Procurement is always looking for ways to work smarter, free up time, and redirect their energy and resources toward the strategic work that matters most to the business. AI holds a lot of promise in helping procurement accomplish all of that at scale, but many teams are still trying to figure out exactly where to apply it. Supplier negotiation preparation, one of procurement's core competencies (and also one of their most time-intensive activities) may provide just the use case procurement has been looking for.
In a recent episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, host Kelly Barner spoke with Nithin Mummaneni, founder and CEO of Infinity Loop, a SaaS platform that supports procurement with supplier negotiations by automating deal reviews, uncovering negotiation opportunities, and driving cost savings.
Bringing Negotiation Intelligence In-House
Nithin brought a practitioner's perspective to the conversation, having spent years in management consulting doing exactly the kind of contract renegotiation work that Infinity Loop now helps procurement teams handle in-house. Nithin explained exactly how AI can complement (not replace) procurement’s efforts to prepare for and execute successful supplier negotiations.
Where Teams Are Getting Stuck
Despite near-universal interest in AI among procurement leaders, adoption is lagging. For example, Nithin shared that while 100% of CPOs surveyed plan to use AI in some capacity, fewer than half have moved beyond the pilot phase. Only about 10% describe themselves as fully ready to act on AI-generated recommendations. The reason, more often than not, is a lack of focus on outcomes.
"There's plenty of software [solutions] within the procurement stack that say they do AI, but they’re not really focused on the outcomes," he said. Teams that stay stuck in pilot mode tend to be the ones evaluating technology for its own sake rather than asking what specific business problem it solves and how success will be measured. As Nithin explained, the teams that move forward and see the best results, especially with improved supplier negotiations, are the ones that can first and foremost answer both of those questions clearly.
Negotiation Prep as the Proving Ground
For many procurement teams, supplier negotiation preparation is exactly the kind of high-effort, time-consuming work that AI is well positioned to support. For example, Infinity Loop's platform, trained on millions of contracts across industries, automatically identifies savings opportunities and generates what Nithin calls “negotiation playbooks:” structured, data-driven guides tailored to each specific deal and category.
The practical impact is significant, he says. Instead of a practitioner spending the bulk of their time on research and preparation before ever getting to the negotiating table, that work is done for them. "So instead of somebody managing just 10 deals, doing it end-to-end, they can now do 20 and do 30, but then also realize actual benefit in terms of ROI with direct savings," Nithin said. The platform also tracks outcomes across the full negotiation lifecycle, so teams can see exactly what changed, what was saved, and what opportunity remains.
Building Expertise In-House
According to Nithin, one of the more significant shifts in how supplier negotiations are evolving is cultural. Procurement teams are made up of professionals with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, which creates natural variability in how negotiations are approached or carried out. Some practitioners are stronger than others, and that inconsistency has real financial consequences.
By encoding the expertise of experienced procurement professionals directly into the platform, the knowledge gap narrows considerably. “Everybody is upscaled to that top performer level because we lay it out,” he said. The result is that the first instinct of a CPO facing a tough negotiation environment no longer has to be reaching out to an external consulting firm.
“You can keep it in-house, upscale internal staff, give the power to the people, let them execute and see the success,” said Nithin.
This extends to category expertise as well, an area where many teams have real gaps. The platform's data is mapped across categories and industries, giving practitioners access to the kind of specialized knowledge that previously required a category expert or outside firm to provide.
Changing Procurement's Seat at the Table
Perhaps the most meaningful outcome Nithin describes is a longer-term one: what happens to procurement's standing in the business when it can consistently demonstrate results and communicate them clearly. Historically, procurement has struggled to be seen as a strategic function despite their direct impact on the bottom line. The data wasn't always there to make the case, and when it was, it was often buried in manual reporting.
When that changes, that outdated dynamic shifts. Nithin is already seeing business unit heads come to procurement rather than the other way around, because procurement has proven they can deliver and explain what they delivered in a way that connects their efforts directly to what the business values the most.
“All we wanted to do when building this platform was answer the simple question, did we get a good deal or not?” he said. “Now we have the mechanisms to do that, and the infrastructure where teams can actually use our data to have more meaningful conversations.”
That transparency, backed by clear data and measurable outcomes, is what positions procurement as a trusted partner to the rest of the business. And that, more than any single negotiation win, is where the real strategic value lies.
For more on this topic, listen to the full episode here.
