One supplier search = One full working day

Machu Picchu Foods is a Peruvian company that makes cocoa derivatives, chocolates and snacks for other brands.

Its sourcing centres (local buying points where farmers bring their cocoa beans) in the Peruvian Amazon connect with more than 15,000 family-owned farms.

However, to turn a client request into a finished product, Machu Picchu Foods also needs other supplies, such as sugar, milk powder, nuts, and flour, as well as the companies that can provide them.

This is the job of procurement, the team in charge of finding, checking and buying from suppliers.

As of today, a large part of that job is manual supplier scouting, which requires thorough research:

• Certifications, 
• Technical specifications, 
• Location (somewhere that makes delivery realistic).

At Machu Picchu Foods, one search like this takes around 8 hours, a full working day.

The process is slow, prone to errors, and hard to scale when requests pile up.

It also offers no consistent basis for comparison, since two buyers may check different things and record them differently.

Buyers stop hunting for suppliers and start choosing them

AGENTS.inc is a Berlin-based startup that began working on AI agents in 2016.

An AI agent, unlike a chatbot which needs constant prompting, receives a task and carries it out on its own, step by step.

For Machu Picchu Foods, AGENTS.inc applied one of its existing products: the Company Agent. 

Here is how it works:

1. The buyer writes a description of the companies they are looking for (certification, technical and geographical criteria and more).
2. The buyer chooses how deep the Agent should dig:
   • Sample search: a low-cost real search returning up to 5 companies, to check that the Agent is looking in the right direction.
   • Standard search: roughly 100 to 400 companies, the working range for most sourcing tasks.
   • Deep Dive search: roughly 500 to 1,000 companies, aiming to find every company that matches the description. 
3. The Agent returns a structured list of companies.
4. The buyer then does what only a human expert can do: review the shortlist, compare the options and pick the right supplier.

A search that used to take the purchasing team a full working day is completed by the Agent in at most 1 hour, often in 15 to 20 minutes.

The hours once spent searching are now minutes spent on judgement.

“

Machu Picchu Foods was spending a full day of team time on a single supplier search. With our Company Agent, that same search takes about an hour, and their buyers spend it choosing suppliers instead of hunting for them. That is what an AI agent should do: not replace the expert, but hand them a shortlist worth their judgement.

Sebastian DENEF, CEO, AGENTS.INC

From a working test to a business case and an investor pitch

• Service n°1: Roadmapping & Mentoring

This service co-created the collaboration roadmap and helped design and evaluate the proof of concept (PoC), aligning both partners on objectives, milestones, risks and responsibilities. 

It fixed the KPIs before the first search was run: 

– 20 complex supplier-search queries,
– active research time cut by more than 80% against the 8-hour manual baseline,
– an average supplier relevance score above 4.0 out of 5,
– actionable shortlists in more than 85% of cases, each with 3 to 5 high-quality leads. 

Mentoring sessions ran alongside, ending with recommendations on whether and how to continue or scale up.

“

We needed to replace slow, manual supplier scouting with a structured way to identify and validate suppliers against complex requirements. The PoC let us test whether the AI agent could cut active research time by more than 80% while maintaining relevant, actionable shortlists.

David MENDO, Project Innovation Analyst, MACHU PICCHU FOODS

• Service n°2: Open innovation bootcamp

This one-day training applied corporate-startup innovation methods directly to the partners’ test, helping them refine:

– how they work together,
– how Machu Picchu Foods scouts and assesses new partners,
– what value the Company Agent must deliver to earn a permanent place in procurement. 

It also mapped out the next steps, for instance, extending the Agent from a first set of searches to other procurement categories, and what it would take to integrate it into buyers’ day-to-day workflows.

• Service n°3: Investment readiness & Matchmaking

This service prepares AGENTS.inc for its next funding round by reviewing and improving its pitch materials and training the team to answer the questions investors typically ask (e.g. whether results with one customer can be replicated with the next). 

It also arranges at least one meeting with at least two selected investors, followed by support to act on their feedback. 

3,136 companies screened, 81 relevant suppliers found (in minutes, not hours)