Zip Enhances Spend Orchestration Platform with AI-Powered Procurement Assistant

Zip has announced the integration of a generative artificial intelligence (AI) procurement assistant into its spend orchestration platform. This new function, along with two other AI-powered features, document extraction and input automation, promises to help firms expedite their procurement operations.

“The problem with business purchasing today is that much of the process is still cumbersome and time consuming,” said Lu Cheng, Zip Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, in a press release on Wednesday. “Zip’s generative AI capabilities change that, transforming this process by guiding employees through purchasing decisions, automating tedious tasks and reducing the complexity of navigating company policies.”

The AI procurement assistant assists staff with the purchasing process, automatically starting purchase requests and navigating the company's spending regulations. This new feature is intended to simplify and speed the purchase process, guaranteeing compliance with business regulations while decreasing manual intervention.

Furthermore, the platform's new AI document extraction tool can scan order forms, contracts, and other documents in seconds, parsing the data to produce a unified source of truth. This data is then used to automate procedures, increasing efficiency and accuracy in procurement operations. The AI intake automation tool automatically fills up purchase requests using data from order forms, reducing the need for human entry of parameters like price, item quantity, and billing frequency.