Easier than ever
With Kommers, Primona help public and private organisations to gain control and to steamline their management of procurements, supplier contracts and purchase orders - from need to invoice. Kommers makes it easier!
Primona and REUSE Company in intelligent co-operation on Procurement using AI
Primona and REUSE Company in intelligent co-operation on Procurement using AI
The Swedish company Primona, a well-known supplier of the procurement- and purchasing system Kommers and REUSE Scandinavia, a subsidiary of REUSE Company in Spain, a leading provider of natural language processing, today announced they have entered cooperation. The companies disclose that they will launch an artificial intelligence-based solution for natural language processing, that will revolutionise requirement specification work in procurement. The solution will be launched during the spring as an option called Kommers KAI.
An innovation is the result of a development process and creative thinking and to use existing resources in a completely new way, hence creating disruptive added value. This definition characterises the solution that Primona is now introducing as a direct result of the co-operation with The REUSE Company, the leading provider of Natural Language Processing, a cornerstone in Artificial Intelligence. The CEO for REUSE Scandinavia, Mr. Christer Fröling, explains how it has been used so far.
"Our clients need to process large amount of written information that are available in a variety of domains from the aeronautic, vehicle and defense industry. Interpreting a text, getting feedback on the quality of that text regarding semantics and syntax, is a crucial activity for avoiding misunderstandings, misinterpretations and other problems between people and between organisations.”
Although AI-based language processing is not a new phenomena on its own, the application of integrating it in a procurement system is both new and revolutionary. Primona, a company with many years of experience in structured procurement with many renowned organisations, has so far focused on process optimisation in procurement. The cooperation will extend the undertaking, Mr. Ragnar Lindholm, Head of marketing at Primona explains:
"Our IT-system Kommers is currently used to facilitate procurement and purchasing in both public and private organisations. In procurement, we have so far devoted our efforts into streamlining the process, while the requirement specification work has been left to the Procurement Officers, hence we have limited our commitment to templates and phrase libraries. In co-operation with The REUSE Company we are now entering a new era where we will actually assist in formulating the requirements, we specifically want to assist in the specification work on the object to be contracted, to avoid misinterpretations.”
In Sweden, official figures for the public procurement value exceed 60 billion Euro and like in other countries, there are often complains on the shortcomings in the contract documents. Requirement phrases are simply poorly formulated which leads to difficulties for both the Tenderers and the Procurement Officers. As a result, it is not possible to guarantee that the right goods or services will be delivered to meet customer expectations.
"When Mr. Lindholm made an inquiry with us whether we could offer a solution for AI and natural language processing, we were extremely excited. The procurement documents often contain a lot of information and it must be properly formulated to make the outcome as expected. Using our knowledge-based technology and implementing it in Kommers will be a minor revolution in procurement" Mr. Fröling explains.
The concept is based on many years of research and development of industrial companies such as Airbus and will be marketed as an option called Kommers KAI (Kommers Artificial Intelligence). According to Mr. Lindholm “KAI” should be viewed as a person.
"The idea is that Kommers KAI should be perceived as a new colleague, who helps you in the formulation of requirement phrases and contract documents. We will be offering Kommers KAI for use in every page where you enter structured text phrases."
The launch of the option is scheduled for the spring 2019 and will initially be available in Swedish and English.
2015