THE PROCUREMENT INTERVIEW
The built-in advantage In implementing intake solutions, organisations face a critical choice between bolt-on and built-in approaches. Aatish firmly advocates for the latter, citing fundamental integration challenges with bolt-on systems.
“ In intake, you have some solutions which are just the layer on top, where they really integrate with third-party S2P systems,” he says.“ The challenge with that is integration because no application exposes the innards; no application exposes all the deep APIs and data which is available.”
This limitation creates two problems. First, bolt-on intake systems cannot access all necessary information to serve end users effectively. Second, they introduce fragility through multiple integration touchpoints.
“ The moment any of those systems change, things break,” Aatish warns.
Built-in systems offer seamless integration with S2P platforms, accessing required data while maintaining the flexibility to connect with third-party systems where necessary to complete workflows.
The tail spend challenge One of the most compelling applications of agentic AI emerged from discussions with Zycus’ AI council, a panel of chief procurement officers managing billions of dollars in spend. Their message was clear: buyers should focus on strategic work rather than tactical purchasing activities like obtaining three bids for small-value items.
“ That’ s a perfect case for AI because it’ s a lower-risk, smaller-value item,” says Aatish.“ People don’ t really have time to handle those thousands and thousands of tactical purchases.”
Autonomous negotiation delivers value through two mechanisms – first, by capturing savings that would otherwise go unrealised, Aatish says:“ Normally, people don’ t have time to negotiate on a US $ 10,000 purchase. But AI can work tirelessly and get you that saving.”
Second, it liberates human resources for strategic initiatives. The considerable effort required to manage tail spend can instead be redirected towards activities that drive greater organisational value.
24 November 2025