Webinar recording: Successful cost reduction in practice – How SW achieves measurable savings through AI-driven negotiations and RFQs

Purchasing organizations are currently facing the challenge of having to compensate for rising labor costs and geopolitical risks while simultaneously dealing with margin pressure. Manually preparing data for negotiations is often too time-consuming to respond quickly to market volatility with well-founded counterarguments.

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Matthias Schlotter (Director of Procurement at Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen), Melinda Behncke (Head of Marketing & Growth at Tacto), and Constantin Blome (Product Manager at Tacto) will demonstrate in the webinar how SW automates data preparation through the use of specialized AI agents and systematically increases competitive pressure in the supplier portfolio through digital RFQs.

initial situation

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The market environment in mechanical engineering is characterized by below-average capacity utilization and unpredictable price fluctuations in logistics. At SW, these external factors led to unplanned cost increases that cannot be fully passed on to customers. Prior to the changeover, the lack of centralized documentation of negotiation results and limited access to external benchmarks made it difficult to consistently achieve savings targets.

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Automated negotiation preparation

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Theuse ofa negotiation agent generates relevant KPIs and cost breakdowns for the purchasing team without any manual effort. For example, in the case of a screw-in connection, the system identified price increases of up to 106% over the last 36 months. By comparing this with over 20,000 external indices, it was possible to demonstrate that the supplier's demands were systematically above the market average, enabling a precise price revision.

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Digital RFQ processes to strengthen competitiveness

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An RfQ agent helps to carry out tendering processes regularly with minimal administrative effort. Digitization makes it possible to invite significantly more suppliers per request and to compare offers directly with each other. This increases the proportion of competitive purchasing volume and secures SW better market prices in the long term.

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Central controlling of all savings initiatives

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SW uses a central control system tokeep track of all levers, from supplier relocation to cost avoidance. AI-driven alerts Procurement identify potential at an early stage and document all results in an audit-proof manner in a "single source of truth." This frees up strategic work from manual routine tasks and allows it to focus on the active implementation of savings targets.

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Conclusion

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The practical example from SW illustrates that successful cost reduction today requires a shift away from manual Excel analyses toward a data-driven organization. It is essential to provide Procurement with Procurement right tools to enable it to act quickly and based on facts in volatile markets.

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In this webinar, Matthias Schlotter, Melinda Behncke, and Constantin Blome demonstrate how SW uses automated data analysis and the targeted use of AI agents to revise price increases based on facts. The experts illustrate how digital RFQ processes increase competitive pressure without additional administrative effort and why central tracking of all initiatives ensures Procurement strategic effectiveness in Procurement .