‘E-Sourcing Execution’ Competitors: Defining the Market Landscape (Part 2) — Suite Vendors

There are two distinct sets of vendors that offer “e-sourcing execution” functionality, the S2P providers that also offer P2P suites and the more specialized sourcing suite vendors that don’t. The variety in the second group is bigger and varies from vendors that also sell contract management or supplier management on a standalone basis to vendors that only support sourcing execution.

Part 1 of this series explored how the problem now is that sourcing, and especially strategic sourcing, encompasses more than what the traditional e-sourcing solutions supported, which was to just negotiate online. We are therefore introducing the term “e-sourcing execution” solutions that in our opinion more accurately reflects what these solutions do: support the tactical execution of sourcing. E-sourcing as a broader term can then be divided into the previously mentioned e-sourcing execution solutions but also “e-sourcing strategy” solutions. In the e-sourcing strategy solutions category, we include offerings for market analysis, opportunity identification, strategy formulation and category management.

In this three-part Spend Matters PRO series, we will present our view of the competitors in the e-sourcing execution solution market in 2020 and define expected functionality and key trends, as well as listing and providing short descriptions of the key competitors — suite vendors and specialty providers.

For Part 2, the suite vendors featured below are vendors in Spend Matters’ Sourcing SolutionMap. There are obviously additional vendors in this space, but because we haven’t (yet) analyzed those solutions with the same rigor as those in SolutionMap, we will list a sample of them at the end of Part 3.