Intelligent Robotic Process Automation for Supplier Document Management on E-Procurement Platforms

Abstract

E-procurement platforms are marketplaces where manufacturing companies, termed buyers, frequently interact with tens of thousands of suppliers. Conversely, different suppliers compete against each other to be selected, by one or more buyers, as those to be commissioned with procuring goods and services. However, such interactions are risky because suppliers may trick buyers by issuing false information about themselves. For this reason, procurement has become a regulated environment in which rigorous supplier evaluation accounts for information from documents exchanged through e-procurement platforms. In this paper, we propose the adoption of Intelligent Robotic Process Automation based on Machine Learning for automatizing the task of supplier document management. Experimental results on suppliers’ documents from a real e-procurement platform prove the effectiveness of the solution.