Explore Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated February 24, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Explore Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) integrates generative AI into the Source-to-Pay Workspace, enhancing efficiency for requesters and procurement teams. This application streamlines procurement requests, improves visibility, and supports quicker, more informed decision-making throughout the procurement process.

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    Key Features

    • AI-assisted Conversational Intake: Requesters can submit procurement requests in natural language, ensuring accurate routing to the correct intake process.
    • Generative AI-powered Record Summaries: Quickly interpret completed actions and statuses through generated summaries accessible across various procurement experiences.
    • Sentiment Monitoring: Tracks requester sentiment on active cases, allowing specialists to prioritize sensitive requests effectively.
    • Email Assistance: Helps procurement specialists draft clear and professional email responses.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing Now Assist for SPO, requesters can easily submit purchase requisitions, sourcing requests, and requests for products or services not listed in the catalog. For fulfillers, it offers various summarization skills and email response templates tailored to procurement tasks, enhancing overall operational efficiency.

    Now Assist is also integrated into Virtual Agent, leveraging large language models to improve conversational interactions and reduce manual efforts in topic discovery.

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) is an application that adds generative AI capabilities to the Source-to-Pay Workspace to help requesters and procurement teams work more efficiently.

    Overview of Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) uses generative AI to handle procurement requests and understand records, which helps procurement teams improve visibility, reduce manual effort, and make faster, smarter decisions throughout the procurement process.

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) includes the following capabilities:
    • Provides AI-assisted conversational intake, enabling requesters to submit procurement requests in natural language. Now Assist for SPO uses procurement-related topics to route requests to the appropriate intake process and helps requesters submit accurate requests without relying on fulfillers.
    • Produces generative AI-powered record summaries that help requesters and fulfillers quickly interpret completed actions, status, and next steps.
    • Embeds summary access across procurement experiences, including Source-to-Pay Workspace, Shopping Hub, and the Now Assist panel.
    • Monitors requester sentiment across active procurement cases, enabling procurement specialists to identify, prioritize, and manage sensitive requests proactively
    • Assists procurement specialists and buyers in composing clear, professional, and accurate email responses using Now Assist.

    Now Assist skills for Sourcing and Procurement Operations

    Skills available on Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations.

    The following skills are available in Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).
    • Skills available for requesters:
      • Document extraction
      • Purchase requisition summarization for requesters
      • Purchase order summarization for requesters
      • Sourcing request summarization for requesters
      Note:
      A requester with the sn_spend_gen_ai.now_assist_requester role can use these summarization skills in Shopping Hub.
    • Skills available for fulfillers:
      • Email response for acknowledgement task
      • Email response for negotiation
      • Email response for procurement case
      • Email response for procurement task
      • Email response for purchase requisition
      • Email response for sourcing event
      • Email response for sourcing request
      • Email response for sourcing task
      • Negotiation summarization for fulfillers
      • Procurement case summarization for fulfillers
      • Product category predictor
      • Purchase requisition summarization for fulfillers
      • Sentiment analysis for procurement case
      • Sourcing request summarization for fulfillers
      • Sourcing event summarization for fulfillers
      • Spend category predictor
      Note:
      A fulfiller with the sn_spend_gen_ai.now_assist_fulfiller role can use these summarization skills in Source-to-Pay Workspace.

    For more information about setting up Now Assist for SPO, see Configure Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).

    As a requester, you can use Now Assist for SPO to:
    • Submit purchase requisitions
    • Sourcing requests
    • Request for products or services that aren't available in the catalog
    For guidance on using these capabilities in Now Assist for SPO, see Using Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).

    Now Assist for SPO is also available in Virtual Agent, where it uses large language models (LLMs) and generative AI skills to enhance conversational experiences. These capabilities help improve deflection rates and reduce the manual effort required for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) topic discovery.

    For detailed information about Now Assist in Virtual Agent and how to use generative AI skills in your conversations, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    To understand how you can interact with the Virtual Agent when Now Assist capabilities are enabled in your instance, see Exploring Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    During the Conversational Interfaces Assistants guided setup, a Now Assist assistant for Virtual Agent is created automatically. For more information about this assistant, see LLM assistants.

    Domain separation is supported for Now Assist in Virtual Agent. For more information, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent domain separation.