We help mid-market procurement teams find where AI will bring the most savings and cost avoidance, choose the tools worth implementing, and put them to work. Senior-led and vendor-neutral, with no software of our own to sell.
Cost targets are rising and most mid-market procurement teams are small. The same handful of constraints comes up in nearly every conversation we have. In our experience AI can help with each of them, once the process and ownership around the tool are clear.
Teams come to us at different points. Some are still working out where AI would pay for itself. Others have chosen tools and need them adopted, or want help delivering the savings.
A senior-led sequence with scope agreed up front. The advisor who scopes the work is the advisor who delivers it.
Hive's procurement work draws on leading the strategy behind the sourcing organization at a Fortune 100 insurance company, including developing and implementing its AI strategy and governance framework. That program put a front-end solution in place that sped up the sourcing request process, along with a contract management and RFx platform that provided insights across the portfolio. The team landed on two full solutions after months of evaluation, and the portfolio was consolidated by nearly 32%.
The largest savings from AI in procurement usually come from contract intelligence (catching auto-renewals, price escalators and overlapping suppliers), intake and orchestration that keeps spend on contract, spend classification that shows where categories can be consolidated, AI-assisted sourcing for tail spend, and invoice automation that checks prices against contract. Which of these matters most depends on the spend profile. For many mid-market companies that still manage contracts by hand, contract intelligence and intake tend to come first.
What tends to work is sizing the savings and cost avoidance opportunities from the company's own spend and contract data first, and then matching tools to the largest of them. We look at what the company already licenses before anything new is bought, shortlist two or three fit-for-purpose tools for each priority, see them demonstrated on the company's own data, and compare total cost of ownership. Hive is vendor-neutral and does not resell software or accept platform referral fees.
Not necessarily. Many mid-market procurement teams get early value from AI before a full procure-to-pay system is in place, most often through contract analysis and a structured intake process. A procure-to-pay system may still be the right investment later. The AI Savings Assessment weighs both paths against the savings each one is likely to return.
Measurement starts with a baseline agreed at the beginning of the work. Savings are price and volume reductions against that baseline. Cost avoidance covers increases that were prevented, such as auto-renewals caught before they rolled, escalators renegotiated and duplicate suppliers retired. Capacity returned to the team is tracked as hours moved from manual work to managing by exception. We suggest reporting all three to leadership on a regular cadence so the savings stay visible.
AI is also reaching procurement through feature updates in software the company already licenses and through suppliers using AI on their side of the relationship. As part of our strategy work we can map where that is happening and check it against supplier agreements and data terms, including whether client data can be used to train models. Hive is not a law firm, so this work is done alongside the company's legal team.
The AI Savings Assessment runs four weeks, priced as a fixed fee or on outcomes, with scope agreed at the start. It delivers a spend and contract baseline, savings and cost avoidance opportunities sized from the company's own data, a shortlist of tools with total cost of ownership, and a business case with the order to implement. The first step is a 30-minute briefing with a senior advisor, with an NDA in place before anything confidential is shared.
A senior Hive advisor will walk you through where AI could bring savings and cost avoidance in your procurement operation.
30 minutes · No pitch · Senior advisor · NDA before disclosure