Procurement teams today are under pressure to move faster, reduce risk, and operate with greater transparency. Yet contract review — one of the most critical procurement responsibilities — remains slow, manual, and highly inconsistent across most organisations.
A major enterprise client came to Octane facing exactly this challenge. Their procurement function was overwhelmed: contracts were buried in inboxes, reviews took hours, and comparing updated versions created delays and negotiation blind spots.
Octane delivered a powerful, AI-enabled solution using IBM WatsonX Orchestrate — combining a Contract Analyser with an intelligent Ask Procurement interface. Together, these capabilities have redefined how the client manages contract intake, review, insights, and procurement intelligence at scale.
The client’s procurement team was experiencing significant bottlenecks:
Contract overload and inbox chaos
Supplier agreements arrived via email and were often lost or delayed, slowing downstream purchasing decisions.
Time-consuming manual analysis
Procurement staff could spend 1–3 hours per contract summarising content, identifying risks, and preparing commentary for stakeholders.
Difficulty comparing contract versions
Updated supplier contracts required line-by-line manual comparison, often leading to missed red flags and weaker negotiation leverage.
Limited visibility into procurement insights
Leaders had no quick way to query procurement data, trends, supplier risks, or anomalies.
These issues created avoidable risk, slowed procurement cycles, and stretched team capacity.
Octane deployed a streamlined, automated solution powered by IBM WatsonX Orchestrate that addresses both contract processing and procurement intelligence.
The analyser automatically:
Captures new supplier contracts the moment they appear in email
Extracts and understands contract text
Summarises key clauses and obligations
Identifies risks, red flags, and missing components
Highlights differences between contract versions
Generates a negotiation playbook
Delivers insights to stakeholders instantly
This means procurement teams no longer read contracts line-by-line — the AI does the heavy lifting.
As part of the deliverable, Octane introduced Ask Procurement, a conversational AI interface that allows users to:
Query procurement data
Identify spend trends
Detect anomalies in contracts or vendors
Access historical contract insights
Surface negotiation patterns
Review supplier performance indicators
Whether it’s “Show me all suppliers with auto-renewal clauses” or “Summarise risk trends for our top five vendors,” Ask Procurement provides instant answers.
Together, these tools create a true digital procurement co-pilot.
The benefits have been significant and immediate:
Review time reduced to under a minute
What previously took hours now happens automatically — contracts are analysed, summarised, and compared in seconds.
Reduced legal and commercial risk
The AI produces a structured risk register, helping teams spot issues earlier and make more informed decisions.
The system highlights:
What changed between versions
Why it matters
Recommended negotiation arguments
This gives the procurement team a consistent, data-driven advantage.
Faster procurement cycle times
Automated intake and instant insights have removed bottlenecks, improving:
No more lost contracts
The AI automatically captures, stores, and processes every attachment.
Improved organisational intelligence
With Ask Procurement, leaders now have:
Instant visibility
Searchable procurement knowledge
On-demand insights
Clear trend analysis
This shifts procurement from reactive to proactive.
This project demonstrates what applied enterprise AI looks like in the real world — practical, operational, and immediately beneficial.
It shows how organisations can:
Modernise procurement without replacing systems
Automate high-effort tasks with intelligent workflows
Strengthen compliance and governance
Provide teams with insights previously locked away in documents
Use AI as an everyday digital procurement analyst
It also reinforces that AI is not only for futuristic use cases — it is delivering meaningful value today.
The next extension is already underway:
AI-driven e-signature workflows, enabling:
Automated signing
Routing and approval
Audit trails
Archiving and version control
This will close the loop across the entire procurement lifecycle:
Intake → Review → Insights → Decision → Signature → Storage
Octane’s AI Contract Analyser and Ask Procurement portal offer a new way forward for procurement teams looking to accelerate productivity, reduce risk, and enhance decision-making.
By combining IBM WatsonX Orchestrate, structured AI reasoning, and deep procurement expertise, Octane has delivered a real-world, production-ready solution that transforms how contracts — and procurement intelligence — are managed at scale.
If you'd like to explore how this could work inside your organisation, the Octane team is ready to demonstrate what’s possible.