AI Agents for Procurement: 10 Use Cases and 13 Tools for 60% Better Efficiency
90% of businesses implementing AI agents report improved workflows, and employees utilizing these tools experience a 61% boost in efficiency.
In this article, we’ll explore how AI agents transform procurement, examine practical use cases across key procurement areas, and identify the specific solutions already available for each use case.
What Are AI Agents and Why Are They Special?
Imagine a digital helper that doesn’t just wait for you to tell it exactly what to do, but actually figures out the steps independently, learns from experience, and adapts as it goes. That’s the essence of an AI agent.
AI agents—often called “agentic AI” or “intelligent agents”—are a class of software entities distinguished by their ability to act autonomously to achieve goals. Unlike classic AI, which relies on predefined rules, autonomous agents can sense their environment and act on it over time to pursue their own agenda.
While chatbots like ChatGPT only respond to prompts but don’t autonomously plan or act, AI agents proactively determine actions, adapt to new information, and learn over time, making them far more flexible and powerful.
In practice, this means:
- Gathering data from APIs, databases, sensors, or user inputs
- Decomposing high-level objectives into actionable steps
- Executing those steps—calling APIs, updating records, sending messages, even controlling robots—and evaluating outcomes
Simple example: Autonomous procurement agents that negotiate contracts and manage supplier workflows without human intervention.
AI agents supercharge teams by handling complex, multi-step workflows on their own. They save time, reduce errors, and uncover optimizations human operators might miss. In short, they bring true autonomy to software—and that’s what makes them so special.
However, AI Agents Vary By the Degree Of Their Autonomy
Not all AI agents are the same, and that’s one of the many reasons some of them can be considered “just a fancy tool,” while others can serve as fully self-directed collaborators. Let’s dive into their autonomy spectrum.
- Assisted AI Agents with the Human-in-the-Loop Approach. Such agents act like super-charged helpers, suggesting actions, but every step needs your approval. Their autonomy rate is poor, and no plan is executed without a human click. For example, an agent drafts an RFQ for you, but you must review it before sending it.
- Supervised AI Agents (Human-On-the-Loop). Those run their plan end-to-end but flag exceptions or high-risk decisions for a human supervisor to review. They are moderately autonomous. For example, an agent automatically scores bids and only escalates those outside your risk thresholds.
- Unsupervised AI Agents (Human-Out-of-the-Loop) – fully execute within their domain, only notifying you of outcomes. Those set their own sub-goals, call APIs, update systems, and learns from feedback. For instance, an agent reorders inventory, negotiates small-value contracts, and refinances orders automatically.
- Last but not least, fully Autonomous (Adaptive) AI Agents that continuously sense, plan, act, and self-optimize—no human intervention required under normal conditions. These agents can handle unexpected events, refine strategies, and even reshape their own workflows. Imagine a multi-agent system that reroutes supply chains in real time across global networks, learning from market shocks and supplier performance – that’s what we’re talking about.
In summary, Low-autonomy agents are great for high-risk decisions or tight compliance, while high-autonomy agents are ideal for routine, high-volume tasks where errors have low impact.
AI Agents In All Parts Of the Procurement Process
AI agents can automate and enhance nearly every key stage of the procurement cycle from source to pay, freeing procurement teams from routine tasks, shortening cycle times, and boosting accuracy and transparency.
Thus, AI agents create end-to-end “agentic” workflows.
- Requirements Definition and Request Qualification
Agents quickly analyze and refine technical and business requirements, filling gaps without back-and-forth human clarification.
Existing solutions:
- Scalera.ai – originally designed for construction tender administration, its agent ingests RFP/tender documents, extracts technical requirements (material specifications, quantities), matches them to vendor capabilities, and highlights any missing information immediately.
- Supplier Sourcing and Selection
They monitor supplier databases, public marketplaces, and internal registries, evaluating cost, quality, ESG criteria, and resource availability.
Existing solutions:
- Fairmarkit automates repetitive spend and builds a strategic sourcing process for procurement teams.
- Lightsource.ai finds suppliers, sends RFQs (requests for quotes), and makes the sourcing decisions for the team.
- RFx Creation and Bid Evaluation
Agents auto-generate RFPs/RFQs based on past specs and objectives, then parse and rank incoming proposals with NLP models, highlighting anomalies or risky bids.
Existing solutions:
- Arkestro (former Bid Ops) is a predictive-procurement agent that pre-populates RFQs with “smart defaults” based on your past data, then ingests supplier bids, scores them against your targets, and highlights anomalies in real time, shrinking sourcing cycles from weeks to days.
- Contract Management
In seconds, they scan thousands of contracts to spot non-standard clauses, ensure compliance, and suggest standardized language for rapid editing.
Existing solutions:
- Bestagreement.ai is an AI-powered agent that scans procurement agreements to uncover hidden financial or compliance risks before you sign.
- Bestcompliance.ai automates and accelerates key compliance workflows for procurement. The AI agent scans contracts in 1–2 minutes, surfacing potential non-compliance issues and “red-flag” clauses far faster than manual review.
- Autonomous Negotiations
Agents conduct multi-round negotiations with suppliers, adjusting price, delivery, and payment terms in real time to maximize mutual benefit.
Existing solutions:
- Pactum’s AI agents are able to simultaneously conduct thousands of autonomous negotiations with their suppliers, finding better deals for both sides.
- Purchase Order Issuance and Fulfillment
They generate and place POs in ERP systems, manage execution, and track delivery status through transaction completion.
Existing solutions:
- Didero.ai uses AI to automate your most common workflows — from proactively checking in on orders to running an entire RFQ process.
- Invoice Processing and Payments
Agents automatically match invoices to POs, flag discrepancies, and prepare payments, drastically reducing manual checks.
Existing solutions:
- Precoro.com can prefill and match invoices with spot-on accuracy, saving the team’s time.
- Stampli.com is a procure-to-pay platform that replaces manual invoice processing with an end-to-end “agentic” workflow.
- Spend Analytics and Anomaly Detection
By continuously analyzing spend data, they spot unusual or incorrect transactions and recommend order consolidations for cost savings.
Existing solutions:
- Spendflo.com allows for maximizing procurement ROI with accurate procurement reports, guaranteeing up to 30% in savings.
- Risk Monitoring and Supplier Management
Agents track supplier financial health, geopolitical risks, and contract performance history—alerting you to potential disruptions before they occur.
Existing solutions:
- Resilinc.ai detects and helps to solve risks by monitoring the supply chain.
- Demand Forecasting and Inventory Optimization
Leveraging historical data and external signals (market trends, economic indicators), they predict demand accurately and trigger replenishment just in time, minimizing excess stock.
Existing solutions:
- Autone.io helps to optimize your inventory decisions, avoid stockouts, and boost sales.
Wrapping it Up
According to Gartner, by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024. This will enable 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously. What does this mean for businesses? Better results with fewer resources needed. And for professionals? Higher efficiency with a more strategic and creative approach because all routines will sooner or later become automated with agentic AI.
Start leveraging agents to transform your skill set and become an in-demand AI orchestrator.
Read also: How the construction company accelerated its Procurement agreement signing by 70% with BestCompliance.AI.