Client context

Digital Procurement World (DPW) is the leading global event platform for digital procurement professionals. Over the past five years, it has become the hub for innovation in the procurement industry, connecting leaders, showcasing startups, and driving collaboration through innovation labs.

Based in Amsterdam and expanding to New York in 2024, DPW continues to shape the future of procurement. To align with their mission of advancing technology in their sector, including putting AI to work, they wanted to leverage this technology for shaping their own strategy.

The challenge

To stay ahead as an industry leader, DPW needed a deep understanding of their competitive landscape. Gaining these insights was essential for understanding their position and finding new opportunities, without being dependent on hunches.

The team faced two major obstacles:

• They didn’t have the internal capacity to conduct detailed research.
• Outsourcing to traditional agencies wasn’t appealing due to long timelines and high costs.

They needed a solution that was fast, cost-effective, and aligned with their reputation as a leader in innovation.

The approach

To solve this, I took the team through a market research process powered by AI in three steps.

1. Collaborative workshop

I led a workshop with DPW’s team to map out their needs and define the research goals. We started off with identifying key players to analyse, including direct competitors, indirect competitors, and inspiring organizations in adjacent markets. Next, we clarified the questions we wanted answered about these players, such as service offerings, ticket pricing, event agendas, and speaker lineups.

This step ensured a comprehensive scope while energizing the team with clear, shared objectives.

2. AI-driven data collection and analysis

I deployed three AI agents to handle the heavy lifting for collecting and analysing the company data.

• Colin Collector: Gathered data from websites, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and other sources, organizing it into a structured database.
• Angelina Analyst: Analyzed Colin's data in three ways. First, for each player, identifying unique insights about individual competitors. Second, between players, spotting patterns across pre-set dimensions, such as service offerings or common speaker themes. Third and finally, looking for deep patterns, highlighting trends across the full dataset that the human eye would miss.‍
• Agent Manager Marijn: Oversaw quality control and ensured smooth collaboration between the agents.

‍3. Interactive delivery

The findings were presented in a dynamic portal, with visualized data for easy exploration. I facilitated a review session with DPW’s team to discuss insights, align on key takeaways, and identify actionable next steps.

Results and impact

The project helped the DPW team with:

• Confidence through data: DPW validated their strategic assumptions with clear, evidence-based insights.
• Fresh opportunities: Trends from adjacent industries and indirect competitors inspired new ideas for events and services.
• Stronger team alignment: The collaborative approach and structured results energized the team and made implementation seamless.

Without an AI-supported approach, DPW would likely not have conducted this level of research due to time and budget constraints, leaving them reliant on hunches. Instead, they gained deep, actionable insights, saved time, and strengthened their position as an industry leader.