With all the dynamics facing the hospitality industry, like shifting room prices, labour shortages, changing travel habits, and the push for sustainability, procurement plays a key role in handling these issues. It acts as a strategy to cut costs and create value.

Hospitality procurement stands at the center of valuable data, coming from both inside (like spending, guest trends, and service standards) and outside (like supplier details and market knowledge). By skillfully managing this data, and investing in the latest technology advancements including AI, procurement teams can meet strategic goals that go beyond just cost, quality, and service.

The Power of Data and Procurement

Enhanced data can drive decision-making throughout the procurement process, from strategy development and supplier evaluations to negotiations and supplier performance management. When executed effectively, it can amplify value-creation efforts beyond cost savings. Here are five key areas where data proves invaluable in hospitality:

• Optimising spend and demand. Leveraging AI category management can become streamlined and automated for the hospitality sector. Spend categorisation algorithms meticulously arrange expenditure data. Accurate demand forecasts enable improved sourcing and inventory control. Gen AI empowers procurement leaders to inquire about spend and market data, identifying risks or savings opportunities. For standard supplies, bots can make decisions, while AI-generated contracts expedite processes. AI also supports discovering new suppliers, managing supply chain risks, and forecasting demand for frequently ordered items.
• Managing external profitability drivers. Hospitality procurement teams can combine internal data with industry reports to identify trends in key commodity prices. This enables procurement officers to remain updated on price fluctuations and negotiate more effectively with suppliers. Procurement can analyze how price changes impact service margins and take actions such as switching suppliers, hedging essential commodities, or adapting purchasing strategies. For instance, a hotel chain might use a price forecasting model to determine monthly hedging amounts for bulk linen purchases.
• Managing supplier performance. Digital dashboards provide a transparent view of supplier performance relative to contracts. Timely warnings of potential issues permit prompt intervention. Advanced tools calculate the total cost of ownership, facilitating robust, data-backed negotiations. AI also augments supplier management by creating reports and supplier risk profiles from available data online, and by automating negotiation scripts and communications.
• Managing supply risks. By 2030, hospitality procurement will leverage digital twins of their supply chain, mapping everything from food suppliers to logistics providers. This facilitates real-time analysis of supply risks, costs, and carbon footprints. Procurement teams can anticipate risks, explore scenarios, and respond swiftly to changes, guaranteeing that service elements are delivered at the lowest cost with minimal environmental impact.

How AI will drive scalable success in hospitality procurement

A Gartner survey from July 2024, including 258 global participants, shows that 72% of procurement leaders are focusing on adding AI to their strategies. In fact, AI-enabled P2P solutions will transform procurement in hospitality by automating routine tasks and analyzing complex data in the coming years.

This emerging transformation will lead to efficient management of supplies and services while enhancing decision-making. By providing insights into spending patterns, supplier performance, and market trends, it will allow hospitality operators to anticipate demand, streamline processes, and improve operational efficiency.

AI will elevate efficiency by analysing spending patterns, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and enabling data-driven purchasing strategies. It will support advanced automation of tasks such as purchase order processing and invoice management, reducing human error and speeding up transactions.

Furthermore, AI will improve supplier management through performance data analysis, supporting superior supplier selection, negotiation, and relationship management. With predictive analytics, algorithms will deliver precise demand forecasts by examining historical data and external factors, optimising inventory, and minimising waste. When it comes to risk management, AI will provide real-time insights into potential supply chain disruptions, enabling proactive contingency plans. In terms of contract management, AI’s natural language processing will rapidly review and negotiate contracts, identify key terms, and accelerate the contract lifecycle while ensuring compliance.

Gartner’s research offers three key tips for CPOs who want to make the most of AI in procurement:

1. Emphasise data governance: To harness AI, you need extensive, well-curated training data that goes beyond mere performance metrics. This should include data on procurement processes. It’s vital to collect, scrutinise, and maintain internal and external procurement data in a structured format for optimum AI effectiveness. Standardising decision-making models and investing in process mining can help uncover procurement “dark data” for more robust AI training.
2. Embed privacy standards in contracts: Collaborate with legal and compliance teams to identify AI-related data privacy risks and create protective measures for your organisation. Develop and communicate policies about AI data rights to major suppliers, and ensure data privacy standards play a major role in supplier evaluations.
3. Raise procurement thresholds: As machine buyers become increasingly common, these technologies will handle many routine sourcing and procurement activities. Procurement teams will take on more strategic roles, focusing on managing exceptions, dealing with complex cases, and advising stakeholders or AI systems on strategic purchasing decisions.

Business priorities are shifting faster than ever. The ongoing growth of data, amplified by AI, is adding even more complexity. Data issues impact the end-to-end procurement process, generating uncontrolled spending and causing a lack of spending visibility, and leading to a lack of suppliers’ insights and performance analytics.

Futurelog P2P aids procurement professionals in streamlining vendor, contract, and order management value chains through procurement automation and AI. Futurelog P2P assists teams in enhancing efficiency and strategic sourcing with seamless system integration, transforming procurement into your competitive advantage. This solution is customised with the capabilities to support your teams’ efforts, utilising the tools they are already familiar with.

Ultimately, by partnering with a hospitality P2P procurement solution partner like FutureLog who is committed to innovation and offering the latest advancements, including AI, hospitality companies will be able to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

About FutureLog

FutureLog provides a fully integrated, cloud-based procure-to-pay platform for the hospitality industry. We facilitate an end-to-end procurement process from purchasing, through inventory management and up to invoice processing; all available in one platform to save you time and money. The FutureLog procure-to-pay platform is the foundation for seamless connectivity between Hotel Operations, Corporate Centres and Suppliers.

Suzanne Ward
Vice President Digital Marketing and Communication
+41 41 759 1861
FutureLog AG

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