Procurement negotiations are often based on experiential knowledge, intuition, and fragmented data. But as supply chains, markets, and price structures become more complex, an objective, data-based foundation becomes increasingly important. In the webinar "From Gut Feeling to Evidence," Zvjezdan Garic (Director of Supply Chain, Steelco Belimed – Miele Group), Johannes Groll, and Florian Findeis (Tacto) show how AI helps base negotiation arguments on facts – significantly increasing efficiency in procurement.

Starting Point – When Experience Alone Is No Longer Enough

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Many procurement organizations face the same challenge today: increasing complexity, growing requirements, and high coordination effort in daily operations. Price changes, market movements, and supplier data reside in different systems – consolidating them costs time that is then missing from meeting preparation.

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As a result, negotiations are often based on experiential knowledge rather than clear, traceable data. This makes it harder to substantiate price developments, support arguments, and systematically track negotiation outcomes.

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AI as a Tool for Fact-Based Negotiations

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At Steelco Belimed – part of the Miele Group – a central goal was to ground negotiations more firmly in data and trends rather than manually consolidating information from various sources. This is exactly where Tacto's system provides support: Internal procurement data, price histories, and supplier records are linked with external market and commodity indices and presented in a format that is directly usable for preparation.

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A key advantage for Steelco Belimed: AI agents take over part of the analytical work, monitor price and volume developments in the background, and flag anomalies early. This produces insights that are easily overlooked in daily operations – and that can be directly incorporated into negotiation strategy and argumentation.

The key functions in use at Steelco Belimed:

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• Price and trend analyses: Relevant changes become automatically visible – without manual evaluation.
• Market trends in context: External indices complement internal data and make causes more clearly identifiable.
• Hints for potential argumentation levers: For example, regarding volumes, timing, or payment terms.
• Central documentation: Results, dossiers, and analyses are uniformly filed and accessible to the team at all times.
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Preparation becomes noticeably easier: Instead of collecting information, the team at Steelco Belimed can focus more on interpreting data and making professional assessments. AI delivers the facts – procurement puts them in the right context.

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From Individual Gut Feeling to Structured Argumentation

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In practice, Steelco Belimed (Miele Group) uses the combination of AI analyses and negotiation dossiers to ground procurement decisions in clear, traceable data.

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The team can analyze price histories, supplier developments, and market indices at the click of a button, arguing with greater precision – independent of personal experiential knowledge.

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Particularly important: AI does not deliver automated decisions but specifically supports buyers in their professional expertise. Hints are reviewed, contextualized, and integrated into individual negotiation strategies.

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This creates a new form of collaboration between human and machine: AI delivers the facts, procurement puts them in context.

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Conclusion

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The Steelco Belimed (Miele Group) example shows how data-based structures can noticeably simplify the preparation and execution of negotiations. Instead of manually compiling information, unified analyses and clear argumentation foundations are available – and results are documented in a traceable manner.

In the webinar, Zvjezdan Garic (Steelco Belimed, Miele Group), Johannes Groll, and Florian Findeis (Tacto) report on how experiential knowledge becomes a reliable, data-based argumentation foundation – and how AI enables procurement to act faster, more precisely, and more fact-oriented.

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