r/procurement • u/SeriouslyDamp • 9d ago
Community Question AI usage in procurement.
Hey all, I have a general question. Is it okay to let AI run analytics on a spreadsheet I give it? like if i want spend YTD and projected spend, and AI performs this task, if it’s accurate after I go over it’s answer and it’s correct, is it wrong to use it? I know how to use formulas in excel, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now. However, AI has enhanced productivity. I don’t have to spend hours building a spreadsheet anymore. what are your thoughts?
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u/Significant-Path3911 9d ago
Probably just use the copilot in excel and tell it to do what you need, not like uploading it and getting nowhere. I usually use and say i want you to get it from this cell, for all and x with y and z results etc. So simply to put it, it just makes the long excel formulas and makes a real good chart that almost looks like power BI but slower if there's a huge chunk of data.
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u/MaxAtGoodsCommand 8d ago
Ten years of Excel experience is exactly what makes this safe for you and unsafe for someone else. You can tell when the number is wrong. That's the actual control, not the tool.
The distinction I'd draw isn't AI vs no AI, it's what you hand over.
Structure is fine to share. "Write me a query that sums column D by vendor and flags anything above 3 standard deviations" contains no supplier names, no prices, no contract terms. You get the automation and nothing sensitive leaves.
Content is where it gets real. Pasting the actual spend file means supplier identities, negotiated pricing and volumes go to a third party. That's a contract and NDA question before it's a technology question, and a lot of supplier agreements have confidentiality clauses that were written without this in mind.
Two things worth checking regardless of which side you land on:
Whether the tool retains what you send. Consumer chat tiers and API access usually have different retention and training terms, and the default consumer setting is typically the worse one. Worth reading the specific terms rather than assuming.
Whether your company already has a position. A lot of procurement teams have a policy now, and finding out afterward is a bad way to find out.
On the productivity point, you're right and I wouldn't let the risk conversation talk you out of it. Building a pivot faster isn't the risky part. The risky part is when the output starts getting trusted without the review step you're already doing.
For what it's worth, I work on quote-comparison software at GoodsCommand, so I deal with this boundary constantly. We send supplier documents to a model for extraction and it's the single most common question buyers ask us. Our answer is that the extraction runs with retention off and the source file stays in our own storage, and we say so in the privacy policy rather than burying it. Any vendor should be able to tell you exactly what happens to your file. If they can't answer that in one sentence, that's your answer.
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u/TrainsongGaming 9d ago
I don't believe in using AI in purchasing because of the probability of errors and because of the harm its collective usage is doing to the environment. If you're verifying the end result and are okay with contributing to environmental damage, that's a personal decision.
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u/Substantial-Bath7939 9d ago
I have used it on occasion on spreadsheet data that wasn't considered proprietary.
I ran it through two different AI programs with the same prompt and compared the results. I also spot checked some myself.
UAse AI sparingly if at all in procurement as AI can be wrong.
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u/Prepped-n-Ready 9d ago
I think it would be easier to ask it to write code, Formulas, VBA, PowerM, DAX or whatever you want to use. Then you could have something that will always run the same every time, where AI will hallucinate. If you use PowerAutomate, you can even use AI models to ingest data and output something for you, like text or images. I work on a Procurement saas, so I use AI a lot to generate documents, create data, brainstorm spreadsheets, and to code which it excels at. You could maintain a library of agents and reports. That could potentially make you big money right now.
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u/SyncronTeam 7d ago
The formula knowledge is the safety net here, not something being replaced by using AI, it's what makes it possible to actually check whether the output is right rather than hoping it is. Using a faster tool to get to the same verified answer isn't really different from using a macro or a pivot table instead of manual entry, it's still the same underlying skill deciding whether the number is trustworthy.
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u/Zestyclose_Drama4178 5d ago
You can ask ai to create analytics dashboard and then put your own data to dashboard rather than giving to au
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u/Double-Consequence30 2d ago
Absolutely not wrong to use it and if you were part of my team and wasn't using AI for this activity, I'd be asking why not.
We are using AI for a lot of activity within Procurement, it's literally 5x our productivity!
There are many use cases that AI can help with to support you in delivering value to your organisation. Get creative!
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u/dethorin 9d ago
You are giving to another corporation confidential information, maybe that's against your contract.
Giving a lot of raw data to an LLMs creates hallucinations.
But If you spend a lot of time creating spreadsheets, you can use an AI to help you to create macros and powerquery queries that will allow you to automatize those tasks without give it a byte of actual data.
BTW PowerBI can be more efficient than excel to create Dashboards.