consolidating suppliers or renegotiating contracts.
Procurement leaders also gain visibility into supplier risk, with early warnings triggered by changes in supplier performance, delivery time, or payment behavior. This proactive approach to procurement risks allows teams to act before issues escalate, ultimately strengthening supplier relationships and protecting business continuity.
Reducing company spending through smarter procurement software
One of the most consistent outcomes from AI-powered procurement software is hard-dollar cost savings. Whether through better vendor selection, optimized contract usage, or improved license management, procurement automation tools help companies cut unnecessary spend and improve ROI.
Vertice, for example, specializes in SaaS and cloud cost optimization. It benchmarks software pricing against a vast dataset and flags where a company may be overpaying. Procurement professionals can then use those benchmarks to negotiate better terms or reduce unused licenses. Organizations using Vertice often report 20–30% savings on software subscriptions alone.
Suplari delivers similar value through broader spend management insights. It consolidates procurement data from accounting systems, POs, contracts, and expenses to deliver a complete view of company spending. It then uses advanced analytics to uncover duplicate vendors, contract leakage, and unmanaged spend—all frequent sources of value erosion.
With these tools, procurement teams are no longer just processing purchase orders—they’re helping finance leaders and business stakeholders optimize spend and increase efficiency across the enterprise.
Procurement tools that automate sourcing and simplify sourcing events
Strategic sourcing has traditionally been one of the most time-consuming procurement processes. AI tools like Keelvar and LightSource are changing that by automating the sourcing lifecycle and enabling procurement teams to run more sourcing events with fewer resources.
Keelvar uses autonomous bots to manage routine or tactical RFQs. These bots can initiate events, invite potential suppliers, evaluate bids based on custom criteria, and even make award recommendations. This allows procurement managers to scale strategic sourcing practices across more categories, without increasing workload.
LightSource, on the other hand, helps procurement professionals manage complex sourcing events, especially for custom goods or direct materials. Its AI can ingest supplier quotes in multiple formats (PDFs, spreadsheets, etc.), normalize the data, and instantly generate a line-by-line comparison. This eliminates hours of manual data entry and enables rapid evaluation of bids.
Both platforms demonstrate how AI automates sourcing while improving outcomes—from better supplier selection to faster negotiation cycles and increased cost savings.
Automating procure to pay with AI: speed, compliance, and efficiency
AI is also transforming the full procure to pay workflow, enabling businesses to streamline how goods and services are acquired and paid for. Zip, ORO Labs, and Opstream exemplify this trend by providing procurement automation software that covers intake management, approval routing, vendor onboarding, and PO generation.
Zip offers a user-friendly interface that guides employees through compliant purchase requests. The AI assistant answers questions, fills in missing details, and ensures that each request follows the correct process. It reduces procurement cycle time and ensures that requests are complete and accurate the first time.
ORO Labs uses AI to classify requests, select the correct buying channel, recommend suppliers, and generate custom purchase orders. It even detects if a similar vendor is already in use—helping prevent redundant onboarding of new suppliers and improving supplier data quality across systems.
Opstream focuses on automating procurement workflows across inventory, finance, and procurement systems. Its AI adapts processes dynamically—so if a budget field changes or an approval rule is updated, the platform adjusts in real time. This ensures consistency and compliance without adding administrative burden.
Together, these tools reduce friction across the entire procure to pay process, helping procurement teams maintain control while simplifying the user experience for requestors.
Market intelligence and supplier performance tracking
Market intelligence is a critical input for procurement teams seeking to make better, faster decisions. AI procurement tools increasingly incorporate external data and supplier insights into their platforms to support informed decision making.
According to ISG's 2025 State of Enterprise AI Adoption research, supplier risk assessment and monitoring has emerged as one of the most successfully deployed AI use cases in procurement, with 58% of implementations already in production. This is significantly higher than most AI enterprise use cases.
Platforms like Suplari and Pactum use supplier performance data, benchmark pricing, and third-party risk signals to help procurement teams assess supplier relationships more holistically. This includes not only cost and delivery metrics, but also financial health, compliance status, and market behavior.
Pactum, in particular, applies AI-driven negotiation logic to improve long-tail contract outcomes. By integrating market intelligence with negotiation strategy, it helps procurement managers achieve more favorable terms without needing to intervene in every conversation.
Incorporating this kind of intelligence into daily procurement tasks reduces guesswork, minimizes supplier risk, and strengthens supplier management practices across the board.
The rise of agentic AI in procurement: A new frontier
The next chapter of AI in procurement is being defined by agentic AI—intelligent systems that not only offer insights or automation but act as collaborative agents that plan, analyze, and execute procurement tasks autonomously, often without human intervention.
Unlike traditional procurement tools or even earlier AI models that rely on rule-based logic or narrow machine learning, an AI agent is designed to understand a company’s unique data, processes, and goals. It can ingest natural language inputs (“Help me renew our Oracle contract by June and reduce costs by 20%”), devise a plan, coordinate tasks across category and vendor managers, and trigger automated workflows to achieve that outcome.
