Webinar Recording: AI Agents in Action – How Koepfer Defends Against Price Increases and Conducts Negotiations

Price increases have long become the rule in industrial procurement. At the same time, demands on speed, traceability, and quality of preparation are rising. Many procurement organizations face the task of reacting faster without building additional capacity.

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In the webinar "AI Agents in Action – How Koepfer Defends Against Price Increases and Conducts Negotiations," Marcel Schweizer (Head of Procurement & IT, Koepfer) and Simon Vötter (Tacto) show how Koepfer is already productively using AI agents today to significantly simplify price defense and negotiation preparation.

Starting Point – High Effort for Price Increases

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At Koepfer, the number of price increase announcements rose noticeably, especially around the turn of the year. Each request required manual preparation: checking price histories, researching indices, compiling arguments. Each case took around 30 minutes.

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Similar effort arose in document management and negotiation follow-up. Information was scattered, comparisons were time-intensive, and many steps were repetitive.

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AI Agents as Pragmatic Support

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Koepfer specifically deploys AI agents to operationally relieve the team. The goal is not to replace humans in decision-making but to eliminate tedious routine tasks and create a solid factual basis. The agents scan internal data as well as historical price and volume developments and match them with external market and commodity indices. This way, irregularities are detected early and presented in a structured manner.

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The "Defender Agent" Against Price Increases

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A real highlight is the Defender Agent. As soon as a price increase arrives, the AI automatically analyzes the letter, classifies the demand, and directly delivers matching counterarguments.

The result speaks for itself: Preparation effort shrinks from half an hour to just a few minutes. At the same time, argumentation becomes significantly sharper, as indices and reference values are seamlessly integrated.

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Versatile in Application
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Beyond price defense, the agents support:

• Document management: Automated maintenance of certificates and contracts.
• Negotiation preparation: Always up-to-date dossiers and benchmarks at the click of a button.
• Quote comparisons: Automatic harmonization of different RFQ formats.

Marcel Schweizer and Simon Vötter show in the webinar how Koepfer not only saves time through AI support but also massively gains strategic impact.

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