Körber Pioneering Procurement Automation & Responsible AI

Industry:

Services, Technology & Telecommunications

Headquarters:

Hamburg, Germany

Employees:

13,000

Website:

www.koerber.com

About Körber

Körber is an international technology company founded in 1946. Operating a successful €3 billion business across three key strategic areas—pharma, supply chain, and technologies—the group is driven by a deep commitment to innovation and corporate responsibility. Under its ambitious “Live 2035” framework, Körber is currently scaling its global footprint to grow into a €10 billion enterprise.

Challenges

Ambitious Enterprise Growth Pressures: Expanding from a €3 billion to a €10 billion global footprint requires highly empowered procurement and supply chain environments that scale smoothly.
Avoiding Isolated Technology Silos: Körber needed an approach that rejected standalone “satellite” systems in favor of embedding AI deeply inside their core workflows and daily user environments.
Overcoming the “Fear of AI”: Introducing advanced automation across global teams requires a massive focus on user adoption, direct organizational upskilling, and local labor alignment (such as the German Works Council).

Benefits

Massive Use Case Scalability: Successfully brought 12 generative AI use cases live within the platform (8 developed natively by Ivalua, 4 built internally by Körber) with 4 more currently deploying.
Frictionless Document Processing (Smart NDA Upload): Enabled immediate drag-and-drop ingestion of non-disclosure agreements, allowing the system to instantly process data and eliminate tedious manual tasks.
Instant Sourcing Context (Part Number RFQ Lookup): Created a buyer-centric feature where entering a part number immediately populates the last historical RFQ data, shortening buyer response times.
Organizational AI Readiness: Built a strong foundation in uncompromising data quality, secure data orchestration, and visible governance that ensures absolute accountability and auditability for advanced workflows.

Solutions Selected

Supplier Risk & Performance

Sourcing

Contract Management

eProcurement

Intake Management

Invoicing

IVA

Payments

Spend Analysis

If we look at the topic of AI, we always see it from a people perspective—we never see it from a technical perspective. For us, it’s crucial that we develop our organization into an AI-capable organization.