We save our clients time,
trouble and, most importantly,
we save them money


US Patent

US11334930B2
5/17/2022


Digital Method for Purchase Centralisation, Optimisation and Negotiation





GlobalSolver Procurement Platform

The GlobalSolver ® procurement system is a cloud-based B2B platform for optimizing and negotiating purchases across a complete range of goods and services.

Our machine learning and optimization algorithms calculate the optimal solution for best prices, quantities, discounts, cost of ownership, supplier quality rating and other buyer and supplier constraints to minimize purchasing costs and complexity.

Our system’s robust data algorithms can work through a staggering volume of calculations and can give results that are tangible, understandable and ready to be put to work
.
Our system greatly expands the capacity of procurement teams to organize and optimize their work leading to cost and time savings across the organization.




  • expand_morePrice & Discount Optimization
    The GlobalSolver algorithms determine the optimal product-supplier combination to minimize order costs while taking into account prices, quantities and various type of discounts (tiered discounts based on order quantity or value, cash discounts).

  • expand_moreSupplier Rating
    The buyer may adopt an optimal selection of the best supply proposals according to qualitative criteria such as lead time, delivery time, turnover, growth, environmental and social parameters, etc.

  • expand_moreTotal Cost of Ownership (TCO)
    The GlobalSolver algorithms greatly expand the capabilities of procurement teams to organize, optimize and take better control of one-off costs, life-cycle costs and income disposal.

  • expand_moreProduct and price bundling
    The supplier can offer several items as one or more combined product or service packages for a lower price than he would charge if the buyer bought each item individually.

  • expand_moreTechnical Validation
    The GlobalSolver platform enables authorised users (technical management) to evaluate and score the supplier proposals as well as providing recommendations for supplier selection or exclusion to the buyer.

  • expand_moreFeatures
    • Unlimited number of products
    • Unlimited number of suppliers
    • Unlimited number of RFQs
    • Tiered discounts
    • Cash discounts
    • Product and price bundling
    • Supplier qualification and scoring
    • Supplier proposal evaluation
    • Total Cost of Ownership
    • Multi-user
    • Multi-language
    • Database abstraction
    • Filtered views
    • Application log
    • Customized reports
    • Cloud-based
    • Integration with other ERPs
    • Data import from Excel
    • Export of results to Excel
    • Desktop, mobile and tablet ready

  • expand_moreRequest a demo







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Industry
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Value proposition
Financial - Significant and measurable cost reductions in the purchase of goods and services.
Strategic – Increased efficiency and effectiveness, quick adoption of best-practices, a centralized negotiation platform, better risk management.
Organizational – Procurement becomes a key business function to rationalize business decisions while reducing administrative and personnel costs.
Cultural – Greater transparency, accountability and reporting;
Technological – Automated optimization platform allows data-driven decision-making and reporting in real time;
Competitive - Highly configurable and customizable solution for improved inventory control and faster cycles for re-provisioning..





GlobalSolver Forecasting Platform

The GlobalSolver Forecasting Platform is a disruptive innovative software that employs a variety of statistical and machine learning methods for sales and business forecasting. This includes artificial intelligence models, for automatic forecasting of large numbers of items in real-time. It also allows for the forecasting of products with shorter series of observations or without historical data (new products), for web, mobile or desktop use.

  • expand_moreAutomatic accurate forecasting
    GlobalSolver forecasting deals with missing observations and outliers in the historical data and accommodates trends, cyclical and various temporal and seasonal patterns.

  • expand_moreStatistical and qualitative forecasting
    To avoid their sensitivity to time series patterns, such as changes in consumer behaviour and other internal and external effects, GlobalSolver forecasting platform combines forecasts derived from the most accurate forecasting methods and allows expert adjustment of statistical forecasts.

  • expand_moreTracking performance against targets
    Through the GlobalSolver platform, forecasting managers and authorized users can set annual targets by product or product group and track forecast performance against targets. They can then use the real-time forecast tool to share forecast reports with people at different levels in the company.

