Spend Matters Future 5 2023 – Introducing dSilo

The procurement technology market is evolving rapidly and deploying the latest power that innovation can bring to support the changing and challenging needs of its customers. In an ever-crowded space it’s hard for those who rely on these platforms and systems to keep ahead of the latest developments.

For that reason, Spend Matters analysts make it their mission to scour the market to find those new solution providers that can fulfil a very specialist role to fulfill the procurement needs of today. Following months of debate based on extensive knowledge of the many procurement technologies they have reviewed, analysed and benchmarked, they arrived at a list of five young providers that they believe are innovative and exciting, have a rapidly rising presence in the market, can grow sustainably and which every CPO should have on their radar.

Get to know all the procurement tech providers that made our lists this year and the methodology behind the selection criteria: 

These start-ups are taking technology further to address problems not previously solved, or are introducing a new category of automation that tackles new challenges in interesting ways. We believe these companies deserve greater visibility, especially in a market which is increasingly consolidating and diluting buyer choices.

So we are delighted to introduce you to our Future 5 as we capture their voices. Today please get to know dSilo.

What is dSilo?

dSilo is a young vendor with an emphasis on AI. As the name implies, its founders’ vision is to literally “de-silo” organizations so they can realize the value in their existing data. Its underlying deep learning generative AI aims to make sense of unstructured data, establish links between disparate data sources and provide insights, intelligence and ultimately automated actions to help companies derive new value from their existing data (such as contracts and invoices) through its pre-trained AI models.

Read more about what dSilo does and our reasons for its selection here.

You can also find our existing coverage of dSilo here in our more in-depth subscription Insider analysis.

How dSilo came into being

Sharad Malhautra and Jay Gutta, with 45 years’ experience between them in procurement and supply chain, tech development and supply chain consulting, formed dSilo in 2020. Having spent their careers working with various companies implementing different procurement systems, including CLM, they discovered that from mid-size to large companies two distinct challenges always arose; one was the expense in cost and time needed to implement these systems, the other was their siloed way of working. It led them to wonder whether the customer was actually receiving value.

“So the first premise for dSilo’s inception,” Sharad explains, “was to build an AI-based platform that could fill the gaps and tackle those challenges. We wanted to break down the silos between the different sub processes within procurement and the people working within them and use the power of AI, at a time when AI, Large Language Models and Natural Language Programming were just coming of age, to link them up and form a unified solution across the procurement organization. Then, of course, we wanted do it at a fraction of the cost and time required by traditional systems.”

So it is a fairly disruptive approach and paradigm to driving value for companies in the source-to-pay value chain.

Niul Burton, Chief Growth Officer with extensive experience in SaaS technology and procurement advisory and consulting, framed how, despite some progress being made over the past 20 years, they had witnessed a gap in procurement technology capabilities. “None so much as in CLM,” he says. “There was still a lack of functionality, particularly in contract management. The ability to close that gap hadn’t been possible before the growth of AI. The traditional way had been through much manual labor to gather information and insights in an expensive and time-consuming way. So much so that the focus had been more on gathering the information than on doing something with it, using it for better decision making and driving more value.”

What are dSilo’s greatest strengths?

dSilo was formed by procurement people, for procurement people. They explain: “We are a team with deep human knowledge who started an AI company to answer a business need, not tech people who fell into procurement. And that is a great strength, because it means we began by understanding the problem from the customer’s perspective: so we understand the problem and have the tech knowledge to solve it. By exploiting the power of AI we are helping to drive value from each step of the procurement journey.

“It is our goal to create end-to-end intelligent and autonomous execution across the procurement process through our patented technology. We invest time in constantly creating new ideas and putting them into action. For example, our ProcureGPT product allows the user to ask any question and gain intelligent insights from a cost-saving and a compliance standpoint. So we are redesigning how procurement and contract management systems deliver value, and doing that from the ground up by harnessing AI. This breakthrough thinking is something that both our clients and the world of procurement analysts are becoming very excited about.”

What’s the road ahead for dSilo?

“We have begun our journey by focusing on creating intelligent insights around working capital, cost savings and compliance to help the user drive greater value through more informed decision making. Our future focuses on using those insights to enable automated activities for the user, then autonomous execution of critical tasks to arrive at a ‘lights-out’ procurement process – all driven by generative AI, going way beyond what RPA could ever do.

“It’s encouraging that our customers and prospects are coming to us with even more use cases, some that we haven’t even identified yet. So we have a huge opportunity to innovate more, because the use cases for AI in this space are endless. We expect to see evermore user traction and impact from our work, of a size we cannot even anticipate today.”

What does it mean to be a Future 5?

“We are very excited about our growth to date in this space and expect to see greater uptake as the power of AI is recognized as a means to build a seamless procurement experience. Getting the recognition for the work we have done, so early in our journey, is testimony to the amount of effort put in and the further innovation we are able to bring to the market. We continue to be highly focused on driving value, driving cost savings and compliance across the procurement ecosystem for enterprises, so we are excited that dSilo’s efforts and investment to get to this stage in our development have been recognized and rewarded.”

“We are delighted to be chosen as a Future 5, because the recognition comes from leading industry analysts who have spent many years dissecting the most forward-thinking procurement tech in the world. We want to thank Spend Matters for taking the time to explore dSilo’s solutions and including us with this list of leading new providers.”

Many thanks to dSilo for sharing their story with us. We hope the Future 5 broadens our readers’ perception of the art of the possible to help you position your organization for the challenges ahead.

To learn more about the methodology behind our analysts’ decisions, listen to our recorded webinar from the Spend Matters analyst team.