Solera Energy AI Procurement Agent

The challenge

Before

Solera Energy is a Brisbane-headquartered solar EPC contractor putting roughly AUD 4M a month through procurement across modules, inverters, mounting, cable, and balance-of-system. The procurement team of four was drowning — RFQs arriving as PDFs, quotes returning in inconsistent formats, comparisons hand-built in Excel, and recommendations written in long email threads that the project managers admitted they often skimmed. The team was missing better-priced alternatives simply because the analysis was too tedious to do thoroughly.

• Inbound RFQs arriving as inconsistent PDFs from project engineers
• Supplier quotes returning in mismatched formats and line-item naming
• Bid comparisons hand-built in Excel taking 4-6 hours per package
• Procurement recommendations sent as long email threads, often skimmed
• No memory of past supplier performance influencing new decisions
• Better-priced alternatives missed because thorough analysis was slow
• Compliance documents (certificates, warranties) re-collected per quote
• No audit trail tying final PO back to the comparison that justified it

The solution

What we built

We built a procurement agent that handles the work the team had been doing manually. When a project engineer raises an RFQ, the agent parses the requirement, identifies eligible suppliers from a vetted panel, drafts the outgoing RFQ in the firm's template, and sends it. When quotes return — in whatever format — the agent extracts line items, normalizes units of measure, applies known supplier discount structures, and produces a side-by-side comparison with total landed cost including freight, duties, and lead-time penalties. The agent flags compliance gaps (missing certificates, expired warranties) and pulls in supplier performance history (on-time delivery, reject rates, payment terms compliance) from the firm's history. A recommendation is generated with the agent's reasoning, but a human procurement lead approves before any PO is issued. Approval is one click; every decision and its justification is preserved as an audit trail. The agent runs on a private deployment with the firm's data — supplier price files never leave the environment.

How the system flows

1. RFQ Intake→Requirement Parsing→Supplier Panel Match→RFQ Drafted
2. Quote Received (PDF/email/XLS)→Line Extraction→Unit Normalisation
3. Comparison Build→Landed Cost→Compliance Check→Performance History
4. Recommendation Drafted→Reasoning Captured→Procurement Lead Review
5. Approval→PO Generated→Audit Trail Linked→Project Cost Updated
6. Supplier Performance Feedback→Delivery + Reject Capture→History Update
7. Compliance Document Refresh→Certificate Expiry Watch→Supplier Nudge

• Private deployment with supplier price files inside the firm environment
• One-click human approval preserving every reasoning step
• Vetted supplier panel maintained by procurement, not by the agent