Optimizing Smarter Supplier Selection with HCL UnO Agentic AI and Amazon Bedrock

Choosing the right suppliers poses many difficulties for businesses given the changing supply chain landscape. Conventional supplier selection techniques frequently involve rigorous assessments, manual procedures, and limited insights. AI-powered solutions improve and expedite supplier selection to overcome these inefficiencies. When paired with HCL UnO, Amazon Bedrock offers a strong foundation for wise supplier selection, empowering companies to make data-driven choices more precisely and effectively.

We’ll also integrate with Snowflake to act as the data hub (simulating SAP feeding data into it) and using the RESTful job type for communicating with agentic skill and using JSONATA to manipulate the responses throughout multiple agentic AI.

In summary, Universal Orchestrator fits in by leveraging:

• Snowflake plugin: To fetch supplier data from the database (simulating SAP integration).
• JSONata plugin: To transform and filter supplier data before sending it to the AI agents.
• RESTful job: Call agentic AI skills for analysis.

Job dependencies: Ensure tasks execute sequentially (Supplier filtering → Risk assessment → Financial check).

Challenges

Several challenges exist in supplier selection, including: 

Data overload: Evaluating vast amounts of supplier data from various sources is time-consuming and error prone.

Subjective decision-making: Human biases can affect supplier selection, leading to inconsistent or suboptimal choices.

Lack of real-time insights: Static evaluations don’t account for dynamic factors like market trends, supplier performance fluctuations, or geopolitical risks.

Complexity in risk assessment: Evaluating supplier risks, compliance, and sustainability factors is complex and time-consuming.

Solution: Amazon Bedrock and HCL UnO

Supplier selection is improved through automation and intelligence by utilizing HCL UnO's Agentic orchestration and Amazon Bedrock's generative AI capabilities. Here’s how:

1. Identify potential suppliers: HCL UnO completes your business requirement analysis and search, classifies and shortlists a suitable supplier for your organization. It allows you to extract potential suppliers from the Snowflake connector.
2. Autonomous supplier data analysis: By processing both structured and unstructured supplier data, Amazon Bedrock's AI models derive valuable insights from financial reports, contracts, evaluations, and compliance documents. It also considers product availability, past fulfillment performance, and seasonal demand fluctuations.
3. Automated scoring & ranking: HCL UnO coordinates an AI-powered assessment system in which providers receive scores determined by preset criteria like cost, quality, compliance, and historical performance.
4. Dynamic risk assessment: AI keeps an eye on hazards associated with suppliers (such as financial instability and legal infractions) and sends out proactive alerts.  It also uses ESG (Environment, Social , Governance) score, SLA Review and Financial Health check. For example, it uses AI sentiment analysis to scan news articles, legal reports, and reviews.
5. Smooth connectivity & workflow automation: HCL UnO minimizes manual interventions by ensuring seamless connectivity with external supplier databases, ERP programs, and procurement systems.
6. Financial health-check: AI-generated Data collection gathering Financial statements, credit ratings, and stock performance and analyzing data to evaluate profitability, solvency and liquidity. It predicts cost efficiency per supplier based on past pricing trends & real-time financial data.

Behind the covers Universal Orchestrator fetches supplier data from the database (using Snowflake connector) to transform and filter the supplier data before sending it to the AI Agents (using Jsonata) and orchestrates the Agentic AI skills calling for analysis using the Restful plugin. 

By leveraging an orchestrator, apply concepts like job dependencies to ensure tasks execute sequentially. Conditional dependencies decide whether to proceed with eligible suppliers or halt the process. Decision automation, in case no suppliers pass the AI filtering, could re-trigger the tasks. Not to mention, the benefits of enterprise features, like logging & auditing and incident management. 

Conclusion

The integration of HCL UnO with Amazon Bedrock transforms supplier selection by making it more intelligent, data-driven, and efficient. Leverage AI-powered insights to select the best suppliers, mitigate risks, and enhance supply chain resilience. By adopting this cutting-edge solution, you’ll gain a competitive edge in supplier management and drive long-term success in your procurement strategies.