  • expand_moreFeatures
    • Automatic accurate forecasts of a large number of items
    • Forecasting performance evaluation and reporting
    • Forecast adjustment of stock breaks and events
    • Outlier detection and treatment
    • Accounting for missing observations
    • Real-time forecasting and reporting
    • Safety stocks and reorder point forecasting
    • Tracking performance against target
    • Hierarchical forecasting
    • Forecasting by analogy using artificial intelligence
    • Combining forecasts from different accurate models
    • Cloud-based
    • Integration with other systems
    • Data import from Excel
    • Export of forecasts to Excel
    • Desktop, mobile and tablet ready

  • expand_moreRequest a demo




Data Analytics and Machine Learning

We use a variety of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools to examine historical data, identify patterns and select the most accurate algorithms to provide a predicted output. In this process, the learning algorithms will train and optimize our custom model for expected results. 

Do you need to solve a data science problem in your business?

We evaluate the available resources to support the project.
We formulate the hypothesis to test and learn the data.
We collect, process and clean data for the machine learning project.
We build a model that uses the data to achieve the goal.
We develop datasets for training, testing and production purposes.
We evaluate the model findings, measure the metrics of the project and communicate results.
We provide a detailed report with key findings, briefings and technical specifications to the stakeholders.

The access to information in our platform is multi-channel, which gives it flexibility, ease of use and rapid scalability. Users will have access profiles, so access to the information can be parameterized according to the profile and restricted according to the intended application administrator. All the information is anonymized, and we do not store any images on our server.

The application is available for cloud hosting or dedicated servers, in a secure HTTPS environment together with a web-based user interface.

Our algorithms are programmed in the Python language and/or Tensorflow and Pytorch. Python is a versatile programming language and can run on any platform, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix, and others.




We use supervised and unsupervised learning models to solve numerous complex problems and drive business value in organizations, in areas such as:
  • - Customer churn prediction
  • - Customer recommendation
  • - Customer segmentation
  • - Fraud detection
  • - Financial analysis
  • - Business efficiency
  • - Information extraction
  • - Decision support
  • - Image recognition and classification
  • - Time series forecasting




Team

Jorge Caiado
CEO & Co-Founder

Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in Economics and Management. Data Scientist, Forecasting and Machine Learning Expertise. Professor at ISEG Lisbon School of Economics and Management

Miguel Ribeiro
CTO & Co-Founder

MBA in Management and Leadership. 15+ years experience in web, Python and mobile development. Senior technology consultant in Portugal and UK. OpenCv, artificial intelligence and machine vision Expertise.

António Caeiro
Expansion Manager

COO at AcustekPro, Responsible for Operations at an acoustic products’ factory. Production Supervisor and Corporate Coach at Philip Morris International. Cell Leader at COLEP


Pedro Lourenço
Investor & Partner

Angel investor in several technology companies. Over a decade he built a diversified group of companies in areas ranging from Consulting, Security & Monitoring to Agribusiness and Real Estate.

Dominic Gualtieri
Investor & Partner

Angel investor in several technology companies. He was Managing Director and Head of Equities at Alfa Bank in Russia. He served on the board of directors of the Russian stock exchange.

Rui Pereira
Investor & Partner

Entrepreneur. CEO of Abricome. Shareholder and board member of Angotexteis and Globescala.






Partners





Industries





Customer successes


  • CATERINGPOR is the leading national catering company in the airline industry in Portugal and a joint venture between TAP Group and Lufthansa Sky Chefs.

    CATERINGPOR manages a high volume, multi-cuisine operation at Lisbon airport, provides catering and logistical support for more than 180 flights and delivers 35 thousand meals/day (11.6 million meals/year). CATERINGPOR provides catering services to 20 of the main aviation companies operating in Lisbon and meals for Alfa train passengers on the Lisbon/Porto route. Main Clients: TAP Portugal, SATA, Lufthansa, Emirates, TAAG, Air Canada, Euro Atlantic, Delta Airlines, American Airlines. 885 employees, € 49M in revenues.

