Supply Market Intelligence for Smarter Procurement Strategies

Are rising supply chain risks, unpredictable market shifts, and cost pressures keeping you up at night? As a procurement professional, you’re tasked with making strategic decisions under immense pressure, yet you often lack the real-time insights needed to stay ahead of the curve. How do you make informed, agile decisions when the data you rely on is often outdated or fragmented?

Enter the supply market intelligence system—your solution to bridging the information gap. By harnessing advanced AI-driven insights, these systems allow you to anticipate market changes, optimize procurement strategies, and mitigate risks before they escalate. 

But how do you leverage these tools effectively? 

This blog will show you exactly how integrating a supply market intelligence system can streamline your processes, save costs, and ultimately give you a competitive edge. 

First of all, let’s understand what Supply Market Intelligence actually means and how it works

What is Supply Market Intelligence?

Supply Market Intelligence (SMI) goes beyond collecting data; it’s about analyzing and using insights to make smarter procurement decisions. By understanding supplier performance, market trends, and risks, SMI helps you optimize sourcing strategies and reduce costs.

For example, imagine you’re a procurement manager overseeing the purchase of raw materials. Without the right market insights, you could miss rising costs due to global supply shortages or regulatory shifts. 

A supply market intelligence system empowers you to monitor price fluctuations, track supplier reliability, and identify emerging risks, such as tariffs or capacity constraints, before they impact your business. With this real-time intelligence, you can negotiate better terms, optimize supplier selection, and stay ahead of disruptions.

In fact, the growth of procurement analytics is a key indicator of the increasing reliance on data-driven decision-making in supply chains. 

The global procurement analytics market was valued at USD 4.13 billion in 2023, and it’s projected to grow significantly, reaching USD 44.53 billion by 2034, expanding at a 24% CAGR over the next decade.

As procurement analytics evolves, it increasingly intersects with Supply Market Intelligence—both serve the same purpose of empowering procurement teams with data-driven insights to optimize sourcing strategies.

Also Read: Steps to Improve Your Procurement Process in 2025

With that foundation in mind, let’s explore the key methods to gather reliable and actionable market intelligence.

Methods of Gathering Market Intelligence

To gather reliable and actionable market intelligence, procurement teams rely on a variety of methods. The data comes from internal and external sources, and the key is to aggregate it effectively for actionable insights.

1. Supplier Data

One of the most common sources of market intelligence is directly from suppliers. This includes Requests for Information (RFIs), where suppliers provide insights into their pricing, capacity, and capabilities. This helps you assess their potential performance and suitability for your needs.

2. Industry Reports

Secondary sources like trade journals, market reports, and financial databases (e.g., D&B or Hoovers) provide a broader view of market trends, commodity pricing, and competitive landscape. These reports often include expert forecasts and industry analyses essential for long-term planning.

3. Surveys and Interviews

Companies often conduct surveys and interviews with industry experts to add depth to the intelligence. These direct insights provide a clearer understanding of the market’s current and future state. For example, a survey of key suppliers could highlight potential disruptions or innovations.

4. Data Analytics Tools

Modern AI-powered analytics tools can sift through large datasets to identify emerging patterns, such as price hikes or shifts in supply-demand dynamics. These tools can also predict future trends based on historical data, helping procurement professionals anticipate changes before they impact their bottom line.

Now that you know how to gather the data, let’s look at the tangible benefits SMI brings to the table.

Benefits of Supply Market Intelligence

Supply Market Intelligence helps you tackle common procurement challenges whether it’s finding the right suppliers, managing costs, or staying ahead of market changes. 

Let’s see how SMI can make your job easier and more efficient:

1. Informed Supplier Selection

Supply Market Intelligence (SMI) lets you see the supplier landscape. You can identify key suppliers, assess their capabilities, and determine their location and performance metrics. With this insight, you’re better positioned to choose suppliers that align with your business needs and goals, ensuring a stable and reliable supply chain.

2. Better Market Understanding

SMI helps you track market trends, including commodity pricing and cost fluctuations. You can spot whether you’re overpaying or receiving competitive rates by comparing your suppliers’ prices to the market average. This allows you to adjust your sourcing strategy to stay aligned with market conditions.

3. Anticipating Supply and Demand Shifts

By analyzing demand cycles and market capacity, SMI offers a proactive approach to supply chain management. You can forecast price fluctuations, potential shortages, or increases in demand, ensuring you’re prepared for market changes before they affect your operations.

4. Navigating Regulatory Changes

Changes in government regulations and compliance requirements can significantly impact procurement strategies. With SMI, you can stay updated on upcoming regulatory shifts, such as tariffs or environmental standards, allowing you to adjust your strategies and maintain compliance without disruption.

5. Benchmarking Performance

SMI allows you to benchmark your supplier performance against industry standards. By evaluating factors like pricing, delivery performance, and product quality, you can assess whether you’re getting the best value from your suppliers and identify areas for improvement.

6. Enhanced Negotiation Power

Armed with market data and supplier insights, SMI strengthens your negotiation position. Whether it’s leveraging new supplier competition or using historical performance data, you can negotiate better terms, secure cost savings, and improve contract outcomes.

7. Data-Driven Decision Making

SMI provides valuable data that supports key business decisions across procurement, budgeting, financial targets, and even technology investments. This intelligence ensures that decisions are based on accurate, timely information, aligning operations with long-term strategic goals.

But what happens if you skip out on Supply Market Intelligence? Here are the risks you’ll face without it.

The Risks of Not Gathering Supply Market Intelligence

Operating without Supply Market Intelligence (SMI) leaves your business vulnerable to various risks. Procurement decisions become reactive rather than strategic without access to key market data and insights. 

