Global Logistics Leader Partners with ZHENYUN - Building an AI-Powered Procurement Marketplace in China
a new benchmark for AI-enabled procurement and support the continued transformation of procurement
Global Logistics Leader Partners with Zhenyun Technology Again to Build an AI-Powered Procurement Marketplace in China
The project will use AI to upgrade end-to-end product operations, from catalog governance and product search to onboarding, review, price management, and reporting.
ZHENYUN has signed a new agreement with a global logistics leader to upgrade the internal procurement marketplace operated by the customer’s China headquarters. Building on their previous collaboration, the two companies will develop an AI-powered management system covering the entire product lifecycle and establish a closed-loop approach to catalog operations.
The customer is one of the world’s largest providers of modern logistics facilities and a leading industrial services and investment company focused on next-generation infrastructure for supply chains, big data, and new energy. Its business spans China, the United States, India, Brazil, Vietnam, Europe, and other markets. In China, it has developed logistics, warehousing, manufacturing, and R&D infrastructure across more than 70 regions, serving over 2,500 customers.
Addressing the Challenges of a Growing Digital Catalog
The customer previously worked with ZHENYUN to launch an internal procurement marketplace for non-production materials, bringing greater efficiency and transparency to the purchasing process. However, as more categories moved online and procurement volumes continued to grow, new operational challenges emerged.
The marketplace’s catalog expanded to more than 100,000 SKUs, but procurement teams continued to face difficulties in matching demand with the right products, while long-tail items added complexity to catalog management. At the same time, large numbers of new product applications required time-consuming manual processing and review. Matching identical products offered by different suppliers also remained inefficient.
To address these challenges, the customer has partnered with ZHENYUN to introduce AI across product selection, onboarding, review, comparison, and ongoing catalog operations.
Three Priorities for the First Project Phase
The first phase will focus on three key areas:
1. Improving catalog quality through long-tail SKU governance
Configurable cleanup rules and scheduled tasks will regularly identify and remove products that have generated no orders over an extended period. This will help maintain a curated catalog, reduce long-tail complexity, and improve overall catalog quality.
2. Enabling self-service product onboarding
Semantic search will help users express procurement requirements more naturally, while AI-powered recommendations will cover both listed and unlisted products. When a user selects an unlisted item, they will be able to initiate an onboarding request directly, with suppliers submitting quotations online. The process is designed to reduce manual intervention by marketplace operations teams significantly.
3. Supporting proactive, intelligent operations
Scheduled tasks and predefined rules will continuously identify high-demand categories and products. The system will then generate recommendations for related products, lower-priced alternatives, and potential new listings, helping marketplace operations shift from reactive support to proactive optimization.
Once completed, the upgraded marketplace is expected to establish a closed-loop operating model encompassing long-tail governance, self-service product selection, higher-quality onboarding, faster listings, and more accurate search. The customer will also gradually develop stronger price management capabilities through purchasing comparisons and continuous price monitoring.
The two companies will now accelerate project implementation while exploring additional digital and intelligent procurement scenarios. Together, they aim to create a new benchmark for AI-enabled procurement and support the continued transformation of enterprise purchasing.