This isn’t theoretical—it’s already being piloted. Suplari recently has introduced an AI Procurement Agent capable of:
- Interpreting spoken or written requests
- Evaluating supplier performance and contract risks
- Creating and executing category plans
- Monitoring spend and forecasting procurement risks
- Coordinating teams and scheduling supplier meetings
In short, these AI agents represent the convergence of generative AI, procurement data models, and workflow automation—delivering strategic value at every level of the organization. From buyers and sourcing managers to the CPO and CFO, these AI agents act as co-pilots that extend human capacity, institutionalize best practices, and help procurement leaders make more informed, timely decisions.
Trust, Explainability, and Data Integrity: The Foundation of AI Procurement
As procurement teams adopt AI-powered tools, three critical questions emerge: Can we trust the AI's recommendations? How did it reach these conclusions? Is the underlying data accurate and auditable?
Leading AI procurement software addresses these concerns through transparent architectures, robust data governance, and explainable decision-making frameworks.
Data integrity through automated integration
AI accuracy depends entirely on data quality. Top procurement platforms use pre-configured connectors to extract real-time data from ERP systems, contract repositories, supplier portals, and accounting systems—eliminating manual uploads and human error.
Platforms like Suplari and Terzo employ advanced data extraction techniques and transformers to normalize information from invoices, contracts, and purchase orders into unified data models. This ensures AI analyzes your complete procurement ecosystem, not fragmented snapshots. For organizations scaling their data infrastructure, following spend data management best practices becomes essential for maintaining data integrity across growing procurement operations.
Explainability: Understanding AI reasoning
When AI flags a $200,000 budget overrun or recommends supplier consolidation, procurement managers need transparent reasoning. Advanced platforms provide drill-down capabilities showing the specific contract details, spending patterns, and supplier performance metrics behind each insight.
For contract leakage alerts, the system should surface violated contract terms, affected purchase orders, and quantified financial impact. This transparency enables confident decision-making and stakeholder communication. Understanding how AI agents change how procurement work gets done helps teams leverage these explanatory capabilities effectively.
Explainable AI also supports continuous improvement. When teams understand which variables drive outcomes, they can refine policies, supplier relationships, and approval workflows—an advantage amplified by emerging reinforcement learning techniques in procurement that optimize decisions through iterative learning.
Security, compliance, and governance controls
Enterprise procurement operates under strict compliance requirements—SOC 2, ISO certifications, and industry-specific regulations. Leading vendors maintain comprehensive trust centers documenting security controls, compliance certificates, and data handling policies.
Essential features include granular access controls, complete audit trails, and customizable data governance rules. The best procurement automation software enforces organizational policies automatically while providing full visibility into data access patterns.
Integration capabilities matter critically here. Top platforms work within existing infrastructure, respecting data residency requirements and security protocols without forcing sensitive supplier data or contract details into external systems.
Building confidence through validation and business cases
Modern AI procurement tools include validation mechanisms allowing teams to verify insights against source data. Users can click through from cost-saving recommendations directly to supporting invoices, contracts, and supplier performance metrics.
This transparency transforms AI from a "black box" into a trusted advisor that augments human expertise. For organizations evaluating these capabilities, building a strong business case for AI in procurement requires demonstrating both the technical trustworthiness and measurable ROI these systems deliver—empowering procurement professionals to make informed, verifiable, data-backed decisions.
Key takeaways: choosing the right AI procurement tools for your team
As procurement continues to evolve into a strategic business function, the right procurement tools can make all the difference. Whether you're focused on improving the purchasing process, optimizing spend management, reducing manual errors, or gaining real-time visibility into procurement risks, there are AI solutions built to meet your needs.
Here are a few final takeaways to guide your selection process:
- Look for platforms that integrate with your existing systems and help you customize purchasing workflows.
- Prioritize solutions that deliver actionable insights, not just reports.
- Ensure the platform supports the full procurement cycle—from intake and sourcing to supplier onboarding and contract management.
- Evaluate whether the tool supports strategic decision making through advanced analytics, supplier performance tracking, and market intelligence.
- Choose tools with a user-friendly interface to drive adoption across business users and finance teams.
But what comes next is even more transformative: AI-powered Procurement Agents. These intelligent systems will act on your behalf, handle tasks end to end, and support the entire procurement cycle—from supplier onboarding and strategic sourcing to contract negotiation and spend management. They will bring structure to complex procurement processes while offering the flexibility and speed that today’s business environment demands.
For procurement professionals, leaders, and finance teams alike, the message is clear: those who embrace AI-powered procurement tools—and prepare for the agentic AI future—will not only operate more efficiently, but also gain a lasting competitive advantage.To see the future of procurement, book a demo with Suplari today.
