Prada Group, the Milan-based luxury company behind Miu Miu and Versace, is turning to agentic artificial intelligence to help manage one of the most demanding parts of its business: procurement across a supply chain of more than 1,000 suppliers.
The move comes after years of unusually intense scrutiny of its sourcing network. According to the Financial Times, Prada carried out more than 850 factory inspections over the past five years, including overnight checks outside subcont...
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ractors’ premises, and ended ties with 222 suppliers over alleged labour abuses. That review unfolded as prosecutors in Milan examined the luxury sector’s Italian supply base for possible worker exploitation, underscoring how difficult it is to monitor complex and layered manufacturing networks.
At the centre of Prada’s new effort is Iva, an AI agent developed by procurement software company Ivalua. Fabio Francalancia, Prada’s head of global procuring and cost management, told an Ivalua event in New York that reviewing supplier documents, performance data and related material across such a large network can take weeks and require significant manpower. He said the company sees AI as a way to speed up that work without sacrificing control.
Ivalua says Iva, short for Intelligent Virtual Agent, has evolved from a generative assistant into a more autonomous system that can operate within procurement processes, including supplier onboarding, sourcing events and contract work. The company says the tool is designed to work inside its platform, with oversight built into a dashboard called Iva Studio, which lets businesses set permissions, tools and integrations.
Prada is among about 90 early users of the system, according to Ivalua. The software company says the platform is meant to combine people, workflows and AI on one system, with what it calls a controlled balance between automation and human approval.
Francalancia said Prada’s procurement strategy has long been shaped by three priorities: compliance, value and speed. In his view, those aims have often been treated as a trade-off. AI, he suggested, now makes it possible to pursue all three at once.
He said the company retains control over where the system is used and what it can do. That matters because, as Ivalua’s product team notes, AI outputs are probabilistic rather than guaranteed. In practice, that means managers decide which tasks can be handled by the system and which still need human review.
Prada has also been looking at more immediate operational uses. Francalancia said AI can support training by giving workers guidance in real time, on the same screen where they are carrying out a task, rather than requiring lengthy classroom sessions. He added that teams must remain open to learning as the technology develops, describing the process as one that depends on shared experience rather than isolated experimentation.
Ivalua has previously said its generative AI tools are intended to speed up research, analysis, content creation and summarisation while being built with data protection in mind. Its broader platform is pitched as a procurement environment in which AI agents can support sourcing, contracts, supplier management, purchasing and invoice handling.
Source: Noah Wire Services
