Case Study

How AI helped a major IT company to improve its vendor interaction experience

A global IT company strengthened its vendor relationships through improved quality of interactions and minimized operational costs.

The better the question

How can AI streamline vendor management to add value for your business?

Vendor management receives a technology transformation with AI.

1

Aglobal IT services company provider was facing challenges to maintain relationships with its diverse network of over 15,000 vendors, resulting in non-adherence to service delivery agreements. Effective vendor management is key to reducing costs, driving service excellence and mitigating risks.

Since the vendors were spread across multiple regions, effectively addressing the large volume of queries in 14 languages was challenging for the organization leading to poor vendor experiences. This had a negative impact on vendor satisfaction levels and also resulted in several contracts with the same vendor or disparate transactions with multiple vendors. Such setbacks caused delays in project completion timelines with lower customer satisfaction levels.

EY was appointed to provide a scalable solution that could meet the rising demands of the organization’s complex supplier ecosystem and support in managing it effectively.

The better the answers

Providing an AI-enabled interactive experience

EY teams developed an agile vendor management solution on EY Fabric AI Space to respond to vendor queries on a real-time basis.

2

How EY can Help

EY Fabric AI Space, an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) and automation platform, equipped the organization with new technology capabilities that helped in effectively managing a complex multi-vendor ecosystem. Built on advanced machine learning algorithms and AI models, EY Fabric AI Space offered a tailor-made suite of AI solutions and deployed an on-premise multi-channel, multi-lingual chatbot.

The solution comprised a robust AI engine, capable of interpreting the inputs received from different vendors and responding intelligently by interfacing with various other enterprise applications. The combined vision of the organization and EY teams was to create an AI-powered digital workforce that augments human input and creates a better user experience with minimal operating expenditures.

“We help businesses build their own automation capabilities to improve governance, reduce costs and help create long-term value. EY Fabric AI Space helped our client resolve vendor queries nonstop, resulting in a manual effort reduction and enhanced vendor experience.” Vijay Shankar – EY India Automation and Artificial Intelligence Leader; Partner, Business Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP

EY Fabric AI Space not only supported with end-to-end automation but also offered complete data privacy with on-premise installation.

We help businesses build their own automation capabilities to improve governance, reduce costs and help create long-term value. EY Fabric AI Space helped our client resolve vendor queries nonstop, resulting in a manual effort reduction and enhanced vendor experience.

Vijay Shankar

EY India Automation and Artificial Intelligence Leader; Partner, Business Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP

The deployment of EY Fabric AI Space helped the IT multinational to:

  • Provide its vendors a choice of communication channels to have their queries addressed.
  • Drastically reduce the response time from several days to just a few minutes.
  • Support secure vendor access through a multifactor authentication mechanism.
  • Save expenditure by eliminating the need to have a multi-lingual team to respond to vendors from various geographies.

The EY teams supported the organization to implement a unified system capable of addressing any vendor query in a short span of time leading to a significantly improved vendor experience.

The better the world works

A smart experience that is better for vendors and the business

Deployment of EY Fabric AI Space resulted in an improved vendor experience score and reduction in manual effort.

3

With the vendor management solution powered by EY Fabric AI Space, the IT services firm witnessed:

Enhanced interactions
vendors reached via automated interactions
Faster delivery
queries addressed on an average per day
Improved productivity
reduction in manual effort
Higher customer satisfaction
improvement of Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Leveraging EY Fabric AI Space empowered the IT global organization to master cost control, mitigate vendor-related risks, and deliver unparalleled client service, all while enriching the vendor experience.

It not only offered an automated vendor helpdesk to employees with minimal human effort but also provided the vendors easy and fully secure access to information related to payment advice, tax, and other key metrics.

How EY can Help

Related topics
AI
Technology

The team

Vijay Shankar

EY India Automation and Artificial Intelligence Leader; Partner, Business Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP
Seasoned intelligent automation and AI professional. Deep knowledge in driving AI-led transformation.
 
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EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.