CORK, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Keelvar, a global pioneer of intelligent sourcing optimization and automation solutions, today launched the next-generation of its Autonomous Sourcing solution which, combined with its Sourcing Optimization platform, fuels a revolutionary approach to sourcing. The announcement makes Keelvar the only provider in the market to offer an optimization and automation solution in one tool for transformed sourcing across the full spend lifecycle – from strategic to tail – with no training or sourcing experience required.
“Many procurement teams are under-resourced, yet have increasing workloads with faster turnaround times expected by internal stakeholders. Legacy sourcing applications are no longer fit for purpose as they are either too difficult to use, don’t work for all spend types or too basic to handle complexity,” said Alan Holland, founder & CEO of Keelvar. “Keelvar Autonomous Sourcing solution extends our Sourcing Optimization platform, enabling businesses to make optimization available throughout the organization. Keelvar enables sourcing teams to scale sourcing excellence across the entire spend lifecycle to easily and efficiently manage large, complex sourcing events as well as simple, repetitive, ad-hoc tenders all from one easy-to-use tool, without increasing resources.”
Keelvar’s 2023 Voices of Sourcing Report found 89% of sourcing professionals are banking on automation to reduce time spent on manual tasks, while challenged to cut costs. Keelvar’s Autonomous Sourcing solution meets this demand by empowering business users, not just sourcing teams, to manage frequent spot bids and low-spend events themselves all while keeping governance with the sourcing team. While its Sourcing Optimizer streamlines complex and large tenders through intelligent recommendations and analysis for human action, the Autonomous Sourcing solution leverages category-specific bots to fully automate workflows around supplier invitation, bid monitoring and more – enabling teams to reduce tactical workload by up to 90% and costs by up to 25%.
Leading enterprises such as Coca-Cola, Mars and Siemens are leveraging Keelvar’s Autonomous Sourcing solution to fuel better decisions, reduce maverick spend, improve supplier relationships and generate cost savings.
“As one of the early adopters of Keelvar’s AI sourcing solution, I can honestly say it’s been groundbreaking for us in the Coca-Cola system,” said Alan Smith, procurement director, global logistics (CEPG) at Coca-Cola. “We now have a structured digital solution to manage all our “Off Tender” requests, removing hundreds of emails from our inboxes on a weekly basis.”
“With Keelvar, Mars now has a fit-for-purpose optimizer that we use to run large scale, complex sourcing events and Autonomous Sourcing which is built onto the optimizer and very intuitive. Our Associates can leverage AI to build and create events,” said Sam de Frates, vice president of commercial for Europe, CIS & Turkey for Mars. “Mars had a base-level aim to create 75 sourcing events during the first year of using Keelvar, but this was more than doubled to 150-160 events, and we now have more than 150 users using Keelvar.”
“We’ve been using Keelvar since 2019 and currently have three different bots for three different categories. They are highly utilized with very happy users,” said Swaroopa Sahu, senior digitalization specialist at Siemens. “There are two major things we look for and get with Keelvar. The first is usability and the ease of use for our users to initiate sourcing events, and second to report, capture and track the data that comes out afterwards.”
The widespread availability of the Autonomous Sourcing solution reaffirms Keelvar’s vision of making frictionless, no-code automation available to all, from large enterprises to mid-market businesses. For more information, please visit www.keelvar.com.
About Keelvar
Keelvar is moving procurement forward with its best-in-breed software for intelligent sourcing optimization and autonomous sourcing, designed for easy adoption, scale, and productivity. Keelvar’s SaaS-based award-winning products utilize artificial intelligence, machine learning, and category expertise to deliver purpose-built solutions that are delivering results for blue-chip global companies and mid-sized enterprises. Customers are turning to Keelvar to advance their strategic sourcing journey spanning logistics, packaging, direct materials, and indirect spends. That momentum has resulted in Keelvar receiving $24 million in Series B funding in April 2022 and steady growth of its team worldwide, with headquarters in Cork, Ireland. Visit www.keelvar.com for more information.
