“The expectation level of procurement is rising. Today's stuff that was not possible a year ago, that felt like science fiction three years ago, is something that we can create for our customers today.” - Sammeli Sammalkorpi, Co-founder & CEO, Sievo
Most procurement organizations aren't short on data. What they're short on is time. Time to analyze data, time to connect the dots, and time to translate insights into action.
In this Provider of the Week conversation, we speak with Sammeli Sammalkorpi, Co-Founder and CEO of Sievo, about the next evolution of procurement analytics. From AI-powered opportunity detection to the rise of agentic procurement, our discussion focuses on how organizations can get more value from the information they already have.
What differentiates Sievo?
"It really boils down to three components. The first component is building enterprise-scale procurement data infrastructure. That's something we've been building for 20 years for these large enterprises.
Then, at the same time, we also have this community data, 2 percent of global GDP, out of which we can create benchmarks, price trends, and opportunities.
But then the third component really is that data is not valuable. It is the actions that we can generate together with our customers and their procurement decision-makers. It's not only providing the clean data, but actually providing the intelligence and the recommendations. ‘What should I do now in this condition, in my situation, with my data, to drive procurement value?’"
How has customer demand changed in recent years?
"Over the last 10 years, I do believe the procurement mandate has gone from, let's say, savings for the CFO into a much wider mandate. It's got a more nuanced, more complex, more challenging ask that procurement is facing.
Then at the same time, I think right now we are living through the AI disruption. I do believe it's the biggest transformation in my career and your career and procurement's career. The expectation level, and rightly so, is heightening."
What capability do long-standing customers rely on most?
"If I listen to our customers, but also if I look at the usage statistics of the software, it all boils down to this self-service reporting where users can very flexibly analyze spend data, savings data, and carbon data from multiple different perspectives.
We've put tens of years of design work into making that very effective. Users love it."
What new or unexpected use cases are you seeing from procurement teams?
"The new frontier we keep exploring is the capability to combine structured data analytics with unstructured data analytics. Traditionally, procurement analytics has been all about structured data because that's the only thing software could process at scale.
But now suddenly with large language models, software can process all the unstructured data: contracts, invoices, material specifications, and so on.
One CPO asked a great question. ‘We've negotiated certain contract clauses with suppliers for 20 years. Do we ever enforce these clauses? Can we go through all the unstructured data and see that we've negotiated these liabilities for the last 20 years but never enforced them?’
That was a lightbulb moment for me."
How does Sievo help procurement connect its work to broader business goals?
"It's been one of my missions over the last 20 years that we should get procurement out of this category savings box. Category savings is the lingo only procurement understands. Nobody else cares about procurement categories. What we are trying to help our customers do is translate that to business language.
Quite often that means asking, what is the profitability impact that this commodity change has on your end products? Or if I have a problem with a supplier, can I point out that there's $500 million of revenue at risk because of this supplier? Again, I've translated the procurement challenge into business language."
How does Sievo fit into the broader procurement technology ecosystem?
"Our strategy has always been focusing on procurement analytics. Our humble role is to be a valuable part of our customers' procurement tech landscape.
The first role of Sievo is to bring all of this information together and be the information hub. But then we also play a second role. We provide insights and recommendations, and increasingly, we are creating connectivity back to operational systems. We want to think of ourselves as the procurement brain, and then the execution, the hands and legs, are the operational systems."
To learn more about Sievo, visit their profile in the Art of Procurement Provider Directory.