Appian has launched ProcureSight to enable federal procurement professionals to accelerate acquisitions and achieve better outcomes. Although it is powered by Appian’s AI process automation, ProcureSight does not require an Appian user licence and will be available free to all US procurement professionals.
Ben Allen, Public Sector Solutions Vice President, Appian, said, “ProcureSight is the only solution of its kind specifically designed for federal government procurement professionals.
“It finds the relevant data they need with source links, automatically generates insights from that data, significantly simplifies the creation of required documentation, and enhances overall efficiency. ProcureSight effectively addresses the challenges that have long-hindered the government’s procurement efforts.”
Why is Appian targeting procurement?
Procurement, especially in a government environment, is a complex and paper-hungry monster. Inside the military, it is even more so. The breadth of items that need procuring, the vast array of suppliers and the need to meet budgetary and operational targets also add to the problems.
What Appian is looking to do is help simplify a process that is hard to understand and one that consumes a large amount of time. In announcing ProcureSight at Appian World 2024, the company stated:
“The US federal government’s mandated procurement process creates an overwhelming documentation burden. Referencing previous procurements expedites the process and enables agencies to gain valuable insights into past suppliers, procurement methods, costs, timelines, and more.
“Federal procurement professionals currently must search multiple websites to gather past solicitation and award information, and even if the data is discovered, it often lacks the completeness and contextual information needed to make it valuable.”
ProcureSight is designed to simplify the data search challenge. Providing a user knows what they are looking for, they enter the search term into ProcureSight, and it will go find all relevant items on government databases. It does this by searching SAM.gov and USASpending.
But this is more than just an advanced search. As might be expected with Appian’s focus on LLMs and AI, it relies on the Appian engine to get accurate data. It will not only search for references to the search terms but also ensure that it only returns answers relevant to procurement.
Appian calling out six key benefits
Appian has highlighted six key benefits that ProcureSight will deliver. They are:
- Find relevant past procurements, fast. ProcureSight uses semantic search to find relevant past procurements, unlike public websites that often provide poor and irrelevant search results.
- Gain insights from past procurements. ProcureSight automatically displays key insights, such as best-in-class contract use, average time to award, average award amount, average contract length, small business data, and socioeconomic data.
- View all solicitation and award data in one place. With ProcureSight you can view procurements end to end, linking solicitation and award data in a unified view.
- Accelerate procurement creation. Get insights from previous solicitations and awards to improve future acquisitions.
- Achieve better procurement outcomes. Write better requirements based on an improved understanding of suppliers, market trends, pricing dynamics, and the regulatory landscape.
- Accelerate document creation. ProcureSight templates make it easier to create documents such as statements of work (SOWs), requests for information (RFIs), and vendor questionnaires. It uses AI to prompt documentation creation based on the topics required in existing documents. ProcureSight’s AI chatbot helps users drill into the data to uncover more information.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Anything simplifying and improving procurement, especially in the defence arena, will be welcomed. The increased pressure on supply chains, as military units increase their deployments, increases the risk of a supply failure.
It is not just the military that struggles with deployment. The increased incidents of natural disasters across the US that require a FEMA response also create procurement challenges. The speed with which goods are needed and the volume of goods require an expedited procurement solution.
One of the benefits not called out by Appian is the potential for reducing fraud. In both the examples above, fraud is a major and ongoing challenge. Comparing previous procurements and getting accurate data should help reduce that risk. More importantly, it will allow procurement professionals to spend more time on getting the best value for money.
