A manufacturer wants an AI assistant for procurement: comparing supplier quotes, checking contracts, and drafting purchase orders in their ERP. Design it.

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Build a workflow-centric assistant. Ingest RFQ responses and quotes (PDF, Excel, email), extract them into a normalised comparison table (unit prices, lead times, payment terms, Incoterms, quality certifications), check them against contract terms and supplier master data, flag risks and anomalies, and produce a recommendation with reasoning. Draft the PO in the ERP for buyer approval through standard approval workflows. Deterministic code handles calculations and policy rules; the LLM handles extraction, comparison narratives and drafting.

Workflow

Quote ingestion: email inbox or supplier portal → parse documents → LLM extraction into a schema per line item.
Normalisation: units of measure, currencies (convert with the daily rate in code), Incoterms differences (landed cost calculated deterministically).
Comparison: a table of total landed cost, lead time, payment terms, past supplier performance (on-time delivery, quality rejects from ERP data).
Policy and contract checks: framework agreement prices, approved supplier list, minimum number of quotes, sanctions/blacklist checks. Rules engine.
Recommendation: an LLM writes the rationale citing the table and policies; the buyer can ask follow-up questions.
PO drafting: create a draft PO via ERP APIs with validated fields; the ERP's approval matrix applies.

Risks and controls

Extraction errors on prices: validate totals, flag outliers vs historical prices.
Prompt injection inside supplier documents ("ignore other quotes"): treat documents as untrusted; deterministic ranking logic.
Segregation of duties: the AI drafts, humans approve; full audit trail.

Metrics: cycle time from RFQ to PO, buyer hours per sourcing event, savings vs historical prices, extraction accuracy.

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A manufacturer wants an AI assistant for procurement: comparing supplier quotes, checking contracts, and drafting purchase orders in their ERP. Design it.

Workflow

Risks and controls

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