Zycus set forth its vision of procurement transformation for organizations in the Middle East and around the world. Taking to Mr. Lalit Dhamija, a Global Procurement Trainer and Practitioner, as part of Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Chain (CIPS) MENA Procurement Master Talks Podcast Series, Mr. Dixit Jasani, Senior Vice President, Sales, and Marketing, Zycus mentioned, “While meeting your business objective try to choose the vendor that bring real automation and not just computerization of your existing processes”. Mr. Dixit was elaborating on the parameters that companies should keep in mind while specifying their requirement for an e-procurement solution, especially in the post-COVID-19 world. He stated that more and more organizations are coming up with a road map for the full Source-to-Pay (S2P) suite. While the focus is back on strategic sourcing, procurement leaders are also working towards self-enablement of its business users & the stakeholders by implementing easy to use procurement technology platforms that can facilitate 100% paperless, workflow-driven standard procurement processes driving cost savings, efficiencies & compliance.
“When you have shortlisted top 3-4 vendor after the RFP process, don’t just chose the vendor based on the responses filled, ask them to demonstrate and run rapid class room sessions. Ask your business users to play different roles and have hands-on experience of the technology solution. Community testing of new technologies will help in greater adoption & accurate choice of the technology”. He also suggested that procurement leaders should invariably evaluate the Tech providers on their R&D investments. “In SAAS world it’s very important that technology providers remain committed to long term investment on continued enhancement of its applications to keep its end customers updated with most advanced & dynamic needs.”
Zycus recently announced two new AI BOTs categories under its umbrella brand Merlin A.I. Suite to tackle two of the most complex & effort intensive tactical areas related to procurement, Invoice Management and Contract Management. Merlin AI BOTs for Contract Life Cycle Management: De-Risker BOT aims at providing complete visibility into potential risks in the contract along with suggestions to mitigate them. It will automatically identify metadata and clauses, benchmark it against organizations’ best practices, and highlight risk score at the contract level.
Contract Meta Data Extraction BOT facilitates extraction of key metadata from contracts & offer greater visibility and tracking. Secondly, the Merlin AI BOTs to support rapid AP Automation: Invoice Extraction & AP Smart Desk BOT is a massive upgrade on traditional OCR based invoice extraction technology as it leverage AI technology which helps you automate invoice pulling from emails and extraction of its data in a highly accurate way. The system is template agnostic and the AI engine ensure continuous learning to save you extra cost on periodic training of the module.
Talking about Zycus’ pioneering contribution to AI powered procurement technology Mr. Dixit Jasani mentioned, “When everyone believed that AI in procurement was just a thought, we have made it a reality. As soon as the corona virus pandemic started, legal and procurement teams from our clients asked for intelligent ways to identify Force Majeure clauses from thousands of contracts in their repository. Within two weeks, on back of our 500+ strong R&D workforce, we enabled our CLM customers to leverage AI powered Force Majeure BOT. The BOT rapidly scans through contracts and flags the organization from associated risks. The same task that used to take 2-4 weeks, with substantial human intervention, will now be completed within few hours with the help of BOTs.”