    Challenges

    To adapt to the specific business requirements of CATERINGPOR
    To promote the integration of new business data and existing systems
    To develop a negotiation process based on a short list of suppliers
    To measure the results obtained (potential versus real)
    To promote and demonstrate cost reduction and potential savings as a result of using the GlobalSolver platform
    To prove in practice the methodology associated with the implementation of the GlobalSolver platform
    To develop new features based on the customer's business requirements

    Results
    Scope: 28 Suppliers | 10 Categories | 319 Products
    Real savings made by product categories as a result of GlobalSolver optimization:

    Cheese 21%
    Margarine/Butter 18%
    Coffee/Tea/Compotes 17%
    Dry/Miscellaneous 15%
    Frozen/Refrigerated 13%
    Spices 11%


    "GLOBALSOLVER's platform is a key to our strategy for minimizing purchasing costs and transactional complexity"
    Mário Matos, Member of the Board of CATERINGPOR.

  • CTT Portugal is the national postal service of Portugal. Founded in 1520, the company has become a public limited company in 1991 and in 2013 the shares were listed on Euronext Lisbon. CTT Portugal was privatised in 2014. CTT Portugal serves the whole country and offers a wide range of services, including post tracking, regular mail, CTT express post, CTT international post, mail forwarding and PO boxes.

    The company has 12,097 employees, 2383 CTT points and more than 4400 payshop agents. CTT's turnover in 2018 was 717 million euros. In 2018 the annual purchase volume of the company was 262 million euros.

    GlobalSolver was asked to organize and optimize the purchase of air mail transport services using its proprietary procurement platform. GlobalSolver conducted a pilot project from July to October 2019 that was focused on procurement of major air mail and parcel delivery routes from Lisbon to Europe (Madrid, London, Paris and Frankfurt), United States (New York) and Africa (Luanda).

  • Eurest is part of Compass Group. Compass Group is the world's leading foodservice company. Compass Group has operations in 45 countries and employs over 600,000 people. It serves around 5.5 billion meals a year in locations including offices and factories, schools, universities, hospitals, major sports and cultural venues, mining camps, correctional facilities and offshore oil platforms.

    Eurest challenged GlobalSolver/Uniksystem to carry out a proof of concept (PoC) for the implementation of its procurement optimization software, in order to optimize the purchase of “Fruits and Vegetables” products.

    The proof of concept allowed to demonstrate in practice the capacity of the GlobalSolver algorithms in the selection of supplier proposals at the minimum total acquisition cost. At the end of the process, Eurest was able to save about 12% on procurement of products covered in the "fruits and vegetables" category

  • The Vila Galé Group is one of the largest Portuguese hotel chains and ranks in the top 200 hotel chains in the world. Founded in 1986, the company focuses on the development and management of 34 hotels across the group: 25 in Portugal and 9 in Brazil with a total of 7,454 rooms and 15,286 beds. Vila Galé Group's turnover in 2018 was 172 million euros. In 2018 the annual purchase volume of the Group was 67 million euros.

    Vila Galé Group must select, negotiate and contract with a wide range of suppliers to ensure a reliable supply of goods and services on the most advantageous terms for their hotels. GlobalSolver was asked to organize and optimize the purchase of goods and services using its proprietary procurement platform. GlobalSolver conducted a pilot project from June to August 2019 that was focused on procurement in the Meat & Charcuterie, Fish & Seafood and Dairy categories on behalf of the hotel chain.

    The mathematical approach we developed contributed to 10% of cost savings on Vila Galé Group’s procurement budget.

  • BLUESHIFT is a privately-held consultancy company, dedicated to both the turnaround and management of assets in the hospitality sector. We focus on hotels that are economically viable but that require either management advice or financial re-engineering to allow them to operate profitably.

    It is well known that reducing costs is one of the key drivers of profitability in this industry. This is why we were pleased to be able to collaborate with the company GlobalSolver.

    At our request they conducted a Proof of Concept at one our hotels, focused on improving procurement in a single product category in the Food & Beverage area. They were able to garner savings of more than 25% in this one category. Not only were there significant costs savings but the product was easy to implement, easy to use and helpful in enabling us to streamline our procurement process overall.

    This ease of use and implementation – driving considerable cost savings – lead us to believe that GlobalSolver can be an effective tool for managing procurement in the hospitality sector.

    Pedro Rodrigues Catapirra, COO of BLUESHIFT


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Head Office
Rua Outeiro de Sá, N.41, Loja 1
4445-485 Ermesinde
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Lisbon Office
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2740-122 Oeiras
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email info@globalsolver.pt
phone +351 21 803 0984