One of the downsides of the Gen-AI mania is the constant messaging that everything is complicated and the only technology that can make it easy is over-engineered, power hungry, planet killing, Gen-AI technology that has to consume mountains of data, be fed by carefully crafted creative prompts (that can take hours, days, and even weeks of trial and error to get right), and require mountains of effort to acquire, install, train, and tweak such a system. The claims are that only this technology can solve modern Procurement problems, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that not all problems require complex solutions. Some require very simple solutions. India recently provided us with an example of that. In a recent article on how Farmers can use WhatsApp for Paddy Procurement, India presented a rather simple solution to its Paddy Procurement problem, where it needed to simplify the acquisition of rice.

When a large amount of product needs to be procured in a whole lot of small batches, coordination is not easy, especially from suppliers who don’t have the same modern tech. Now, imagine your suppliers are not corporations, but small farms where the most advanced tech might be the cell phone they are holding to make calls. As a result, they don’t have any complicated sales and order management systems, no ability to process XML or EDI, and even using a sophisticated portal on a small screen is a challenge (even if they have a fairly modern smartphone).

However, they have WhatsApp, so the state government has adopted a methodology to support the farmers selling their wares through that platform. When they are ready to sell, all they have to do is text “hi” to a given number, enter their Aadhaar (ID) number, the nearest procurement center, and the number of bags they want to sell. The platform will then provide them with three dates and times, they choose one, and they can then show up, and, without waiting, deliver their bags and get promptly paid. Before, they might have had to wait hours (or all day) if they just showed up, and much longer for payment. Moreover, due to the efficiencies they’ve introduced and other related Procurement efficiencies, the government is able to offer farmers tarpaulin sheets to protect field stock at a 50% subsidy price.

Simple works. Never forget it, and you’ll go further than if you blindly adopt over-promised solutions that under-deliver.