From contract chaos to AI-powered operator: build your first procurement agent without writing a single line of code
For procurement, supply-chain, and sourcing professionals who want to understand how AI agents actually work in practice and walk away with the skills that get them hired into the next generation of the function.
32 chapters, 36 lessons
14-day refund on the yearly plan. Real pricing on the plans page, no surprises.
36
lessons, yours to run
Easy to pick up, built to get you the next job
No coding background needed, and you write code with Claude as you go.
Every section below turns into something a hiring manager recognises, not just notes.
Understand what an AI agent actually is, in procurement terms
- You'll trace the difference between a rule-based script, a chatbot, a RAG system, and a true AI agent, using supplier contract scenarios, not abstract theory.
- You'll be able to explain to a hiring panel exactly what an AI agent can and cannot do, and why that distinction matters when managing 5,000 supplier agreements.
- No coding background needed: every concept is introduced through the story of a real build, with plain language and everyday analogies before any technical term appears.
Follow a real build from a missed auto-renewal to a working agent
- You'll shadow Maya, Sam, Dev, and Priya as they scope ContractWise, hit real problems, and make the decisions that shape the final system.
- You'll see every stage a procurement AI project actually goes through: identifying the pain, scoping the problem, designing the agent, testing it, and going live.
- You'll spot the mistakes the team made at each stage, so you can recognise and avoid them when you're the one in the room advising on an AI rollout.
Learn the vocabulary that makes you credible in AI conversations
- You'll master twelve plain-language definitions, including embedding, RAG, prompt, ground truth, and hallucination, tied to real moments in the ContractWise build.
- You'll be able to join a conversation with IT, legal, or a vendor and translate between procurement needs and technical requirements, exactly as Maya does throughout the story.
- This is the vocabulary hiring managers expect from a procurement professional who claims AI literacy, taught through context rather than rote learning.
Apply agent design thinking to your own procurement or supply-chain context
- You'll work through fifteen design cases drawn from the ContractWise project, each one a different decision the team had to make and the reasoning behind it.
- You'll use the beginner's roadmap from Part III to map out what an agent project would look like in your own organisation, with the lessons from Nexa's mistakes already built in.
- These are the skills a hiring manager labels as AI project readiness, someone who can brief a build, review a design, and hold a vendor accountable.
Finish this course and you can do all of this, no prior background required:
- You'll be able to explain to a senior stakeholder or interview panel exactly how an AI agent differs from a chatbot or a script, using procurement contract examples rather than technical jargon.
- You'll be able to identify where in a contract management workflow an AI agent adds genuine value and where it does not, which is the first question any serious employer or internal sponsor will ask.
- You'll be able to brief an IT team or external vendor on what a procurement AI agent needs to do, using a structured scope built on the ContractWise design process.
- You'll be able to review an AI agent design or vendor demo with the same critical lens Priya brought to ContractWise, asking the right questions about accuracy, human oversight, and failure modes.
- You'll be able to use the beginner's roadmap to propose a first AI agent project in your own organisation, with the common mistakes already mapped and mitigated.
- You'll be able to present yourself credibly as an AI-literate procurement professional, someone who has studied a real build end to end and can translate between the commercial need and the technical
36 lessons, 32 chapters
Built by practitioners, not influencers
Every agent, skill file, and dataset is drawn from 25+ years and 50+ Oracle ERP implementations across pharma, manufacturing, semiconductor, and distribution.
Kept current with the stack
Claude Code, skills, and MCP move fast. Your licence includes every system update for as long as you're subscribed. Your system gets better, not obsolete.
You're managing supplier relationships and contract risk with a spreadsheet, a shared drive full of PDFs, and the hope that someone remembered to check the renewal date. You know the function is changing fast, and you can see job postings asking for AI literacy, but every course you've looked at assumes you can write Python or talk fluently about neural networks. Meanwhile the contracts keep renewing themselves, the auto-renewal clauses keep sitting on page 31 of documents nobody has opened, and the cost of one missed sentence keeps compounding. The gap between where you are and where the market is heading is real, and it is widening every month you spend waiting for a course that actually speaks your language.
What you'll be able to do, module by module
Every module leaves you able to build and run something real. Here is the syllabus, in the order you work through it.
Curriculum
32 chapters · 36 lessons
Welcome
You can describe, in plain procurement language, what ContractWise is, why it was built, who built it, and what every key term in the course means before the story proper begins.
Front Matter3 items
- L0.1: The Story Ahead🔒
- L0.2: Meet the Team🔒
- L0.3: Words We Will Use🔒
Part I: The World Before the Agent
You can diagnose the contract management problem that AI is actually solving at Nexa, articulating the attention gap, the daily manual loop, and the financial cost of unmonitored supplier agreements in terms a CFO or CPO would recognise.
Chapter 1: The Procurement Puzzle1 item
- L1: The Procurement Puzzle🔒
Chapter 2: What Is an AI Agent, Really?2 items
- L2: What Is an AI Agent, Really?🔒
- Quiz: The World Before the AgentQuiz
Part II: The Build Journey
You can walk through every stage of a real procurement AI agent build, from scoping and data through design, construction, testing, and go-live, identifying the decisions that mattered most and the mistakes worth avoiding.
