Co-Exprise Sheds Energy Sourcing Business to Focus on Discrete Manufacturing

Earlier this week, World Energy Solutions announced it had acquired Co-Exprise's energy sourcing business. Specifically, Co-Exprise appears to have sold its energy procurement book of business and is holding onto its team members and software assets. According to the announcement, "the acquisition extends World Energy's leadership in online energy procurement, adding valuable new government, institutional, and commercial & industrial clients to its large and growing customer base. World Energy expects the transaction to be immediately accretive." Co-Exprise was previously a major competitor to World Energy Solution in the area of negotiating energy contracts for private and public sector clients.

Richard Domaleski, CEO of World Energy Solutions, is quoted in the announcement as saying, "We have long said that consolidating the energy procurement industry, eliminating competitors and supplementing our strong organic growth is a path we will actively pursue to drive future success, and today we are making good on that promise." Earlier this week while at ProcureCon and just minutes following the announcement, I caught up with Greg Anderson. Greg is a former FreeMarkets colleague who is now running the commercial organization for Co-Exprise. I'll be featuring some additional thoughts from Greg on the opportunity that Co-Exprise sees to now focus on the manufacturing industry exclusively in the coming days.

It's Spend Matters' cursory view that selling its energy business makes sense for Co-Exprise. The move will enable Co-Exprise to focus on what it does best in a market where it has limited true competition. In a Compass research report from earlier this year, Spend Matters suggested that managing commodities and direct materials more effectively requires "purpose- built sourcing tools designed specifically for a complex, global manufacturing environment. Tools from vendors such as Co-Exprise, Pool-4-Tool and FullStep are all worthy of consideration here, in addition to standard e-sourcing vendors and advanced sourcing/optimization providers.

Of these, Co-Exprise is likely furthest along in the maturation of a dedicated direct materials sourcing platform that can handle the most complex engineering and related specifications in complicated RFPs. The platform is simply not comparable to anything else in the marketplace given its ability to drive collaboration and information exchange at the design/parametric level, protect IP in a global sourcing environment, compress design and other files into a tiny and secure file size, and build massively complex (yet easy to use) total cost models within the application. Both Co-Exprise and FullStep have elegantly built Excel-like capabilities within their toolsets (and users can also use MS Excel if they want to upload data and models).

We'll feature an update with Co-Exprise in the coming weeks on Spend Matters including sharing their thoughts on the opportunity to target the global discrete manufacturing market. In the mean time, if you're interested in learning more about specialized (and general) sourcing and commodity management tools, we would encourage you to download our latest research on the subject:

A Foundational Look at the Evolution of Sourcing Technology and Platforms

Advanced Sourcing Technologies and Platforms to Broaden a Portfolio

Jason Busch