AI-supported "add-ons" for buyers within 48 hours

Within a tight timeframe of just 48 hours, the teams had to develop innovative, practical use cases that utilize the generative AI capabilities within Ivalua's Source-to-Pay (S2P) platform. The special feature: All innovations had to be developed as functional "add-ons", i.e. as Ivalua-certified applications that can be activated for customers.

The participating teams used the generative AI service "AskIVA", the intuitive no-code configuration tools and the Ivalua framework to create a variety of use cases. The winners of the Innovation Cup will be presented at the upcoming Ivalua NOW conferences and made available to customers in the next platform release. Ivalua has recently opened its Add-On Store for partners to maintain and publish their own developments. An expert panel of procurement leaders from customer organizations and Ivalua executives judged the submitted projects. The winning innovations are:

1st place: Fluxym

With the Smart Configuration Assistant, this team has developed an assistant that automatically creates the required configurations based on specifications, suggests optimizations for existing workflows and creates supporting documentation. This significantly speeds up project runtimes. For example, a fully configured workflow with suggestions for improvement was created within seconds from a document with workflow specifications written in natural language. The team also demonstrated that they could easily replicate the same solution on any configuration of the Ivalua platform.

2nd place: Cyrias

Cyrias has developed Chatwatch, an intelligent messaging monitor and assistant that summarizes missed messages and conversations from colleagues or suppliers and provides support in replying or translating them. By analyzing chat messages, it can detect suspicious or fraudulent activity and compliance issues.

3rd place (tie): OJC & Ivalua

The OJC team has developed a procurement exploration feature that allows procurement to search the internet and find potential suppliers to invite to tender based on user-defined criteria. Automated supplier onboarding activities can also be initiated.

The Ivalua team enhanced the AI assistant IVA: users of the Ivalua platform can interact with the content of any screen and use data obtained via the Internet for enrichment or support. For example, they demonstrated how IVA can be used to assist buyers with online reviews, search for alternative products or answer questions about specifications, usage, performance and maintenance.

No-code support for AI assistant

The results showed the tremendous benefits of the no-code approach for the AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA): With the Ivalua platform, customers gain access to pre-built generative AI capabilities embedded in the S2P process, as well as the ability to configure their own use cases - without having to write a line of code. This underscores Ivalua's focus on rapid delivery of standard best practices that enable customers to innovate for procurement and gain competitive advantage.

The competition also underlined the value of Ivalua's partner ecosystem. Currently, around 2,000 partner consultants worldwide are certified for Ivalua's platform. They have extensive expertise in spend management and contribute significantly to Ivalua's high pace of innovation.