Oversight Systems: Vendor Analysis (Part 1) — Background and Solution Overview

Procurement fraud typically gets everyone’s attention after it happens. Granted, in certain geographies and industries, regulations such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) have magnified the potential risk that procurement fraud can bring to expand beyond profitability impact through high fines and negative media coverage. Yet procurement and finance organizations generally are loath to invest in additional fraud controls and measures such as procure-to-pay (P2P), travel and expense (T&E) and payment solution (including p-cards) rollouts or upgrades at the same time. Oversight Systems, an Atlanta-based organization that focuses on fraud and overpayment controls and prevention and has raised almost $40 million in funding to date, is hoping to change this.

Existing P2P (SAP Ariba, Concur, Basware, etc.) and T&E (e.g., Concur) solutions can put in preventative steps to help reduce the risk of fraud and overpayment occurrences. But the controls they provide are insufficient to prevent fraud alone (as Best Buy discovered when procurement and a supplier colluded to steal millions of dollars from the company). Fraud and overpayment can occur in both expected and unexpected places, and Oversight has designed its solution to find and detect and find it through an advanced analytics platform, regardless of whether an employee, procurement, accounts payable or a supplier is the responsible party (or a combination of actors).

This Spend Matters PRO vendor snapshot provides facts and expert analysis to help buying organizations make informed decisions about Oversight Systems’ procurement and accounts payable fraud and overpayment solutions. Part 1 of our analysis provides a company background and detailed solution overview, as well as a summary recommended fit suggestion for when organizations should consider Oversight Systems as a complement to existing P2P, T&E and card investments. The rest of this multi-part research brief covers product strengths and weaknesses; competitor and SWOT analysis; user selection guides; and insider evaluation and selection considerations.