TCS Digitate rolls out AI tool to monitor purchase transactions

Digitate, the software division of information technology (IT) services giant TCS, has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool to help enterprises monitor purchase transactions.

Called ignio Cognitive Procurement, the solution helps companies make smarter purchase decisions and take actions faster, the Mumbai-based IT firm said in a statement. The tool will help enterprises minimise the number of purchase transactions that result in sub-optimal spend, non-compliance and processing fallouts, it added.

According to TCS, enterprises have traditionally tried to address this issue with tighter controls and regulations. However, that approach adversely impacted the company’s overall cycle time. The inigo software leverages AI and machine learning (ML) to bring speed and scale to the process, which enables enterprises to understand procurement behaviour, monitor purchase transactions in the background and intervene when needed, it said.

“The mandate for procurement organisations today is to add value beyond spend optimisation. Moreover, the evolving situation around Covid-19 is forcing organisations to make some hard, unconventional decisions under constraints to manage demand and supply,” Akhilesh Tripathi, global head of Digitate, said.

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Additionally, the tool can uncover hard-to-discern anomalies while delivering granular operational intelligence, the country’s largest software exporter said. It can detect and flag purchase transactions exhibiting odd behaviours or undesirable price variances, while mining for patterns that explain different types of exceptions requiring human intervention, the company added.

A fortnight ago, TCS reported a 5.1% rise in revenues at Rs 39,946 crore during the fourth quarter of 2019-2020 ended March amid the Covid-19 pandemic, compared to Rs 38,010 crore during the same period in the previous year. 

However, the company’s net income fell by 7% below analyst expectations to Rs 8,093 crore during Q4 of FY20, compared to Rs 8,152 crore during the same quarter in FY19. The company said that it expected the economy to return to normal by the third quarter of current fiscal.

TCS, which now has around 93% of its employees working from home, said it plans to deploy remote working as a long term strategy. 

Even as IT companies expect the demand situation to normalise by the second half of the year, analysts expect the current fiscal to be a washout owing to the slow retreat of the coronavirus in several developed economies.