D&B Ask Procurement Offers Immediate Access to Supplier Insights
November 19, 2024
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., November 19, 2024 — Dun & Bradstreet, a prominent global provider of business decision-making data and analytics, has unveiled its latest innovation: D&B Ask Procurement. This generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) assistant, developed in partnership with IBM, is designed to help procurement teams make quicker data-driven decisions, mitigate risks, and enhance efficiencies throughout their supplier networks.
The platform is seamlessly integrated with Dun & Bradstreet’s extensive data resources, which include business risk, financial, and firmographic insights. D&B Ask Procurement enables teams to extract critical supplier information, speed up analysis and reporting processes, and identify potential suppliers for collaboration. This AI assistant, built with IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate and watsonx.ai technology, is supported by IBM Consulting and employs an advanced AI framework to offer sophisticated reasoning capabilities and autonomous decision-making. Through a conversational chat interface, users can effortlessly access expanded insights, thereby reducing supply chain risks, boosting productivity, and ultimately lowering costs.
“D&B Ask Procurement unlocks the comprehensive range of Dun & Bradstreet’s data, allowing procurement professionals to swiftly access a holistic view of a company’s business relationships and make more informed decisions,” remarked Brian Filanowski, General Manager of Finance & Risk Solutions at Dun & Bradstreet. He added, “Our dedication is to merge Dun & Bradstreet’s reliable data and analytics with IBM watsonx Orchestrate’s Gen AI capabilities. This fusion powers solutions like D&B Ask Procurement, which provide significant competitive advantages to our clients.”
Key Features of D&B Ask Procurement
- Critical Supplier Insights: Leveraging Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud, which encompasses over 580 million public and private entities globally, D&B Ask Procurement responds to inquiries about existing or potential supplier risks, financial statuses, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, beneficial ownership, legal filings, and more. It utilizes proprietary predictive risk scores and analytics to assess suppliers’ business and financial health.
- Company Data Integration: In addition to Dun & Bradstreet’s data, organizations can integrate their own insights, such as spending patterns and purchase order histories, into D&B Ask Procurement. This integration is based on their direct interactions with suppliers.
- Multi-step Analysis & Reporting: The platform can efficiently synthesize data outputs to generate analysis reports, create risk summaries based on key findings, and compare supplier attributes, transforming what used to be a time-consuming manual process into a matter of seconds.
- Identify Suppliers for Engagement: D&B Ask Procurement facilitates the comparison of multiple suppliers, enabling organizations to make optimal selections. It also identifies suppliers in a company’s portfolio that require engagement, streamlining research efforts during routine evaluations.
- Easy Accessibility: Accessible via a web-based application, D&B Ask Procurement provides real-time answers to user queries whenever and wherever needed.
Parul Mishra, Vice President of Product Management, Digital Labor at IBM, commented, “One of the primary entry points for adopting Gen AI is through AI assistants. Together, IBM and Dun & Bradstreet are introducing innovative solutions within the procurement domain. With D&B Ask Procurement, built on the watsonx Orchestrate foundation, users can effortlessly complete tasks and automate complex processes using natural language, thus enhancing efficiency, achieving cost savings, and boosting productivity.”
This announcement is a result of the strategic collaboration between Dun & Bradstreet and IBM. The partnership combines IBM’s AI and data platform capabilities and consulting services with Dun & Bradstreet’s supply chain expertise and extensive, reliable data sets. This collaboration aims to help organizations expand their use of generative AI responsibly. By utilizing IBM watsonx Orchestrate and watsonx.ai, enterprises can simplify the creation of scalable AI assistants and agents, integrate existing workflows, and streamline complex business processes.
D&B Ask Procurement aligns with the responsible data and AI principles that guide Dun & Bradstreet’s development of data-driven and AI-fueled solutions. This initiative marks a continuation of the company’s journey to provide businesses with AI solutions that enable efficient access to comprehensive data and analytics. The launch of D&B Ask Procurement follows the introduction of another advanced Gen AI assistant, ChatD&B, which provides prompt responses to inquiries about commercial entities by leveraging Dun & Bradstreet’s validated and up-to-date data.
D&B Ask Procurement is currently available in North America, with plans for expansion into other markets in the near future. Those interested in learning more can find a demonstration of D&B Ask Procurement here.
About Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet is a well-established leader in providing businesses with the data and insights needed to make informed decisions. With a rich history of delivering trusted information, the company has established itself as an essential partner for organizations seeking to navigate complex business environments.
For further details, readers are encouraged to visit Dun & Bradstreet’s official website or consult additional resources for more in-depth information about their services and solutions.
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