Orchestration, Platforms and Apps: Spend Matters and Relish CEO Ryan Walicki discuss challenges and pathways forwards

In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, the ability to seamlessly integrate multiple applications has become crucial for businesses aiming to optimize their operations. This interview delves into the challenges and opportunities presented by platform-based approaches in a multi-app vendor environment.

Our guest, Ryan Walicki, CEO of Relish, talks to me, Spend Matters chief research officer and MD, Pierre Mitchell, about his journey of creating a platform that simplifies the interaction between various systems and processes. Together, we explore the rising importance of Orchestration, the perennial debate between best-of-breed solutions versus enterprise suites and the collaborative dynamics between CPOs and CIOs. We also discuss the relevance of GenAI (heard of it?) in enterprise solutions and the key factors practitioners need to consider today in their technology investments.

Pierre: In a multi-app vendor world, we’ve written a lot about ‘platforms’ because of the importance of the infrastructure to manage processes (and data) across apps, especially apps that have not yet delivered enough value. You saw this when you were running a consulting business, but you then started a platform business to help address this overall issue. What led you to make this move towards a platform approach and the specific apps you built to address these issues?

Ryan: : That’s correct; this is one of the fundamental realities we discovered during those years. Regardless of the business process or application being implemented, the challenges and failure points in projects typically centered around the interaction of various systems, teams and processes. Our vision for Relish was to provide customers with an extension platform that allows them to address these junctions of systems, data, processes and teams in a simpler way. Today, we provide a suite of apps that customers use to gain more value from the applications they have already invested in without adding to the complexity of the architecture, user experience or business process — built on a single platform of common capabilities.

Pierre: You mention a suite of apps, but those apps were generated by your platform, so I’d like your take on platforms and platform capabilities that generate or enhance apps. The term ‘platforms’ has become so generic that it’s hard to explain their value to practitioners. Interestingly though, the term ‘orchestration’ has become ‘hot,’ especially with ‘intake management’ becoming a primary set of use cases. So, in what areas are you finding the most interest these days: is it intake, TPRM, analytics, supplier integration, data management or just good old-fashioned straight-up transactional automation and integration?

Ryan: I’ve had the opportunity to experience and, to some degree, participate in the industry’s efforts to find solutions to challenges that typically arise at the intersection of different solutions, processes or teams. Enterprise vendors have been promoting the platform concept, positioning that these challenges can be avoided if everything happens in one system. Other providers have brought to market various ‘guided’ experiences for this same reason. For a few years, robotic process automation (RPA) was the go-to approach. Today’s excitement for orchestration solutions is also an indicator that customers are still struggling with these challenges that platforms, guided experiences and other approaches have not been able to address. It is natural to get caught up in buzz terms — like platform, orchestration, intake, blockchain, RPA — the list goes on. But let’s park the buzz terms and talk about the facts:

1. A single integrated S2P application suite as a solution sounds nice, but for those on the innovator/disruptor curve, it is not enough. Everyone knows this; it is why nearly all the major enterprise software firms are embracing the third-party app marketplace concept to be able to extend and augment the basic core functionality.
2. While technology innovation is accelerating, so is the intelligence of practitioners — they want more in terms of flexibility, depth and solving complex problems, not just ordering items like office supplies. Spend is moving towards services and digital products, not to mention the complexity of direct spend in the supply chain.
3. The ‘easy stuff’ that sold solutions 5-10 years ago is table stakes now. How can you help manage the most complex categories, user stories or challenges your customers have? That is the point of differentiation, and it requires a very high level of flexibility.

To succinctly answer your question: customers are looking for solutions that actually solve their most high-value challenges — completely. 100%. Not 50%. Not 75%. They want a solution that goes the ‘final mile.’

Suites vs BoB – The never-ending question

Pierre: In terms of suites vs best-of-breed (BoB) niche apps, this is perhaps a futile debate when framed by just two mutually exclusive options, but it does exist, especially when the IT department pushes ERP. So, how do you help change the debate to allow firms to find a win-win and allow suites (i.e., ERP and S2P) and best-of-breed apps? You have developed apps that sit in app stores of suites, so you obviously have some expertise. What would you recommend practitioners think about, and where do they go wrong? What else is missing in the market that’s solvable?

