Meet Daniel

Procurement was not on my radar when starting my career. Like many people, I stumbled into the procurement function, loved the challenge and stayed. My career started in management consulting helping manufacturers transform their operations functions. I quickly realized the impact that procurement had to the bottom-line of companies and how invaluable its work was. Since I love a good challenge, I decided to transition into a procurement function of a specialized automotive manufacturer. As right hand to the CPO, I was responsible to empower the rapidly growing organization with new tools, processes and governance.

2.   Why entrepreneurship? It seems like you had a comfortable job in an enterprise

*Laughts*. Indeed, the change from corporate to entrepreneurship is quite a big one. Since university, I was interested in how technology can make our life as procurement easier. When repeating a process multiple times, I naturally get bored of it and start thinking on how I can automate it. At wantex, I can build the tool that I have always dreamed about.

3.   Why is now the right time for a solution like wantex?

Procurement technology providers have focused the last 30 years optimizing indirect sourcing. Technology was able to target unmanaged spend and achieve great results. Production spend on the other hand has been largely neglected. 

I was looking for a direct sourcing tool to deploy back in my procurement excellence role and I simply couldn’t find a great one. Everybody I asked that used a solution basically told me a variation of: “We have a general adoption problem with the tool. If we use the sourcing tool, we exchange excel quote sheets with our suppliers”.

This pseudo sourcing automation goes against the very core of what I believe a sourcing tool should do: Enabling category managers spend less time knee deep in excels but rather find creative win win solutions with suppliers through collaboration.

4.    What market trends are driving the need for wantex? 

We see transformation of the procurement function from a purely operational “doer” to a "strategic thinker". This change was massively accelerated by Covid and the other recent supply chain disruptions. Also, the procurement function has become younger. The new generation of procurement leaders share our enthousiasm for efficiencies driven by technology.

The second big change is the focus on sustainability and supply chain compliance pre-dominantly driven by the EU. These new regulations will need to be operationalized by the procurement function. As a procurement leader, I will have to hire new staff to get the work done or look at automating these new tasks. 

5.    What type of company is the ideal fit for wantex?

Our tool is tailored at manufacturers, particularly the hidden champions of the world who produce the everyday items we rely on. This includes companies that manufacture airplanes, cars, trains, ships, laptops, washing machines, and all the the machines that are used to produce these products. Essentially, we serve those at the heart of industrial production, creating the technology and tools that shape modern life. 

Procurement is more of an art than a science. As procurement professionals we communicate with suppliers with natural language in emails, meetings or during site visits. This unstructured format was previously not understandable by machines. Thats why AI is such a game changer in the daily workings of the procurement function! We are only getting started... 🚀

Daniel Häberle

Chief Executive Officer

6.   What's the biggest misconception you encounter about AI in procurement?

AI is "just" another tool and does not replace the traditional software. Many tasks cannot be solved by AI - some not yet, some will never be viable. For example, I would not recommend using AI for scenarios calculations.

Don't get me wrong. AI is a revolutionary technology, comparable to the invention of the internet. It allows machines to gain cognitive functions, which were assumed to be reserved to humans unlocking tremendous speed in workflows. 

To give a real world example of a project buyer: Building a new product means that buyers need to be quoting each of the hundreds of component necessary. Todays manual processes force the buyer to compare 3-5 PDFs with dozens of pages each. This process is tedious and requires days. wantex uses AI to transform the the PDFs into database entries which enables buyers to find the best combination of offers with our powerful scenario analysis. 

7.    What's your long-term vision for wantex? 
I see wantex becoming the central platform for all communication with the suppliers. Other functions with a lot of communication with external stakeholders - such as sales - have long adopted technology to 10x their collaboration abilities. So why shouldn’t procurement also do so?