Sparky AI is here to help

GreenSpark Software’s artificial intelligence (AI) feature is designed to save scrapyard operators time and boost profit margins.

In its own way, Sparky AI is akin to increasing the size of a scrapyard’s staff.

“It’s like adding another employee but without any of the ramp-up time and without any of the uncertainty,” GreenSpark CEO Gordon Driscoll says. “This is a resource that can radically augment your team. And it’s not just an extra assistant for you, it’s someone that can supercharge your employees to do a lot more with less.”

Embedded in GreenSpark’s existing software offering, Sparky AI has been designed with efficiency in mind and incorporates features based on feedback from customers operating scrapyards of all sizes.

According to GreenSpark, it can take six- to eight-hour task lists and cut them down to minutes, contributing to an 80 percent time reduction in price updates, 75 percent faster reporting and 80 percent faster access to business insights, all while cutting data entry errors by 80 percent.

It also is designed to be user-friendly. Operators can ask Sparky AI questions in plain English and promptly receive accurate responses on topics ranging from customer information and material pricing to automated contract management.

Sparky AI can keep up with an operator’s train of thought, providing near-instant access to PDFs, screenshots of emails and more that allow for side-by-side price comparisons and variables such as freight costs and payment terms. Users can enter contract terms into the system and orders automatically are created and ready to ship.

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Additionally, Sparky AI allows operators to review tickets in bulk—including weights, prices, images and updates—without having to review every ticket individually.

“The ability to turn natural language into structured objects is something that saves a ton of time in the back office,” Driscoll says of GreenSpark’s AI offering. “Instead of using spreadsheets or standard customer reports to identify trends or perform analysis to get a singular piece of information that you’re looking for, you can ask Sparky AI anything and it will query all your data in our system and pull out that kernel of information. [It gives you] the ability to ask questions in plain English, with no technical expertise required, and is incredibly helpful and gets accurate responses pretty much instantly.”

With such time savings also comes greater profitability, according to the software developer. Use of Sparky AI potentially can lead to a 15-20 percent boost in profit margin thanks to its optimized pricing and real-time updates.

GreenSpark notes a quick return on investment, with users seeing that return in as few as 90 days.

With AI’s increasing presence across the recycled materials industry, GreenSpark is working to meet the moment and give scrapyard operators a reliable tool.

“We didn’t build AI just to build AI,” Driscoll says. “[Sparky AI] is rooted in workflows that are tedious, time-consuming, error-prone. These take away from what businesses should be doing, which is growing volume, growing revenue and growing the overall business. … What we’re building is rooted in core workflows that have tangible business impacts.”