Zycus’ AI Council Charts the Course of Generative AI in Procurement

Merlin Assist – Gen AI chatbot awarded Innovative Solution of the Year by CPO100

Zycus, a pioneer in Cognitive Procurement Software, proudly announces the continued success of its AI Council, uniting CPOs representing over $0.5 trillion of annual spends, and leading analysts to propel AI advancements in Source-to-Pay (S2P).

The recent session focused on Gen-AI use cases.

Innovative Leap with Merlin Assist

At the heart of these advancements is Merlin Assist, an AI-powered chatbot integrated with Microsoft Teams, offering a singular, streamlined interface for procurement activities. Enriched with the capability to utilize any Generative AI LLM, like OpenAI / ChatGPT or Bard AI, Merlin Assist is poised to redefine business engagement within procurement. Incidentally, Merlin Assist – Gen AI chatbot was awarded the most “Innovative Solution of the year” by CPO100 at their 2^nd annual conclave held in Dubai.

Aatish Dedhia, Founder & CEO of Zycus, emphasizes, “Merlin Assist is more than a technological innovation; it’s a paradigm shift in procurement. Integrating Generative AI into our platform empowers users to navigate procurement processes with unprecedented ease and intelligence. We have always believed AI is the new UI, and Gen-AI truly makes it possible.”

Council's Collaborative Triumphs

The AI Council, comprising prominent leaders Hervé Le Faou (Heineken), Brian Roche (Westfield Insurance), Daniele Landi (Danone), Piotr Teodorczyk (Suntory Holdings), Florence Tinsley-Roy (PwC), Robert Andersen (NewsCorp), Shyamala Chalakudi (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Chris Sawchuk (The Hackett Group), and Kishore Pejavara (Delta Air Lines), among others, prioritized key Gen-AI use cases for the source-to-pay process. The members voted on the 20+ Gen-AI uses cases demonstrated live by Zycus which were developed over the past 4 months based on specific inputs from AI Council meet held in June 2023.

Top voted priorities include:

• RFP generation,
• Category strategy development,
• Contract summary creation, and
• Supplier discovery.

These use cases address current challenges and pave the way for strategic advancements in procurement.

Path to General Availability

While thousands of end users across key Zycus clients across the USA & Europe are currently using the Beta version of Merlin Assist, the Gen-AI powered Merlin Assist is scheduled for general availability by early next year. This early adoption is a testament to the significant impact Merlin Assist is anticipated to have across various industries.

About Zycus:

Zycus is the pioneer in Cognitive Procurement software and has been a trusted partner of choice for large global enterprises for two decades. Zycus has been consistently recognized by Gartner, Forrester, and other analysts for its Source-to-Pay integrated suite. Zycus powers its S2P software with the revolutionary Merlin AI Suite. Merlin AI takes over the tactical tasks and empowers procurement and AP officers to focus on strategic projects; offers data-driven actionable insights for quicker and smarter decisions, and its conversational AI offers a B2C type user-experience to the end-users.

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