Analytics8 SpendView: A New, Affordable Spend Analysis Solution — Year-End Tech Review

This post is part of our 2016 Year-End Procurement Tech Review series, in which we offer procurement practitioners a bird’s-eye view of some key vendors and their solutions in select categories. This week, we’re highlighting companies in the risk management and spend analytics spaces.

There’s a new spend analytics vendor in town: Analytics8. The company recently introduced its SpendView product, an offering designed to bring modern, easy-to-use spend analysis capability to any organization with more than $10 million in annual spend at a reasonable price tag, but with functionality that is sufficiently deep to satisfy many of the needs of larger procurement organizations with unique requirements.

Quick Facts

• Founded: 2004
• U.S. operation commenced in 2005
• Headquartered in Sydney, with eight offices in the U.S. (U.S. headquarters is in Chicago)
• Privately-owned
• Over 20% annual growth over the past three years
• Recently entered the spend analytics market; senior team has deep experience in a wide range of analytical applications
• While the core design of their products came from industry and implementation experience, all products are designed with user input from key customers for optimal usability and applicability
• Partnerships include Qlik (on which the analytics platform is built), Birst and SAP; also a reseller or partner of Cloudera, Microsoft and Alteryx
• Analytics products are sold based on a single, perpetual, license fee with a small annual maintenance fee; services fees are billed on a project-by-project basis
• Offers solutions in related areas such as marketing spend

Background & Overview

While the spend analytics sector, like the e-sourcing market, may be well established, Spend Matters observations suggest that less than half of procurement organizations today use real analytics consistently to drive strategy. There are numerous reasons for this, but a major contributing factor is that spend analytics solutions, like early e-sourcing and optimization tools, typically came with a high price tag. Another major factor has been that refreshes were less than automated and most organizations didn’t have the motivation, resources or funds to support more than a quarterly refresh schedule.

However, as newer solutions like Spend Radar and BIQ came on the scene, spend analytics became much more affordable, and useable, as analysts could refresh data on monthly, weekly and daily basis and obtain the solution in the five figure range. As analytics started to take off, so did the interest therein by both the typical e-sourcing suite providers (that did not have advanced analytics previously) and big data and analytics companies (that did not have spend analytics solutions, focusing mainly on c-suite and marketing needs). As a result, these new upstarts that made spend analysis affordable and more easily accessible were acquired. This again left the needs of middle-market procurement organizations wanting, with few options that could meet their budget and requirements.

Yet much has changed in the past 12 months. Small U.K. upstarts like Spend360 and AnyData have expanded into the U.S., and procurement organizations have sometimes taken matters into their own hands by configuring Tableau and Qlik on the fly using available data. And now Analytics8 is also entering the equation. The Analytics8 SpendView suite includes a set of four integrated modules that allow a procurement analyst to create categorization families and normalize spend and suppliers, identify preferred vendors and gain visibility into suppliers, categorize spend and create and drill into spend reports.

Only a handful of providers offer standalone products in the same sector as Analytics8 SpendView. These include:

• AnyData Solutions
• Rosslyn Analytics
• Sievo
• Spend360
• SpendHQ

Commentary & Summary

Analytics8 is an ideal fit for middle-market procurement organizations looking to build visibility into spending activities and requires a solution that delivers efficiency and value in approach — and for those not willing to “get their hands dirty” with spend data themselves.

This provider can serve a range of potential customers. These include:

• Global 2000 procurement organizations that already have a sourcing or procurement platform and are looking to augment it with a solid, standalone, suite-independent spend analysis platform. In these situations, Analytics8 should definitely be a short-list candidate, especially if there is limited budget and annual spend volumes between $10 million and $200 million.
• Middle-market procurement organizations. It is in this market segment where Analytics8 really excels by serving procurement organizations that are underserved by suite and best-of-breed providers alike. Here, smaller organizations can look at Analytics8 as a way to access much of the same capability as more expensive solutions, but while doing so on a limited budget. This is important not just when it comes to technology acquisition costs for spend analysis but also support costs, as middle-market organizations often have limited internal headcount and limited or no external budget for consultants.
• Organizations without a formal procurement team but that can bring resources from finance or IT to help with targeted spend analysis in key areas of spend (e.g., large commodity purchases, IT purchases, etc.)

Spend Matters believes that all procurement organizations should have access to an affordable spend analysis solution, and Analytics8 SpendView fits in this category nicely — with an emphasis on usability and value.

For a more comprehensive analysis and guide for procurement organizations looking to understand whether they should consider adding the provider to their shortlists for consideration, please head over to Spend Matters Plus.