Navigating Fragmented Spend Using AI with Amazon Business

In an operating climate marked by persistent geopolitical friction, inflationary pressures and supply chain volatility, enterprise cost optimisation has grown markedly complex.

Finance chiefs can no longer treat procurement simply as a transactional cost-cutting exercise; it must actively drive operational agility and enterprise resilience. 

Yet, achieving disciplined spend management remains difficult when decentralised corporate purchasing obscures visibility and leaves finance functions analysing commitments long after cash has exited the business. 

In a webinar produced by BizClik, in association with Amazon Business, Natasha Gurevich, CEO and Founder of Candor Procurement,, was joined by Aidana Zhakupbekova and Nithin Mummaneni for an insight-filled discussion on cost optimisation and using AI in procurement. 

Natasha observed that modern tools often enable well-meaning employees to bypass formal procurement governance altogether: “We call them hobby buyers: people who negotiate on behalf of the company without having clear affiliation with procurement... that actually leads to spend segregation and spend dilution.”

This fragmentation amplifies information asymmetry when negotiating mission-critical commercial terms. 

Commercial vendors frequently leverage dynamic market conditions to justify higher pricing, leaving corporate buyers at an information disadvantage unless backed by live market intelligence. 

Nithin Mummaneni, Founder and CEO Infinity Loop, explained how legacy tooling has historically tilted the scales towards the supply side: “Over the last twenty years there's been a ton of solutions out there helping sales teams get more efficient on increasing revenue... but that solution hasn't been built for the buy side. 

“There's no real-time market intelligence that tells people if they're getting good deals or not.”

Watch the webinar on demand here. 

Starting with unstructured data

While boardrooms often push for sweeping artificial intelligence implementations to automate executive decision-making, seasoned finance leaders recognise that immediate, defensible ROI stems from foundational data hygiene. 

High-level analytics falter when fed dirty data, unapproved receipts, and mismatched purchase orders. 

The initial focus must centre on eliminating repetitive back-office administrative burdens, converting unstructured transaction paperwork into verified datasets that feed downstream financial planning.

Automating these administrative bottlenecks allows corporate teams to redirect their finite focus toward higher-value commercial activities.

Aidana Zhakupbekova, CFO of Rydoo, emphasised that deploying technology at the baseline layer creates the most reliable enterprise efficiencies: “The best use case and the best efficiency gains you will see from AI is actually the very first step – it's quite unglamorous.

“It's AI taking those receipts, it's taking those invoices, and actually turning it into structured data that you can use later on for analytics.”

Transitioning from tedious processing to strategic execution also shifts how commercial negotiations take place. 

When manual preparation and contract auditing are automated, corporate buyers can engage suppliers collaboratively based on hard evidence rather than aggressive posturing. Natasha highlights this strategic evolution: “Negotiation used to be take the hammer and beat supplier over the head.

“AI gives you a lot of insights to learn about suppliers' business, to understand what kind of cost pressures they are experiencing, to arrive to negotiation very well prepared, jointly arriving to what the price should be.”

‘Cost Optimization Using Artificial Intelligence in Procurement’ is available on demand here. 

Managing adoption: Pacing transformation and aligning enterprise value

Scaling intelligent procurement systems across an enterprise introduces substantial change management challenges. 

Attempting a total structural overhaul overnight risks employee fatigue, workflow disruption, and systemic user rejection. 

To establish durable adoption, leadership should identify specific manual pain points, test automation with clear operational guardrails, and mandate human validation as the decisive final step in every critical transaction.

Nithin advises leadership to begin within their own ranks: “Ask your procurement team what the pain is. Do some interviews, write it down, because that is gonna help you internally. That gives you kind of the pain points to go out to market with to evaluate different solutions.”

Procurement strategies must ultimately serve the wider commercial goals of the enterprise rather than siloed functional KPIs.

Executive overreach remains one of the primary pitfalls when deploying modern automation platforms. 

Natasha warns that forcing widespread structural disruption before teams are ready invariably leads to organisational failure: “Start slow, move fast... do not choke organisation with a change, because if organisation is not prepared for a massive transformation, it will be organ rejection.

“Once an organ gets rejected it's very difficult to introduce that change second time.” 

For CFOs mapping their technological roadmap, success hinges on prioritising the pain points of front-line operators rather than pursuing theoretical capabilities. 

To uncover deeper strategic perspectives and practical frameworks from the panellists, be sure to watch the full webinar here. 

About the speakers:

Aidana Zhakupbekova serves as the Chief Operating and Financial Officer at Rydoo, a specialised spend management platform managing both direct and indirect corporate spend. Her strategic focus centres on spend compliance, real-time fiscal control and leveraging automated financial workflows to replace retrospective cost post-mortems with active cash-flow governance.

Nithin Mummaneni is Founder and CEO of Infinity Loop, a negotiation intelligence platform designed to restore parity between corporate buyers and suppliers. A former practitioner and management consultant, Nithin focuses on automating contract analytics, identifying hidden enterprise savings and democratising specialised negotiation strategies for internal procurement teams.

Natasha Gurevich is the Founder and CEO of Candor Procurement and the former Global Chief Procurement Officer at Nike, with senior leadership tenures spanning Salesforce, McKesson and PayPal. Bringing over 27 years of enterprise experience, she advises executives on procurement maturity, anti-RFP methodologies and aligning procurement functions directly with broader enterprise objectives.