Key methodology for the 50 Providers to Know, 50 Providers to Watch selection – The science behind the analysis

2023 marks the tenth annual release of the Spend Matters 50 Providers to Know and 50 Providers to Watch lists that represent the best technology providers that serve procurement, finance and supply chain organizations.

Get to know all the procurement tech providers that made our lists this year.

For a decade, the Spend Matters analyst team has determined the lists through rigorous analysis that factors, among other things, market presence, tech competency, innovation and solution delivery.

Get to know all the providers that made this year’s 50 To Know, 50 To Watch and Future 5 lists here.

For the 2023 lists in particular, we have continued the significant refinements that were made to our methodology beginning in 2022. As was the case last year, the purpose of our changes is to use data-driven processes whenever possible to promote a more scientific and objective approach to vendor selection.

As a reminder, in 2022, our key changes to our methodology were:

• A programmatic process to capture, evaluate and filter potential new entrants.
• A centralized overview of each provider’s key data to supplement analyst debates about qualifications.
• Requirement for active customer references from all vendors featured on the lists.
• Laying the groundwork for future list selection processes to become even more data-driven, including the quantification of ‘soft’ factors via a scoring scale.

In 2023, we continued this process by introducing the scoring scale mentioned above. The vendor selection process for the 50/50 lists now more closely resembles our SolutionMap data engine scoring process in that we numerically evaluate vendors on specific, granular criteria. This allows us to meaningfully track important aspects of vendors, such as the compelling nature of each solution, the solution’s ability to deliver business results, the solution’s robustness and more.

The scoring process creates more repeatability and explainability to the market while bringing organizations up to speed faster on the current trends they need to know and the emerging ones they need to watch. Rather than each analyst (even with the use of more data, as introduced in 2022) proposing individual 50/50 lists, the analyst team individually scores vendors on the above criteria, leading to a cleaner, more centralized overall list of vendors worth considering for the final 50 to Know and 50 to Watch.

Since vendors will now be scored on the same criteria each year for the 50/50 lists, it will be easier to reflect on past lists to identify key trends and shifts in the market. Additionally, from an analyst perspective, the annual scores for each vendor (even those that do not make the final 50/50 lists) will be a useful resource in the future to consider change over time.

In making the process behind the 50/50 selection more objective, we are keeping up with the Spend Matters data-driven ethos and ensuring that the providers chosen each year are truly the most impressive in the industry. We hope that the annual releases of our 50/50 lists continue to inspire debate about future technology investments, and we look forward to continuing the more programmatic backend process we installed this year for the tenth annual release.

Learn more about our procurement tech ranking system here.

Discover how we use data to match tech with procurement needs.

If you missed our analyst-led webinar on October 31 but you’d still like to understand more about our 50/50 decision-making process, you can still receive for a recording of the event.