Why DeepStream Backs the Supplier Underdog - and How.
To state the obvious; big companies have more money, more people, more resources and bigger networks. However, as The Notorious B.I.G said, “mo money, mo problems”.
Ultimately, more or bigger is not better unless they continue to solve actual pain points in a way that is easy and helpful to the user. Invariably, huge clunky systems with bloated functionality lose this focus as they over extend and over cater with inflexible systems which end up hindering rather than supporting the day to day user. At DeepStream, this is exactly what we aren’t and never want to become.
For example, we’ve just closed our Series A round, but we were careful about the amount we raised, enough to give us the ammo to fire out the product features and updates our users need, but not so much that things were being done for the sake of it.
What we do at DeepStream
We have less features than the likes of huge ERP systems (e.g SAP) - but what we do have is user-friendly software that users actually use, and well deployed resources. Ever heard of the phrase less is more? That’s us. Much like salt, you can always add, but overdo it, and you're stuck with a salty unappetising meal. That’s what we want to avoid.
This underdog mentality helps us as a company think more strategically and resourcefully, incentivising us to deliver what people need and want rather than what others assume they do. This includes empowering our users to send RFx (Request for anything; Information, Product, Quotation) that can be tailored to their workflow and timeline. We also have granular permission settings to ensure that teams can be onboarded and collaborate on RFxs with full transparency, auditability and confidential security.
AI capabilities
In addition to these capabilities, we have a very new and exciting additional offering for our Buyers that also benefits our Suppliers on the platform. This is the introduction of AI to the platform which uses supervised and unsupervised machine learning to suggest Suppliers that Buyers should invite to bid on their RFxs that they issue through DeepStream.
These suggestions are made based on a number of factors; a Buyer’s scope of work matched with Suppliers that have been invited to participate in similar requests, the description that Suppliers enter on their company profile, and also the Products and services they tag.
As Dave Hanbury, our resident AI expert behind all of this explains:
“We make use of AI/machine learning approaches that don’t just rely on the results of previous RFx (‘supervised machine learning’), but also use unsupervised learning approaches to match suppliers and buyers. This means that some lesser known suppliers have the chance to be recommended and discovered by our buyers on the platform.”
“This is a win-win for both our buyers and suppliers: all suppliers have a chance of being recommended, increasing their likelihood of being invited to an RFx and being engaged by the platform, and the buyers can discover more options for suppliers, who may be better suited to the particular RFx at hand, which can increase their pricing power.”
Being an underdog ourselves, and understanding the importance of diversifying your supply chain we are committed to facilitating this through our platform through our new AI capability. Again, we are removing a time consuming, usually manual process, that relies on someone researching and qualifying suppliers, and replacing it with technology which supports our users to get the best results from using our platform.
If you want to find out more about how to join DeepStream and get the most out of your procurement software, get in touch.
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