Procurement management is essential for small and medium businesses (SMBs) — but it’s also tedious and time-consuming work. Now there’s a virtual employee to help with that.
Nyck AI uses artificial intelligence to automate the procurement process and save SMBs time and money. Born out of the Kellogg School of Management’s New Venture Discovery course, the web-based platform condenses hours of painstaking work into one 15-minute set of calculations.
As part of the course, MBA students Marc Davis, Dániel Sütheő, Alexandre Rossi Alvares ’25 MBA and Arthur Koefender ’25 MBA conducted interviews with staff at more than 60 SMBs and discovered that a key pain point for employees was procurement — a suite of tasks that includes checking inventory, reviewing incoming shipments, calculating and drafting purchase orders, and emailing suppliers. Employees reported spending sometimes 20 or more hours per week on procurement.
A trip to the Milwaukee headquarters of the midsize chain Colectivo Coffee solidified the group’s theory that SMBs would benefit greatly from a virtual employee who could handle the tedium of procurement, Davis says. When Colectivo needed to order coffee beans, employees would review inventory in a spreadsheet, forecast demand and create a purchase order. Then an employee would have to reach out to Colectivo’s suppliers. If certain products were out of stock, delayed or only available in certain quantities, Colectivo employees would have to look to other suppliers or rearrange orders.
“But with Nyck AI, you just upload inventory data,” Davis says. “It calculates exactly what you need to purchase for every single item instantly. It also helps you optimize, making sure to hit the quantity and shipping requirements. Then it auto-drafts all the documents and the email to the supplier, and all you do is hit send.”
And when suppliers respond with out-of-stock notices or other issues, Nyck AI will find an alternative supplier, prepare a purchase order and draft a response to the original supplier, Davis says. An employee then reviews Nyck AI’s proposed solution and approves it, and “the whole situation is taken care of.”
The founders say Nyck AI can help SMBs reduce the time spent on procurement by 90%, realize 2% to 5% cost savings on procurement spending, improve cash flow and minimize errors.
Last summer Nyck AI took part in Jumpstart, The Garage’s summer pre-accelerator program, and won first place in the program’s Demo Day.