FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Addison, TX – (June 5, 2024) – In a move that reinvents the RFP process for procurement professionals, ERA Group is now offering a suite of e-sourcing services that harnesses the power of AI to save clients time, money, and effort. ERA Group improves the e-sourcing process for clients by doubling down on a key element missing in recent hype around AI: humans.
ERA Group uses human intelligence to improve reverse auctions
One tool in ERA Group’s e-sourcing package is reverse auctions, in which vendors submit preliminary RFIs and RFPs. This information is then translated into a live competitive bidding event that provides rankings based on a set of criteria, including price.
“Reverse auctions are the antidote to manual RFPs,” says Jeff Reynolds, an ERA Group Global Enterprise Partner. “It’s a form of e-sourcing that utilizes technology to streamline the RFP process. It both gathers the information and speeds up the cycle to get users to a decision-making point faster.”
But that’s only one part of the story.
“AI is great at gathering and measuring hard factors, such as price,” Reynolds says. “What it can’t do is employ non-price factors, such as quality, personal industry knowledge, judgement, and loyalty — which can all be considered while still minimizing costs.”
That’s where ERA’s expert humans come in. They provide unmatched industry knowledge, negotiating experience, and historical context. They pre-qualify and vet suppliers that want to enter the auction, ensuring they actually can do the job on which they are quoting. Technology, alone, just can’t do that.
Further, real humans understand the importance of incumbency in RFP decision-making. ERA experts take the history and value of an existing vendor relationship into consideration and combine it with the competitive environment of a reverse auction. This gives key decision-making information to procurement professionals looking to balance efficiency and cost with quality and commitment.
ERA maximizes e-sourcing for special expense categories
Businesses save an average of more than 10% across categories by using reverse auctions. Reverse auctions particularly excel at streamlining negotiation time and reducing decision-cycle time for specialized spending, such as:
• Custom and large commercial builds
• One-time-only capital expenses
• Spot pricing and distribution of commodities
• Specialized transportation and logistics
• Large direct material spends
E-sourcing provides efficiency improvements through cost analysis, expense reduction, vendor management, and procurement optimization.
For more information about ERA Group’s e-sourcing, reverse auctions, and why humans and AI work better together, contact Jeff Reynolds or learn more here.
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About ERA Group
ERA Group partners with business leaders to tackle their most important challenges and illuminate their greatest opportunities. For more than 30 years, ERA has been a pioneer in business strategy and cost optimization. Today, we leverage data, analytics, and the world’s most knowledgeable industry specialists to help clients validate, improve processes, and turn insight into opportunities.
With over 40,000 projects completed in over fifty countries across six continents, ERA Group enables organizations to grow, build competitive advantage, and drive bottom-line impact. As a global team of thinkers and doers, ERA Group brings deep vertical and functional expertise in over 50 categories and 100’s of subcategories plus a range of diverse perspectives to spark change for our clients. We’re the resource today’s modern leaders need as they navigate a new horizon, face unforeseen challenges, and seek new opportunities.