Let’s consider the common issues:

• Overpaying for Supplies: Suppliers may take advantage of your lack of market insight by charging inflated prices, presenting them as industry-standard rates.
• Difficulty Finding Alternatives: Without knowledge of the supplier landscape, it will take you longer to find reliable alternatives when needed.
• Unexpected Supply Shortages: Supply shortages may catch you off guard. Companies with strong SMI had already planned for crises like the semiconductor shortage by finding alternative solutions.
• Supplier Bankruptcy: Failing to monitor financial stability and credit risk could lead to unexpected supplier bankruptcies, impacting your supply chain.
• Slower Reaction Times: Without real-time SMI, you’ll lag behind competitors who can quickly respond to supply chain disruptions due to their access to early warnings.

Also Read: Building a Better Strategic Procurement Strategy: Key Differences and Steps

While the risks are clear, implementing SMI isn’t always smooth sailing. Let’s dive into the challenges.

Challenges in Implementing Supply Market Intelligence

Many organizations struggle with integrating SMI systems into existing procurement processes, often due to data fragmentation or reliance on outdated systems. 

Here are some of the most common hurdles:

• Data Integration: Combining data from various sources can be difficult, making it hard to extract actionable insights.
• Lack of Expertise: Many teams lack the skills to analyze and interpret market data effectively, limiting the system’s full potential.
• Resistance to Change: Employees may be hesitant to adopt new tools, requiring proper training and communication of the system’s value.
• Cost and Time: The upfront investment and time needed to set up SMI systems can be a barrier, especially for smaller enterprises.

Facing obstacles? Here are the best practices that will help you harness SMI to its full potential.

Best Practices for Leveraging Market Intelligence

To truly benefit from Supply Market Intelligence, it’s crucial to implement best practices that make the most of the system’s capabilities. 

Here’s how you can maximize the impact of your SMI system:

• Set Clear Objectives: Identify what you want to achieve, whether it’s cost savings, supplier optimization, or trend analysis.
• Ensure Data Quality: Keep data clean and up-to-date to ensure the accuracy of insights and predictions.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Involve different departments like finance, logistics, and risk management to get a comprehensive view.
• Monitor and Adapt: Continuously evaluate market trends and adjust your strategies accordingly to stay ahead.
• Leverage Technology: Use advanced tools like AI to analyze data faster and uncover deeper insights that drive decisions.

Also Read: akirolabs Named Amongst the Top 27 AI Startups in Germany

Now that you know how to leverage SMI, let’s see why akirolabs is the perfect tool for your procurement needs.

Why akirolabs is the Best Solution for Smarter Procurement Strategies?

Market disruptions, volatile prices, and supplier risks are constant challenges for procurement teams. If you rely on fragmented data sources or static spreadsheets, your procurement strategies will often be reactive rather than proactive. akirolabs addresses this gap by providing a comprehensive category strategy platform with integrated market intelligence workflows, designed specifically for strategic procurement teams.

Rather than replacing your existing data providers such as market feeds, D&B, or Spend Matters, akirolabs enhances and operationalizes the intelligence they provide by embedding it directly into your category strategies and decision-making processes. Here is how the platform works:

1. Capture and Tag Market Intelligence in Context

akirolabs includes a Market Intelligence module that enables you to:

• Upload or link to external market data, including analyst reports, supplier insights, and commodity outlooks.
• Tag relevant insights directly to procurement strategy frameworks like PESTLE, SWOT, Risk assessments, and Porter’s Five Forces.
• Maintain an up-to-date, organized repository of market intelligence for each category to support all sourcing decisions with current data.

Benefits:

• Prevents intelligence from being lost in disconnected reports or files.
• Ensures that insights are directly tied to the decisions they impact.

2. AI-Augmented Insight Generation with akiroAssist

akirolabs offers smart tools to help you interpret collected intelligence by allowing you to:

• Summarize lengthy or complex documents into clear, actionable insights.
• Automatically generate analysis sections such as conclusions based on frameworks like PESTLE.
• Identify and recommend value levers based on observed market trends and dynamics.

Benefits:

• Saves time by reducing manual analysis.
• Supports clearer, more consistent insight generation without relying on external data mining.

3. Link Intelligence to Strategy and Execution

akirolabs connects market intelligence directly to strategic actions by enabling you to:

• Convert identified market risks into specific mitigation plans, for example, dual sourcing or supplier diversification.
• Align category strategies with external factors such as inflation trends or environmental and regulatory changes.
• Track initiatives that respond to these insights, assigning responsibilities, setting deadlines, and monitoring progress.

Benefits:

• Moves procurement from awareness to action.
• Provides full accountability for strategy execution.

4. Centralized, Searchable Market Intelligence Library

Over time, procurement teams accumulate extensive market intelligence that can easily become scattered or forgotten. akirolabs addresses this by:

• Providing a shared, searchable library organized by category for all relevant market intelligence content.
• Allowing teams to reuse past insights in future strategy sessions, supplier negotiations, and reviews.

Benefits:

• Improves knowledge retention across teams and regions.
• Speeds up onboarding for new employees.
• Reduces the risk of missing critical market signals.

Conclusion

We’ve seen how Supply Market Intelligence helps you make smarter procurement decisions, reduce risks, and stay ahead of the competition. But without the right tools, this valuable information can be hard to act on.

That’s where akirolabs comes in. It’s a powerful, AI-driven platform that gives you everything you need to create, manage, and execute procurement strategies seamlessly. From real-time insights to AI-powered recommendations, it’s designed to make your job easier and more efficient.

If you’re ready to level up your procurement process, try akirolabs and start making better, faster decisions today.