When GATX, the leading global provider of railcar leasing and service in North America, Europe, and India since 1898, switched to Levelpath, they did not have to wait months to see a return on their investment. With a consolidated team managing direct, indirect, and capital categories, the organization required tools that would reduce manual effort, improve visibility, and accelerate workflows. After partnering with Levelpath, GATX began seeing measurable outcomes for procurement efficiency in the first week.

The Challenge

The GATX procurement team faced increasing pressure to manage sourcing events, capital projects, and vendor processes with a small group of employees wearing many hats. Historically, they relied on SharePoint, Excel, and manual communication methods to track procurement activities, project approvals, and contract data. Although functional, these systems created serious inefficiencies.

One of the most time-consuming processes was handling supplier bid comparisons. Proposals often arrived in inconsistent formats, including PDFs, Word documents, or direct RFP responses, forcing the GATX procurement team to manually extract and consolidate data. This approach slowed decision-making and added unnecessary workload.

Managing large capital projects also presented difficulties. Procurement needed to track a lot of questions about risk, progress, payments, and milestones for each project. Without an automated system, large capital projects require time-consuming meetings and ad-hoc manual tracking. Project visibility of this complexity can become fragmented, increasing the risk of delays and miscommunications.

On top of these operational challenges, resource constraints were still a factor. As their Director of Sourcing and Procurement explained, “We have a small team and handle a lot of different categories, so we all wear a lot of different hats.” The procurement team needed a platform that could bring them into the future, delivering efficiency, streamlining workflows, and empowering procurement to stay ahead of demands by bringing platform-native AI to GATX.

While GATX liked the experience of their existing sourcing tool, they wanted a native AI solution, and as former Scout RFP users, they looked to Levelpath to be their trusted partner who would bring AI to GATX.

Our goal with the change was to drive greater efficiencies using Levelpath’s native AI capabilities that really stood out to GATX. No one really knows where AI will land in the next five or ten years, and because of this we chose a trusted partner to grow and ride that AI wave with Levelpath.

Director of Sourcing and Procurement_‍

GATX

Achieving Rapid Procurement Efficiency with Levelpath

GATX saw tangible results within weeks after onboarding Levelpath. One of the first major improvements came with the use of Levelpath’s AI Assistant pre-built sourcing prompts. By clicking one button within the platform, GATX’s procurement team is now able to quickly summarize supplier pricing, draft a description of services, and note some risk factors across proposals within seconds. Bid comparisons that used to take a lot of manual time, now are completed and shared with business stakeholders almost instantly. “AI Bid analysis now with one click of a button literally takes 15 to 20 seconds. It’s especially powerful when we’re managing complex bids with 10 to 12 proposals; what used to be manual and take a long time is completed in seconds.” explains their Director of Sourcing and Procurement.

Within just one week of kicking off their implementation, GATX launched sourcing projects through Levelpath. Early user adoption followed quickly. On Day One, GATX achieved a 29% adoption rate from its shop stakeholders. Levelpath partnered with GATX to provide training for all their stakeholders to encourage adoption and compliance, empowering everyone to start getting value.

In another instance, procurement needed to source lobbying support, a category the team had never managed. Using the AI Assistant, the team generated a high-quality RFP in seconds, sent it to 12 firms, and then used AI to summarize responses, shortlist candidates, and even generate interview questions for final vendor selection. “Sometimes we don’t really have the availability to do an RFP, but with Levelpath we are able to do 10 in the same time it used to take to do 1,” said the VP Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, and Materials Management.  

In parallel, GATX has begun migrating critical procurement data into Levelpath, including contracts and category strategies. Gathering information from documents with Levelpath’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities will save time from previously manual processes. This shift allows the organization to start building a centralized, structured foundation for managing procurement operations more effectively.

‍

Having all our data and vendor information configured within the Levelpath platform changes the game for us and makes our AI initiatives that much easier.‍

Director of Sourcing and Procurement

GATX

​​Building a More Connected Procurement Operation

GATX is streamlining procurement by centralizing documents, replacing legacy workflows, and applying artificial intelligence to drive faster results. The team is migrating contracts and 50 different category strategies into Levelpath, using built-in workflows, automated alerts, and metadata to improve review and renewal processes.

One example of immediate value came during a review of a bulk materials contract. Using Levelpath’s contract tools, the team surfaced a volume-related pricing gap that led to renegotiation and $3.5 million in savings over seven years. Previously, this analysis would have taken weeks, even with heavy legal support.

Having anytime access with the native Levelpath mobile app is accelerating decisions. Team members can review savings documents and approve them mid-flight, and quickly retrieve supplier data to support executive meetings. With an intuitive process and on-the-go access, adoption and compliance within GATX has increased significantly from their previous tool. “It’s bringing much better compliance because it’s easier and folks are able to do it themselves,” said the VP Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, and Materials Management. “We’re able to work quickly and do more without our resources being taxed.”

Ongoing Journey and Future Vision

Early returns with Levelpath have been strong, and the team views its accomplishments as only the beginning of a much larger procurement transformation. One area of focus is capital project management. The procurement team is already developing workflows to automate capital expenditure approvals and track change orders more accurately. Their Director of Procurement and Sourcing details, “Change orders are a very important part of our process. Currently, we track them manually in Excel, which is not ideal. We will be leveraging Levelpath’s workflows to improve cycle times, prevent errors, and increase visibility. Ultimately, all change orders will be managed through a centralized executive dashboard.”

Vendor management is another area of investment. GATX will be moving its vendor add process into Levelpath, allowing departments across the company to submit, review, and approve new vendor requests through a centralized, consistent workflow.

The procurement team is also working toward eliminating SharePoint usage for procurement operations. With contract management, sourcing requests, and TCO dashboards now moving into Levelpath, the goal is to have a unified platform with all their procurement data.

GATX’s early results with Levelpath highlight how quickly the platform delivers real impact, from dramatically shortening RFP evaluation times to launching sourcing initiatives in just days. As procurement expands workflows, scales automation, and taps into deeper AI-driven insights, GATX is not just optimizing procurement, it is transforming it. The business is building a smarter, more agile procurement function, setting a new benchmark for procurement efficiency in a rapidly evolving and competitive landscape.

Levelpath’s native AI capabilities are a big draw. We want to make sure we are keeping pace or ahead of the market and this unified platform helps GATX do exactly that.

Director of Sourcing and Procurement

GATX

‍