Chapter 3: Discovery and Scoping1 item
- L3: Discovery and Scoping🔒
Chapter 4: The Data Reality1 item
- L4: The Data Reality🔒
Chapter 5: Designing the Agent Architecture1 item
- L5: Designing the Agent Architecture🔒
Chapter 6: Building the Core Capabilities1 item
- L6: Building the Core Capabilities🔒
Chapter 7: Integration and User Experience1 item
- L7: Integration and User Experience🔒
Chapter 8: Testing, Safety and Compliance1 item
- L8: Testing, Safety and Compliance🔒
Chapter 9: Deployment and The Real World2 items
- L9: Deployment and The Real World🔒
- Quiz: The Build JourneyQuiz
Part III: Reflection and the Beginner's Roadmap
You can use the team's honest retrospective to produce a practical first-project roadmap for your own organisation, grounded in what the Nexa team would do differently and what they would do exactly the same.
Chapter 10: The Human Side of Building an AI Agent1 item
- L10: The Human Side of Building an AI Agent🔒
Chapter 11: Lessons for Absolute Beginners2 items
- L11: Lessons for Absolute Beginners🔒
- Final: The ContractWise StoryQuiz
Appendices
You can use the reference material from the appendices to look up definitions, design decisions, and worked examples quickly when you need to brief a colleague or review a vendor proposal.
Bonus Material3 items
- LA: Bonus: How the Prompts Grew Up🔒
- LB: Bonus: The Hall of Horrors🔒
- LC: Bonus: Where to Go Next🔒
Part IV: The Agent Design Foundation
You can explain the five traits of a true AI agent, distinguish ContractWise from simpler automation, and articulate the design principles behind a procurement agent to a technical or non-technical audience.
The Seven Layers, Part 11 item
- L12: The Seven Layers, Part 1: The Brain, the Briefing, the Hands, the Memory🔒
The Seven Layers, Part 21 item
- L13: The Seven Layers, Part 2: The Conductor, the Fence, the Scorecard🔒
The Orchestration Ladder1 item
- L14: The Orchestration Ladder: Seven Ways to Run an Agent🔒
The Build Sequence and Where Agents Break2 items
- L15: Build Order and Break Points: Why Agent Projects Fail🔒
- Quiz: The Agent Design FoundationQuiz
Part V: The Design Case Bank (15 Cases)
You can work through fifteen realistic procurement agent design scenarios, applying the reasoning the Nexa team developed, and demonstrate the kind of structured AI project thinking that makes you valuable in a hiring or promotion conversation.
DC-01: Uber: Ride Operations1 item
- L16: DC-01: The Answer That Starts With No🔒
DC-02: Swiggy: Order Incidents1 item
- L17: DC-02: Two Seconds to Say Something True🔒
DC-03: Amazon: Refund Decisions1 item
- L18: DC-03: The Agent With the Keys to the Money🔒
DC-04: Airbnb: Damage Disputes1 item
- L19: DC-04: The Judge Who Trusts No Words🔒
DC-05: IndiGo: Mass Flight Rebooking1 item
- L20: DC-05: Thirty Thousand Passengers, One Hour🔒
DC-06: Razorpay: Chargeback Defense1 item
- L21: DC-06: The Clock Nobody Can Pause🔒
DC-07: Duolingo: The Tutor That Withholds2 items
- L22: DC-07: The Tutor That Refuses to Help🔒
- Quiz: Case Bank, First HalfQuiz
DC-08: LinkedIn: Compliant Screening1 item
- L23: DC-08: The Shortlist That Must Explain Itself🔒
DC-09: Datadog: Incident Response1 item
- L24: DC-09: The Pager at Three in the Morning🔒
DC-10: Practo: Symptom Triage1 item
- L25: DC-10: The Safe Side of Wrong🔒
DC-11: Walmart: Tail Spend Negotiation1 item
- L26: DC-11: The Polite Bargainer🔒
DC-12: Support at Ten Million Conversations1 item
- L27: DC-12: Ten Million Conversations, One Budget🔒
DC-13: Perplexity: Multi Source Research1 item
- L28: DC-13: The Researcher That Shows Its Sources🔒
DC-14: HDFC: Data Resident KYC1 item
- L29: DC-14: The Vault With One Window🔒
DC-15: Ola: Predictive Fleet Maintenance2 items
- L30: DC-15: The Fleet That Phones Ahead🔒
- Final: The Design Case BankQuiz
Procurement roles that list AI literacy are growing, and almost every applicant claiming it can describe a chatbot but not a real agent build. Completing this course means you can walk a hiring manager through a full procurement AI project, from the commercial problem through the design decisions and the failure modes, which puts you in a category most candidates simply cannot reach.
From subscribing to running your first artifact
Subscribe and get instant access
Create your account and you are inside the course immediately. Start with the free preview lesson, which drops you straight into Monday morning at Nexa Manufacturing, no setup, no software to install, no technical prerequisite to clear first.
