Why NPI Is Excited to Partner with Zip: Bringing Better Data to AI-Powered Procurement

AI is changing how procurement work gets done. But there’s an important distinction between automating procurement tasks and making better procurement decisions. Better decisions require better intelligence.

That’s why we’re excited about NPI’s new partnership with Zip⁠ and our role as a launch member of its Data Partner ecosystem. NPI will serve as Zip’s AI Data Partner for large enterprise IT deal benchmarking, bringing our price benchmarking intelligence directly into Zip’s AI-powered procurement workflows.

It’s a meaningful step forward for both companies, but more importantly, for the procurement teams we serve.

Putting Pricing Intelligence Where Decisions Happen

One of the biggest opportunities with AI in procurement is reducing the distance between insight and action. Today, procurement teams typically have to leave their workflow to find the information they need to make a purchasing decision. They may need to consult another system, request a benchmark, review a report or engage an expert before determining whether a supplier’s offer is competitive.

Our partnership with Zip begins to change that with the introduction of Price Pulse. Through an MCP-based connection, Zip’s Procurement Superagent will be able to call NPI’s price benchmarking intelligence from within a Zip workflow and return relevant IT vendor pricing insights in real time. For NPI, Price Pulse represents our first fully autonomous, system-to-system benchmarking capability.

The goal is simple: put independent market intelligence directly into the workflow at the moment it can influence an IT purchasing decision. That’s the type of friction-reducing value procurement teams are hungry for right now.

Why This Matters for Procurement AI

There’s a lot of excitement around what AI agents can do for procurement. Zip’s Superagents are designed to take on procurement work like supplier research, sourcing, negotiation and request follow-up, while operating within enterprise policies, permissions and audit controls. This is game-changing stuff for enterprise procurement teams who are, more often than not, under-resourced as they juggle multiple major tech sourcing initiatives.

But we believe automation alone isn’t enough. An AI agent can move faster, analyze more information and execute more tasks. The quality of its decisions still depends on the quality of the intelligence available to it.

That’s where we see enormous potential in this partnership. By giving Zip access to NPI’s independent IT price benchmarking intelligence, the Procurement Superagent can incorporate external market context into its work. Instead of simply processing a supplier quote, it can have better information about how that pricing compares to the market.

As NPI CEO Jon Winsett put it in our announcement: “Procurement AI is only as good as the intelligence behind the decisions it makes.”  

Built for the Complexity of Enterprise IT

We’re particularly excited about what this can mean for large enterprises. NPI and Zip already share significant customer overlap, and our benchmarking intelligence is built around the complex, high-value IT categories that represent significant spend and negotiation opportunities for large organizations.  

Those purchases aren’t easy to benchmark. Pricing can vary based on configuration, volume, licensing structure, product mix, commitments and dozens of other variables. Having relevant enterprise-grade market intelligence available inside the procurement workflow gives teams another way to make faster, more informed decisions without sacrificing rigor.

For years, NPI has helped enterprise IT buying teams answer a fundamental question: Are we getting a fair deal? Through our partnership with Zip, we’re creating a new way for that intelligence to reach procurement teams, and the AI agents working on their behalf.

We think that’s great news for procurement. AI has tremendous potential to make the function faster and more effective. Combining that technology with deep, independent market intelligence is how we make sure faster decisions can also be smarter ones.

Learn more about Zip Superagents⁠ and how Zip is bringing governed AI agents into enterprise procurement.