RISK MANAGEMENT

better insights into supplier behaviour and associated risks to make more informed decisions during supplier evaluation, monitoring, and compliance management.

“Cognitive data-driven risk management for procurement is undoubtedly a major enabler for your organisations to keep you ahead of the curve in the dynamic business environment, where risks can surface abruptly and can have considerable threat to the bottom line, With the increasing complexity of global supply chains and growing regulatory requirements, cognitive data-driven risk management for procurement is becoming an essential tool to ensure compliance and minimise risks,” explains Zycus.

Six steps for better procurement outcomes with cognitive data-driven risk management

• Define the problem

• Gather the data

• Choose the right technology

• Train the system

• Monitor and evaluate

• Engage stakeholders

“Implementing cognitive procurement requires careful planning, data gathering, technology selection, training, and evaluation. By following these steps, you can improve your procurement processes and achieve goals like cost savings, efficiency gains, improved supplier relationships, fraud prevention, improved supplier performance, and contract compliance.” – Zycus

The challenges of adopting cognitive data-driven risk management

Like all strategies, cognitive data-driven risk management isn’t without its own set of challenges, with Walden explaining that “the most common challenge” is “access to highquality, up-to-date data, and then feeding it to the AI so it can be acted on”.

“Another challenge is negotiating the limitations around how creative and innovative the AI can be, particularly in terms of proposing or recommending solutions to risks and issues. Artificial intelligence is fantastic at following business rules and logic. However, humans still have the advantage when it comes to creativity, innovation, and troubleshooting.”

In conclusion, implementing cognitive data-driven risk management requires lots of planning, high quality data, careful technology selection, training and evaluation. But getting this right, will be a recipe for success for procurement professionals to gain a competitive advantage when it comes to making smarter decisions when securing their supply chain.