Knowing what you buy and who you buy it from sounds straightforward. In practice, for companies dealing in thousands of product lines from hundreds of suppliers, getting a clear picture of procurement patterns is surprisingly difficult. Product descriptions vary between suppliers. The same item might be coded differently depending on when it was purchased or who raised the order.
Softrader Cloud’s Procurement Intelligence uses AI to solve this problem.
When purchase orders are raised in Softrader Cloud, the AI analyses each line item and assigns it to a product category. This happens automatically in the background – no extra work for your purchasing team.
The categorisation is based on the actual product descriptions, specifications and supplier information. The AI learns from your data, understanding the terminology your suppliers use and the types of products your business handles. Over time it becomes increasingly accurate at recognising what you’re buying.
This gives you something that’s traditionally been very hard to achieve: a consistent, reliable breakdown of your procurement by product type.
With consistent categorisation in place, you can answer questions that were previously difficult or impossible:
The Supplier Capability Report brings all of this together. For each supplier, you can see exactly what categories of product you’ve purchased from them, the volumes, and the time periods involved. This is real data from your actual transactions – not what the supplier claims they can do, but what they’ve actually delivered to you.
This intelligence feeds directly into better procurement decisions.
When you need to source a particular type of product, you can quickly identify which suppliers have successfully delivered similar items before. When a regular supplier lets you down, you can find alternatives who have proven capability in that product category.
For supplier reviews and negotiations, you have clear data on your relationship. You can see exactly what proportion of your spend on a particular category goes to each supplier, and how that has changed over time.
When tendering for new work, you can rapidly assess whether your existing supplier base can support the requirements. If you need to find new suppliers for certain product types, you know exactly where the gaps are.
The real value of Procurement Intelligence grows the longer you use it. Historical purchase data is categorised and analysed, building an increasingly complete picture of your supply chain capabilities.
New suppliers are automatically profiled as you start ordering from them. Existing supplier profiles update as your purchasing patterns evolve. The system maintains a living record of what your supply chain can actually deliver.
Supplier Capability Reports sit alongside the other supplier management tools in Softrader Cloud. You can access capability data from supplier records, from the purchasing screens, or through dedicated reports.
The categorisation data is also available for your own reporting. Export it to Excel, incorporate it into management dashboards, or use it as the basis for custom reports. The intelligence is yours to use however best fits your business.
The key advantage of using AI for this work is that it happens without manual effort. Traditional approaches to procurement categorisation require someone to classify every items, or rely on suppliers using consistent coding. Neither approach scales well.
With Procurement Intelligence, the classification happens automatically as orders flow through the system. Your purchasing team continues working as normal. The intelligence builds itself.
Contact us to learn more about Procurement Intelligence and Supplier Capability Reports.