Ryan: There are some debates that will likely never get settled. James or Jordan? Ali or Tyson? Best-of-breed solutions or enterprise suites? There may not be a universal answer to these questions. Every organization is as unique as a snowflake. Companies are built by unique people, so each organization will naturally have a unique situation and special challenges. For some, the suite may be the right answer at the time; for others, the BoB approach makes the most sense. We’re seeing organizations improve their ability to decipher which type of solution fits their needs the closest, but some also do choose both if, for example, they’re a large firm that needs a core suite but also needs some specialty apps and integration capabilities.

At the same time, whichever route customers choose, another universal truth becomes applicable: swapping, replacing or even reimplementing solutions is a massive effort, typically coming with significant cost and disruption. This is why the key advice we give to our customers is to evaluate and ensure that your finalist or selected vendors support a robust ecosystem of partners and extensions. The brutal reality is that no solution is going to be 100% fit for any organization. It is through this ecosystem that customers will be able to adapt their chosen solutions or suites to fit their needs and maximize their benefit from these systems.

Aligning Procurement with IT

Pierre: To a CIO, the ecosystem is often the one favored by IT, even if it doesn’t maximize enterprise value where good CPOs focus. What’s been a key success factor for CPOs to align with CIOs? More specifically, how can Procurement get IT as an ally — not just to help procurement better support IT — but to help IT better support procurement and have these two key functions work together to jointly serve stakeholders for processes, such as intake, service management, vendor management, contract management and so on?

Ryan: This question reminds me of the movie Step Brothers. In my view, CPOs and CIOs are future best friends who just haven’t yet discovered all the things they have in common: common value drivers, similar risks/concerns, similar challenges and, of course, a common organizational context. The two organizations are internal customers of each other as well. So, there are many reasons why these teams should be champions of collaboration.

This is usually easier in situations where procurement leaders appreciate that IT needs to consider the entire organization’s landscape and processes in its decisions. Similarly, good IT leaders appreciate that business requirements and processes will change often and that systems should accommodate some adaptability. Ideally of course they demonstrate to the rest of the organization the power and benefits of close collaboration, resulting in efficient systems and processes for better common goals to reduce costs, improve terms, increase security and so on.

Applications of GenAI

Pierre: I love the Step Brothers reference. Let’s switch movies to maybe Minority Report or Her, and let’s talk GenAI. What are you seeing in terms of the most promising use cases and some of the areas that you’re working with clients on implementing? And looking beyond some of the capabilities that are increasingly coming online, with SaaS players in S2P, what are some other ways that firms are sourcing GenAI, for example, using LLM APIs for approaches like RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) for searching, RFx/SOW/policy generation and so on?

Ryan: It has been, and still is, exciting to follow and participate in the emergence of GenAI. We are seeing solution providers creating plans for incorporating GenAI technologies, and some are now coming to market with these capabilities. We’re seeing the initial “Let’s put GenAI on everything” excitement boil down to some distinct capabilities that bring value to customers.

Everyone is going to have an assistant/chatbot; this seems clear. Some rationalization of this is inevitable, likely resulting in a few dominant platforms that everyone interacts with and integrates in various ways.

Today’s applications of GenAI may not be exactly indicative of the direction we’ll see unfolding in the next few years. The use cases currently being positioned by various providers typically focus on:

• Access to internal knowledge/policies — visibility into documentation.
• Analytics and reporting.
• Content creation (RFP questions for example).
• Content analysis (contract clauses).
• Chatbots.
• Usability/UI enhancements.

Most of these use cases result in marginal improvements in efficiency, quality, etc. However, the wholesale disruption or restructuring of the enterprise procurement software landscape may still be brought on by GenAI. Many business processes we address today with solutions may operate autonomously in the future, reducing the need for business-line-specific solutions like procurement and AP apps. The core financial systems of organizations, such as ERP, accounting and GL systems, will need to remain in place. Therefore, we expect to see an increasing number of GenAI use cases extending ERP solutions with capabilities previously delivered (or not) by line-of-business applications.

Getting value from procurement tech

Pierre: Let’s wrap things up with a broader question. What are some other things that you wish procurement practitioners would do to get better value from tech?

Ryan: Instead of introducing new ideas, I want to reemphasize something I mentioned before. Any solution a customer selects will have some gaps, issues and challenges. This is not a judgment of software vendors or solutions, it’s a reality of how software is created and distributed today. Customers consistently see the most success with solutions that have adaptability and extensibility to overcome such gaps and allow them to adjust their business processes to correspond with an evolving business environment.

In short, ensure that a vendor’s ecosystem and extensibility can help you get the maximum value out of your investment in whatever solution you select.

Many thanks to Ryan Walicki of Relish for joining us in this candid discussion. We appreciate his sound advice and personal insights.