As Pactum AI embarks on a pivotal phase of commercialization, the arrival of Sarah Alper in the AI-driven company’s CFO office is by no means a coincidence.
Having transitioned from structured finance roles at General Electric to the dynamic environment of UiPath, Alper now brings to the table a blend of experience in operational finance, strategic planning, and transformational technologies that arguably made her an optimal CFO candidate.
Read MoreLooking back, Alper tells us, her leap from GE to the high-velocity world of tech start-ups afforded her the opportunity to help to execute a finance transformation while participating in strategic decision-making and investor relations, culminating in a front-row seat at UiPath’s initial public offering (IPO).
Alper is now channeling her expertise toward refining Pactum AI’s go-to-market strategy, which includes the critical task of pricing and packaging the AI company’s negotiation offerings to make certain that they appeal to a broad spectrum of enterprises seeking to enhance their negotiation capabilities.
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CFOTL: Tell us about Pactum AI … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Alper: At Pactum, we’re using AI to autonomously conduct negotiations on behalf of some of the world’s largest companies. Today, we’re focused on negotiations between our customers and their suppliers. Large organizations are often just unable to manage all of their suppliers, and oftentimes they’re sitting in legacy contracts that have been untouched for some time—which means that ultimately they’re leaving a lot of value on the table for themselves and their suppliers.
With Pactum, our customers are able to conduct thousands of negotiations simultaneously through a digital agent that is able to engage suppliers and conclude deals on our customers’ behalf. When people first hear this, they kind of think, Oh, we’re just replacing humans and negotiators, or just squeezing our suppliers. But what we do is so much more interesting than that because AI is enabling us to negotiate contracts that we would never have previously been able to do economically through human negotiators.
Read MoreNow our customers are able to spend more time in preparing for the negotiation if they need to—engaging with their more strategic suppliers in some cases—but they don’t necessarily have to conduct the entire negotiation because our technology and software will do it in a rules-based way. Coming from a Fortune 100 company, I know from personal experience that management of the vast majority of contracts out there sort of follows the 80/20 rule and people just don’t spend time on them. The contracts are just sitting there forever with their standard cookie-cutter terms. Pactum AI enables you to better manage these suppliers and, if you want, to have a relationship with them that you didn’t have in the past.
Another interesting thing about our AI is that Pactum has been AI since its inception. We weren’t a part of this generational AI wave that has come about recently, although I would say that we have benefited a lot from it because we have been inherently AI from the beginning. For us, though—again—it’s not just about working on behalf of humans. We like the technology and the algorithms and the models behind this that are allowing us to create what I’ll call a bigger pie. Everybody now wants a bigger slice of the pie, and we can now create a bigger pie for everyone with this AI piece. We’re creating more value on both sides of these negotiations—value that can generate hard savings and true efficiency gains for our customers. jb
“When you enter the CFO office, although there will likely be a number of pressing matters demanding your immediate attention, don’t hesitate to say: ‘I know that this is important to you, but please permit me to have a little time here to get up and running first.'” –Sara Alper, CFO, Pactum AI
Pactum AI | www.pactum.com | Mountain View