Recommend supplier consolidation with Google Sheets, Groq, Slack and Gmail

Description

Quick overview
This workflow runs weekly to read supplier spend data from Google Sheets, detect overlapping suppliers across departments, estimate potential consolidation savings, and use Groq-hosted LLM analysis to assess risk and produce recommendations that are sent to Slack and emailed via Gmail.

How it works
Runs every week on a scheduled trigger.
Reads supplier records from a Google Sheets spreadsheet and keeps key fields like supplier name, department, spend, risk rating, and stakeholder email.
Groups and normalizes supplier names to find suppliers used by multiple departments and calculates estimated savings and an opportunity level.
Sends each consolidation opportunity to a Groq chat model to evaluate risk versus savings and return a JSON decision and recommendation.
Parses the AI JSON output, merges it with the calculated savings data, and formats a final recommendation record.
Posts the recommendation to a Slack channel and emails a formatted report to the supplier stakeholder email address.

Setup
Connect your Google Sheets OAuth account and update the spreadsheet ID and sheet/tab to match your supplier records.
Add a Groq API credential for the chat model used to evaluate risk and recommendations.
Add Slack credentials and select the target channel where consolidation alerts should be posted.
Add Gmail OAuth2 credentials and ensure the sheet includes an Email column with the recipient address for each supplier (or replace it with a fixed recipient).

Additional info
How To Customize Nodes

Schedule Trigger

Change weekly timing to daily, monthly or custom intervals.

Google Sheets

Replace with:

Airtable
MySQL
PostgreSQL
ERP exports

Savings Logic

Modify thresholds in Identify Overlaps & Calculate Savings node.

AI Prompt

Customize prompt to include:

ESG score
Supplier performance
Compliance score
Contract renewal risk

Notifications

Replace Gmail or Slack with:

Microsoft Teams
Discord
WhatsApp
SMS
CRM updates

Add-ons / Enhancements

Auto-create procurement tickets
Generate vendor negotiation reports
Power BI dashboard integration
SAP / Oracle ERP sync
Multi-country supplier scoring
Contract renewal automation
Approval workflows
Historical trend reporting
Monthly savings leaderboard
PDF executive summary reports

Use Case Examples

1. IT Vendor Consolidation

Detect multiple software vendors across departments and recommend consolidation.

2. Office Supply Optimization

Find duplicate stationery suppliers and reduce fragmented purchasing.

3. Logistics Vendor Review

Identify overlapping transport partners across branches.

4. Marketing Agency Rationalization

Analyze agencies used by multiple business units.

5. Manufacturing Procurement Savings

Merge duplicate raw material suppliers to gain bulk pricing.

There can be many more similar use cases depending on your business model.

Troubleshooting Guide

| Issue | Possible Cause | Solution |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| Workflow not running | Trigger inactive | Activate workflow |
| Google Sheets error | Credential issue | Reconnect Google Sheets |
| No suppliers returned | Wrong sheet columns | Verify column names |
| AI response parsing failed | Invalid AI output | Improve prompt consistency |
| Slack message failed | Wrong channel or token | Reconnect Slack |
| Email not sent | Gmail auth expired | Reconnect Gmail |
| Wrong savings values | Incorrect spend data | Validate Monthly_Spend column |
| Duplicate suppliers missed | Name mismatch | Improve normalization logic |

Need Help?

Want help setting up this workflow, customizing supplier scoring logic, adding dashboards, integrating ERP systems or building advanced procurement automations?

You can hire n8n developers to help you deploy and customize workflows like this for real business use cases including AI automation, procurement systems, finance workflows and enterprise integrations.

Whether you need small changes or a fully custom automation platform, professional assistance can save time and deliver faster ROI.