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Technology

SaaS means Software as a Service” and is a way of delivering applications over the Internet – as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

Category Management and Supplier Management are closely interlinked and complement each other to create effective and impactful strategies. There is a logical sequence that has to be observed. A category strategy lays the foundation for successful supplier strategies. Using a sports analogy, category strategies define the “playing field” and the ”rules” along which category managers will act. In contrast, supplier strategies define how they will interact with individual “players” on the field. Supplier strategies must be built on and aligned with the underlying category strategies to succeed. A supplier strategy that ignores the limits of the playing field or violates the rules will inevitably fail.

The core of the AI-powered Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ platform is an “Expert System.” It contains the knowledge distilled from several decades of procurement expert training and coaching sessions delivered by Cirtuo procurement experts. The “Expert System” works similarly to procurement consultants. It first gathers knowledge on each category by asking the user questions. It then uses the answers combined with proven procurement tools (i.e., Kraljic matrix, Supplier preferencing matrix) and Cirtuo proprietary expert knowledge to suggest the appropriate category strategy – “Strategic Options” and corresponding “Strategic Objectives.”

Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ comes with an integrated interface to two of the leading external Market Intelligence (MI) providers in the procurement arena – Beroe and The Smart Cube. Upon client request, we also can establish a technical integration with any other 3rd party MI provider. As a user of Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™, you will have the opportunity to ask about 150 specific questions along the category strategy creation process – directly out of the tool, with the concrete answers being provided straight back into the tool to the exact spot where they were asked. The response will be immediate in the case of digitally archived information or data. If no digital answer is available, SMEs and AI will initiate the research to develop it – typically within a few business days.
Connecting with an external MI provider is an option for Cirtuo clients. The commercial terms and scope of collaboration are subject to an agreement between the client and the MI provider outside Cirtuo’s influence.

The “Expert System” knowledge base is continuously upgraded to ensure optimal strategy recommendations in volatile times. Real-life experiences, shared by Cirtuo clients or gathered through other channels, are used to adjust and fine-tune the existing knowledge base. Learning never stops – and Cirtuo’s “Expert System” will only get smarter over time.
“Machine Learning” is the next level of AI-enablement Cirtuo aims to go beyond the existing “Expert System.” “Machine Learning” requires a vast database to refer to, which will proliferate over the next couple of years, thanks to the dynamic growth of the Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ client base. Real-life data gathered from Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ users worldwide, across all industries, over thousands and thousands of category strategies – some more successful than others – will enable even sharper recommendations and automated adjustments in the knowledge base. Accuracy and agility will only grow over time.
Yes, the power of AI can also effectively be applied to organizing spend data. Cirtuo enables clients to perform AI-driven spend classification, which results in unprecedented speed, accuracy, and consistency in classifying spend items into categories. The AI-based spend classifier is tailored to each client – to account for industry and client specifics and different languages used to define spend items. The classifier uses all the information available for each spend item – i.e., item name, supplier name, unit of measure, spend amount, or bookkeeping account name. Once trained on the data provided by the client, the classifier can be used to classify new spend items, detect potential misclassifications, or reclassify spend data to a new category tree.
In the development of Cirtuo software, the best practices and development standards for secure web applications are used, primarily OWASP Application Security Verification Standard. We comply with the ISO 27001 standard, and development team members are certified ISO 27001 internal auditors. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting services, including state-of-the-art cloud data infrastructure with all required industry security certificates. As a backup, we use AWS data centers in Frankfurt (Germany) and Dublin (Ireland).
The external Market Intelligence provider does not have access to any client data in the Cirtuo software, only to the questions asked and accessed through a separate interface in the Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ solution.

Cirtuo software is originally designed as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. It allows easy maintenance and reaction in case of change requests. In this way, regular updates are also done more efficiently. Still, internal hosting on your company’s premises is possible with a VPN tunnel for maintenance and updates, with shared responsibility for business continuity and performance. Cirtuo has practical experience in setting up and supporting such an “On-premises Hosting” environment.

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