Taking Your Sourcing Project to the Next Level

eSourcing Services: Creating the Simple Out of the Complex

A Deceptively Simple Tool, Now Smarter Than Ever

As a sourcing professional, your needs are simple: find the best value available today. Getting there, however, often involves navigating a maze of suppliers, data, and market dynamics. That’s where Intesource — and our AI-driven sourcing intelligence — comes in.

Providing professional services for a full-service eSourcing organization means wearing many hats and collaborating with procurement professionals across countless categories. With Intesource AI, we now combine human expertise with real-time analytics, supplier intelligence, and predictive insights that make even the most complex sourcing events seamless and strategic.

Provide Insight

One of my most common roles is helping clients explore new or under-optimized categories through AI-powered category insight reports. Whether it’s a first-time RFP for Freight or a recurring Racking event, our tools analyze historical performance, supplier benchmarks, and savings trends in seconds.

Clients no longer have to guess which suppliers or price bands are most competitive — Intesource AI surfaces those patterns automatically, identifying value opportunities and supply-chain risks before an event even launches.

Strategy Brainstorm

Not all categories are straightforward, and that’s where the partnership deepens. When strategy requires nuance, we combine experience with AI scenario modeling to identify the best event design.

Some of the questions we explore together:

·      What line-item structures yield optimal competition, based on category behavior and market

data?

·      Should freight be included or separated, given logistics and inflation trends?

·      Would an AI-recommended RFI/RFP sequence improve vendor qualification?

·      Which suppliers score highest on performance and compliance history?

·      For large, complex events — would a blind RFP or hybrid AI-guided auction drive better

outcomes?

The addition of Intesource’s automation tools allows us to model each scenario quickly, forecast potential savings, and track post-event impact through custom dashboards.

One of my favorite examples is our collaboration with SpartanNash, where AI-driven survey analytics helped quantify floor-care quality across hundreds of locations, giving category managers actionable visibility that manual surveys never could.

The Team Approach

Every sourcing project moves through our Managed Service Specialists and Data Operations teams, supported by Intesource AI event intelligence platform. Managed Service Advisors now have access to AI-generated supplier insights, bid-trend anomaly detection, and real-time savings forecasting to ensure each event exceeds expectations.

Human experience plus machine precision equals consistency, speed, and stronger results.

Taking to the Air

We still believe in the power of face-to-face collaboration. Visiting client sites, facilitating live brainstorming, and delivering AI training sessions ensures everyone — from executives to category analysts — understands how to apply automation effectively. Our goal is not to replace expertise but to amplify it through intelligent tools.

Keeping an Ear to the Ground

Markets change daily, and Intesource continuously scans global data streams, tracking cost drivers, supplier consolidations, and logistics trends. These insights allow our clients to stay ahead of price volatility and supply disruptions, transforming reactive sourcing into a proactive strategy.

Innovation Is Key

We thrive when clients bring us new categories to explore. Each new project trains our AI models further — enriching benchmarks and enabling smarter event recommendations across the platform. Whether it’s a first-time RFP for specialized packaging or a global freight rebid, Intesource AI quickly identifies patterns, anomalies, and potential value levers, helping clients act with confidence.

A Smarter Simplicity

Every day brings a new challenge, but also a new opportunity to simplify the complex. By integrating Intesource AI into our sourcing workflow, we’ve turned complexity into clarity — and sourcing data into decision intelligence.

Charles Mingus once said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

That’s exactly what we do — now with the power of AI behind every sourcing decision.

Lindsay Bernacchi

Managed Services Advisor – InteSource