Executive Talk with Christoph Kunel
ChatGPT and co. have great potential, especially for C-parts purchasing. Crowdfox-COO Christoph Kunel talks about the opportunities now available to companies. And why one should now think much more in terms of opportunities than limitations. A question of attitude.
C-parts purchasing – high volume and yet always a bit neglected by the CPO because less strategic. Will AI change that – and if so: why and how?
Christoph Kunel: I would even say that AI will make a significant difference here in the short term. Precisely because C-parts purchasing in modern companies is often already set up in such a way that buyers and suppliers are brought together directly via platforms. Digitization is often already further advanced here. Accordingly, it is obvious that the new possibilities offered by large language models, for example, should be implemented now.
What opportunities do these LLMs like ChatGTP offer a platform provider like Crowdfox? How do you plan to make these possibilities available to your customers?
Christoph Kunel: We are currently thinking about a ‘ProcureGTP’. To take one of our examples from the past: There, when ordering a drill, it was a matter of being shown the best content and the best price from various platforms and catalogs – in order to then be able to make an order directly. But I needed to know, ‘I need a drill.’ ProcureGTP, on the other hand, will work differently. Someone will enter, ‘I need to fix a shelf.’ And ProcureGTP will determine – with some follow-up – what the requester needs and then suggest the right items to them. That’s a completely different approach.
What are the limitations from your point of view?
Christoph Kunel: We are not interested in limitations at the moment, because we want to try out what is possible first – without limiting ourselves and our thinking right now. A second use case is that LLMs can be used to search, aggregate and reprocess catalog content in a much more targeted manner. With ProcureGTP, we want to let AI figure out which is the best quality content. Or generate a new product description based on all existing content. We’re talking about whole new possibilities here.
The crucial question is: When do you think will be the moment that AI is commonplace in procurement/SCM? When do you expect Crowdfox to be ready?
Christoph Kunel: I can’t answer that seriously any more than, for example, OpenAI could answer when ChatGTP will work ‘properly’. We are in a phase of targeted experimentation. We have already built a prototype for the Procurement Summit 2023 in Hamburg, which is intended to illustrate our vision of ProcureGTP. But when will we be able to make this function available to our customers? That depends solely on when this new way of interacting with the digital sphere really works as well as it does flawlessly. There is still a way to go. In the future, we will report regularly on this path and where we stand there.
Meet Christoph Kunel in person at Crowdfox’s masterclass “How AI is fundamentally changing procurement” at the Procurement Summit. For more information about Christoph Kunel, please follow this link.