Procurement AI: Start with Bounded Work and Named Approval Points
A staged route from evidence preparation to bounded action, with evaluation and human approval at each increase in authority.
Begin with evidence preparation and classification
Increase authority after the workflow proves control
Move from evidence preparation to action only when evaluation, approval and failure handling work on representative cases.
- 01 • ReadSummarise
Retrieve approved sources and cite claims
- 02 • StructureClassify
Apply taxonomy and identify missing evidence
- 03 • ProposeRecommend
Prepare options and route to an owner
- 04 • GateHuman approval
Accept, edit, reject or stop
- 05 • ActBounded update
Change an approved record within limits
- Baseline
- Analysts gather the same PO, receipt and invoice evidence before routing each exception.
- Decision
- The agent classifies and proposes the next owner; payment and supplier-master changes stay human-approved.
- Acceptance
- Correct routing, cited evidence, zero prohibited actions and a lower median touch time.
- • Summarize requests, supplier documents, contracts, and policies
- • Draft comms, training, and enablement assets (then review)
- • Classify exceptions and recommend next actions (with a human approval gate)
- • Create consistent meeting notes and action registers from steering calls
Define the approval checkpoints
Pick where humans approve outputs (risk, spend thresholds, supplier decisions). This protects quality and builds trust, especially in regulated or high-stakes categories.
Prove the controls before expanding scope
- • Define data boundaries (what can be processed, where, and how it’s stored)
- • Add traceability: what source was used, what changed, who approved
- • Start with one workflow, prove value, then expand the surface area
Reference framework
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