Follow the story, chapter by chapter
Read the narrative in order. Each chapter opens with a real moment from the ContractWise project, explains what the team thought, then what they actually learned. Mind teasers and flashcards are embedded throughout so you are testing your understanding as you go, not cramming at the end.
Apply the design cases to your own context
By the time you reach the fifteen design cases in Part V, you have enough context from the story to work through each scenario yourself before you see how the Nexa team resolved it. Use the beginner's roadmap from Part III to sketch out what a first agent project would look like in your organisation, then bring that sketch to a daily live session for mentor review.
How ContractWise catches a missed auto-renewal before it costs $40,000
The problem arrives in an inbox
Finance sends Maya an email. A supplier contract renewed automatically last month. The auto-renewal clause was on page 31 of a PDF nobody had opened in a year. The 90-day cancellation window closed without anyone noticing. The price inside the old contract is well above the current market rate. The cost: $40,000 for one missed sentence buried in one of about 5,000 agreements.
Sam maps the daily manual loop
Sam logs one honest week to show the team what contract management actually looks like: a question arrives by email, he opens the PDF, presses Ctrl+F, hopes the contract uses the exact word he guessed, copies the result into a spreadsheet, sends anything tricky to Priya's legal queue, and waits days for an answer. He logs 31 hours on contracts in one week, and only a fraction of that is actual thinking. The rest is hunting.
The team scopes ContractWise around the attention gap
Maya's insight in the Wednesday meeting is that the problem is not effort, it is attention. Humans are poor at watching 5,000 deadlines at once. The team scopes ContractWise to read supplier contracts, extract key terms including renewal windows and notice deadlines, flag risky clauses, and surface alerts before the cancellation window closes. A human always makes the final decision; the agent handles the watching.
Priya tests it until she trusts it
Priya sends back the first batch of test results covered in red ink. She will not accept any output the agent cannot show its working for. The team builds in the transparency she demands. They measure accuracy against a set of contracts where the correct answers are already known, the ground truth, and they iterate until ContractWise meets Priya's bar. The team's private rule: if it convinces Priya, it is ready.
The lesson the course teaches
Every stage of that build, from scoping and data through design, testing, and launch, is a chapter in this course. By the end you can describe each decision the team made, explain why, and apply the same thinking to your own organisation's contract risk before the next $40,000 email lands.
The toolkit you'll build and run in this program
You leave with working assets, not notes.
Real things you can demo in an interview.
A personal copy of the ContractWise design framework, drawn from the fifteen cases in the Design Case Bank, ready to adapt for your own supplier contract context.
A completed beginner's roadmap template, showing what a first AI agent project looks like in your organisation, informed by the Nexa team's lessons and mistakes.
A glossary of twelve AI terms with procurement-specific definitions and examples, built for use in briefing documents, proposals, or interview preparation.
A set of critical review questions, Priya's checklist distilled from the story, for evaluating any AI agent demo or vendor proposal you encounter in your role.
A portfolio case study narrative you can describe in an interview: a full procurement AI build followed from the spark of a missed auto-renewal through to launch day.
You'll get the most from this if
Procurement and supply-chain professionals who manage supplier contracts and want to understand how AI agents can take over the watching, flagging, and hunting that currently fills their working week.
Sourcing analysts and category managers who are seeing AI mentioned in job postings and need to build genuine, demonstrable literacy without a technical background.
Students and early-career professionals entering procurement or supply-chain who want to arrive in the function already able to talk about AI agent design with confidence.
Operations and legal professionals who sit alongside procurement and need to understand what a contract AI agent can and cannot do so they can brief, review, or challenge one credibly.
Yearly plan: 14-day keep-the-system guarantee
14-day refund on the yearly plan. Finish the first two modules, and if you haven't run your first live pipeline, take a full refund.
Straight answers before you subscribe
Do I need any coding or technical background to follow this course?
None at all. The course is built around a narrative case study with no code anywhere in it. Dev, the developer on the Nexa team, asks every beginner question out loud so you never have to feel embarrassed for not knowing. The design work starts on day one and stays practical throughout.
Will this work for my industry, or is it only relevant to manufacturing?
The story is set at Nexa Manufacturing because that is where ContractWise was built, but supplier contracts, auto-renewals, pricing schedules, and SLAs are not manufacturing-specific. The design thinking and the beginner's roadmap in Part III apply wherever you manage supplier agreements or procurement risk.
What if I start and decide it is not right for me?
There is a 14-day refund policy. If you have worked through the material and it is not what you needed, you can request a refund within that window, no complicated process.
How do I get help if I am stuck, and will the content stay current?
Daily live sessions run throughout the course, and your work can be submitted for mentor review, so you are never stuck waiting for a forum reply. The curriculum is updated as the field develops, and enrolled students receive those updates as part of their access.
Can I use what I build and learn here in my actual job?
Yes. The frameworks, the roadmap, the design cases, and the critical review checklist are all yours to apply in your organisation. The course is designed so that the outputs you produce during the lessons are practical starting points for real work, not just exercises you leave behind when the course ends.