Almost every procurement organization knows what category management should look like. The problem is time. Those managing 30, 50, or 400 categories end up actively steering only the largest ones and letting the rest run on autopilot. Among the webinar participants, 55 percent worked with Excel and presentations for each category. Only 10 percent had a fully formulated strategy for all their categories.

In this webinar, Laura Weiher (Customer Development at Tacto) and Jakob Strobel (Product Development at Tacto) introduce the new Category Intelligence module: how it prioritizes categories, creates strategies, and tracks their implementation.

Four steps per category, time for three

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Managing a category properly involves four tasks: structuring and evaluating the category, analyzing cost drivers and market conditions, planning and implementing measures, and finally, measuring the impact. And this isn't a one-time effort, as new suppliers join, items are discontinued, and markets shift. This is manageable for one category. With thirty, it becomes a capacity issue.

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On top of that, there are four hurdles. Data is scattered across ERP systems, Excel files, and slides, and the associated knowledge often resides with only one colleague. Cost drivers per category are rarely documented, so while a buyer might know that prices have risen, they cannot determine if the increase is justified. Everyone handles their categories differently, making it impossible to transfer a successful strategy to another area. Furthermore, agreed-upon measures often run alongside daily business, with progress usually only reviewed during annual meetings. The cost of this is quantifiable: one to three percent of category volume is left on the table. On a volume of ten million euros, that’s 100,000 to 300,000 euros per year, in a single category.

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Context first, strategy second

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Without context, there is no reliable strategy, and ERP data alone doesn't provide it. For a category like turned parts, which involves many technical components and numerous suppliers, it is not enough to know which items exist and how the spend is distributed. Tacto Intelligence therefore consolidates four levels: the technical characteristics of the parts and volume trends, suppliers and their countries of origin, the markets and cost drivers behind the category, and the resulting dependencies.

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The foundation is built on over six years of procurement history and millions of external market signals. In the demo, this means that what used to take hours or days of research is now available as an overview—from price and volume trends to supplier concentration, payment terms, and on-time delivery performance.

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Which category comes first?

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With 400 categories, the first question is where to start. Category Intelligence ranks every category based on demand power and supply power. For non-critical categories, the goal is to minimize effort through standardization and bundling. Leverage categories are those where procurement can take action and savings are realistic. For bottleneck categories, supply security is what counts, requiring transparency regarding dependencies and the development of secondary sources. Strategic categories are vital to the business and face a difficult market environment; these require long-term decisions and reliable partners.

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The AI performs the classification, but the category manager has the final say. They know their category better than anyone and can adjust the assessment at any time. It is important to look beyond just volume, as the largest categories are not automatically the ones that need the most attention.

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From strategy to action

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A strategy that no one implements is just a PowerPoint presentation gathering dust. This module translates the target vision for a commodity group directly into strategic goals, attaching a specific action to each one—complete with an owner, start and end dates, and status. In the demo, the goal of qualifying alternative sources in Europe becomes an action that links directly to an RFQ, for which the AI has already pre-selected items and suppliers. During ongoing operations, agents continue to monitor the commodity group, flagging changes in price versus market, supplier consolidation, supplier mix, terms, should-costing, and lot sizes. Decisions are made by the team; the agents simply keep the context up to date. Technically, the module builds on the Analytics module, which uses a pipeline to stream ERP data into a separate environment. If you are already using Analytics, you can add Category Intelligence at short notice.

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Conclusion

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Commodity group management rarely fails due to a lack of knowledge; it fails due to the capacity required to apply it across all categories. That is exactly where the agentic approach comes in: the context is built once and kept current, prioritization is transparent, and every strategy is tied to an action with a name and a deadline. This turns an annual planning exercise into continuous management.

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Laura Weiher (Customer Development at Tacto) and Jakob Strobel (Product Development at Tacto) demonstrate how Category Intelligence prioritizes commodity groups based on demand and supply power, builds context for each group using purchasing data and market signals, and derives strategies with concrete actions. Includes a live product demo and answers to questions regarding custom parts, established commodity group structures, ERP integration, and data security.