Ivalua launches single-agent IVA for procurement tasks

Ivalua has launched IVA Studio and its IVA artificial intelligence agent for procurement, designed to work across the company's spend management platform.

The launch marks Ivalua's decision to back a single-agent model at a time when some procurement software providers are developing multiple specialised agents for separate tasks.

IVA is intended to handle work across sourcing, supplier management, contracts, procurement and accounts payable through natural language requests. Users can ask it to gather information, complete tasks and track progress within the Ivalua platform.

IVA Studio sits behind the agent, managing the skills, permissions, tools, integrations and language models used to carry out those actions. Ivalua says this structure is designed to give organisations tighter control over how artificial intelligence is used in procurement processes.

Single agent

Ivalua is positioning the product against what it sees as the growing complexity of multi-agent systems. In its view, using many separate agents can fragment oversight and add work for procurement teams that must configure and manage them.

Instead, IVA is presented as a single point of interaction across the full source-to-pay process. For more complex jobs, the system can create temporary sub-agents in the background while keeping one front-end interface for the user.

Ivalua outlined several uses for the software in procurement operations. A category manager could ask IVA to retrieve an expiring contract, compare it with other agreements, identify suppliers, set up a request-for-quotation process and launch the event from one conversation.

In accounts payable, the system can check invoices against purchase orders, prices and contract terms contained in documents. IVA can also work in workflows or in the background, such as responding to a supplier risk event by identifying affected contracts and purchase orders and proposing mitigation steps.

Governance focus

A central part of the launch is Ivalua's focus on governance. IVA inherits the permissions of the user who calls on it and cannot go beyond those limits.

When the system acts autonomously within a workflow, it still operates within the boundaries of an accountable user and can fall back to that person for human review. Every action is logged to create an audit trail.

That emphasis reflects wider concern among procurement and finance teams about how artificial intelligence tools are controlled when they are allowed to take action rather than simply generate text or suggestions. Software suppliers across business functions have been under pressure to show how permissions, approvals and accountability are handled.

IVA Studio also allows customers to choose which large language models are used. The platform is model-agnostic, according to Ivalua, so customers can use built-in models or bring their own.

Procurement push

The launch comes as procurement technology groups compete to show that artificial intelligence can move beyond analysis and recommendations into operational work. That has included tools that draft sourcing events, review contracts, assess suppliers and route approvals.

Ivalua says its approach differs because the agent uses the company's source-to-pay platform as both its knowledge base and its toolset. The company argues this reduces the need for separate integration and configuration before customers can use the software in live procurement work.

Franck Lheureux, Chief Executive Officer of Ivalua, set out the company's view of how procurement teams should use the technology.

"At Ivalua, we believe the future of procurement is not AI, it's people using AI to deliver better and faster results. IVA, powered by IVA Studio, is a decisive step forward into a new era for procurement, one full of disruptive challenges and exciting opportunities. With IVA, procurement teams can focus on what they do best: building strategies and relationships, internally and externally. We are thrilled to lead this journey with our customers and partners," said Franck Lheureux, Chief Executive Officer, Ivalua.

David Khuat-Duy, Founder & Chief AI Officer at Ivalua, said the company sees governance and ease of deployment as key points of difference.

"Procurement teams have typically had to spend time building and configuring AI agents before seeing any results. Ivalua's approach is entirely different: IVA accesses the Ivalua platform as its toolset and source of knowledge, so procurement can start getting value from day one, within a framework of governance that's enforced by design," said David Khuat-Duy, Founder & Chief AI Officer, Ivalua.

IVA Studio is currently in beta, with wider availability planned for the summer.