Aquiire Snaps Up Machine Learning Tech From Zakta

Aquiire, an eProcurement company, has acquired technology from semantic search firm Zakta to enhance its services with machine learning, news reports said Tuesday (Sept. 12).

Aquiire said it purchased the rights to Zakta’s machine learning and collaborative search technologies and will imbed that tech into its real-time procure-to-pay platform. Zakta’s technology includes visual search and discovery, natural language processing, data mining and other capabilities.

According to the eProcurement firm, the technologies will result in enhanced search experiences and enhanced integration with online and social media product reviews. It will also impact Aquiire’s “purchase-together” solution, which enables collaborative procurement processes for buying teams, the firm explained.

“Procurement departments will gain the ability to visually analyze spend on poorly structured order data, improve real-time collaboration with existing suppliers and other buyers throughout the organization and perform supplier discovery, profiling and market intelligence activities via an intuitive, visual interface,” Aquiire stated in its announcement. “Zakta’s machine learning technology and expertise will be leveraged across the procure-to-pay process to continuously enhance spend analysis and optimize the user experience.”

In a statement, Aquiire President and CEO Mike Palackdharry said the purchase of Zakta’s natural language processing technology is part of the company’s efforts to introduce new levels of capability in its procure-to-pay offerings.

“By challenging our team to think differently about procurement and the buyer/seller relationship, we are finding many previously untapped or ‘white space’ savings and collaboration opportunities for our customers,” he stated. “Zakta’s capabilities enable us to accelerate the delivery of unique actionable insights and savings while meeting our requirement that Aquiire solutions are practical and can be implemented without major disruption to an organization.”

Earlier this year, Aquiire emphasized its focus on real-time eProcurement with a paper exploring the employee’s role in such initiatives.

“Employees’ increased expectations for getting things fast and accurate is outpacing the traditional ways of doing business,” the company wrote, adding that professionals needs a consumer-like buying experience when procuring for their organizations. That means real-time product search and pricing, automated information organization and instant validation of pricing and products, among other features.