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EC Sourcing: Vendor Analysis, 2021 update (Part 1) — Background, Solution Overview, BidMode acquisition, added spend analysis

This Spend Matters PRO Vendor Analysis 2021 update offers a refresh of our 2020 review of EC Sourcing’s solution based on EC Sourcing’s recent announcements of its BidMode acquisition and its new, native spend analysis capability.

While we normally wouldn’t do two complete PRO updates in a year, these announcements are quite substantial as they provide EC Sourcing with not only entry into the source-to-contract platform market (while they don’t have authoring, they support contract document and data management) but one with advanced optimization capabilities generally only found in the large enterprise source-to-pay platforms.

EC Sourcing is one of a select group of procurement technology providers that have been aggressively targeting the middle market with an e-sourcing platform, one of a smaller group that offer relatively full source-to-contract capabilities (which are more than sufficient for the majority of mid-market companies because legal teams are usually quite happy to author contracts in Word and then just upload the signed contracts), and one of a smaller group still that can even serve Global the 3000 if they are just looking for S2C and are primarily indirect/services.

Moreover, EC Sourcing also happens to be one of the most mature in capability, with a set of clever features that only comes from the battle scars of decades of managing sourcing events. Spend Matters' analysis of the EC Sourcing platform positions it as a solid contender to fill the sourcing needs of middle to large middle-market procurement organizations as well as a subset of Global 3000 organizations looking for technology to transform their end-to-end sourcing efforts.

Since our initial three-part snapshot update, EC Sourcing has continued to address a number of the weaknesses we pointed out in addition to natively integrating the sourcing optimization specialist BidMode, adding native spend analytics capability, and continuing to enhance its UI and process-based workflow capability. That means its solution now consists of modules for spend analysis and insight, e-sourcing, optimization, workflow-based process management, contract management, and supplier management.

This update will provide facts and expert analysis to help procurement organizations determine if the EC Sourcing solution is the right fit for their needs, and it will offer perspectives on alternative providers to consider in an evaluation alongside it.

Part 1 will include a company and detailed solution overview. Part 2 will focus on product strengths and weaknesses. Part 3 will offer a company-level SWOT analysis, a look at EC Sourcing’s competitors, tech selection considerations and a summary analysis.

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Vendor Analysis