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Spend Matters reveals the ‘50 Providers to Know,’ ‘50 Providers to Watch,’ ‘Future 5’ start-ups and ‘Hall of Fame’ lists for 2024

10/08/2024 By

Procurement Technology Recognition 2024

After 12 months of intense assessment and debate, Spend Matters is delighted to release the 2024 ‘50 Procurement Providers to Know’ and50 Procurement Providers to Watch’ lists.

This year celebrates 11 consecutive years of these lists, released in conjunction with the sixth year of recognizing five innovative procurement tech startups — the Future 5 — and the newly launched Hall of Fame. The lists are being announced this week at the SIG Global Executive Summit in California.

Introducing the ‘Hall of Fame’

The new ‘Hall of Fame’ honors the vendors that have been on the 50 to Know list for 10 years or more.

The list serves as a better acknowledgment for vendors that are not only ‘Providers to Know,’ but have become synonymous with procurement tech itself. The inaugural class is comprised of industry stalwarts that support the S2P landscape and beyond, and each of these providers continues to innovate. It comprises Basware, Beeline, Coupa, GEP, Ivalua, Jaggaer, Oracle, SAP and SpendHQ.

Additionally, given the evolving market and the emergence of new types of providers in the last three-to-five years (ESG, CO2, risk, intake, orchestration, etc.), the Spend Matters Hall of Fame allows for the 50/50 lists, which are exclusive by nature, to better represent the current landscape. Procurement software is only becoming more important, so it is only natural that new categories materialize as decisions on which providers make the lists get tougher.

The science behind the 50/50 selection

The 50 Providers to Know and 50 Providers to Watch lists represent the best technology providers serving procurement, finance and supply chain organizations. For over 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.

For the 2024 lists, we have continued the significant refinements that were made to our methodology beginning in 2022. The reason for these changes was to use data-driven processes whenever possible to promote a more scientific and objective approach to vendor selection.

As a reminder, key changes to our methodology in recent years 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
  • Making the selection process even more data-driven with the quantification of ‘soft’ factors via a scoring scale

The scoring scale was first used in 2023, and it enables our selection process for the 50/50 lists to more closely resemble 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.

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

Movements this year in the 50 To Watch and the 50 To Know lists

The ‘50 Providers to Watch’ are the relative newcomers to the market that are pushing procurement forward — those we believe offer the latest and most innovative solutions in the industry.

The ‘50 Providers to Know’ list highlights leading technology and services providers that continue to raise the bar for procurement. These are the firms that set the industry standard and which every senior procurement or supply chain professional should know about.

Of note this year:

The Future 5 of 2024

Throughout the year, our analysts scour the market to find and scrutinize procurement tech newcomers. This list is composed of the most impressive procurement technology start-ups that meet our criteria:

They must:

  • Be less than 5 years old.
  • Have 5+ customers.
  • Have an innovative, interesting application of technology.
  • Maintain clear momentum and sustainability.
  • Have less than $10 million in revenue.

We are delighted to announce that the recognized Future 5 providers for 2024 are:

It’s always pleasing to watch previous Future 5s grow and develop enough to make the ‘50 To Watch’ and ’50 to Know’ lists, so we’d like to congratulate and call out: akirolabs, Archlet, Circulor, Focal Point, Malbek, Relish and Zip for making that great step.

Summing up this 11th year of highlighting the best in procurement technology development and innovation, Nikhil Gaur, Spend Matters Director, Strategic Projects & Research Analyst, said:

“Spend Matters tracks some 1,500+ procurement and supply chain technology and services providers. Given the evolving market and the emergence of new technologies, we discover and take demos with new types of provider all the time. Solutions around ESG, risk, intake & orchestration come to mind.

“The annual ‘50 Providers to Know’ and ‘50 Providers to Watch’ lists recognize best-in-class and fast-rising companies in the supply chain and procurement market. The ‘Future 5’ list features the most impressive procurement technology start-ups we’ve seen in the past year. And, to better represent the dynamic provider landscape, the new ‘Hall of Fame’ honors the vendors that have been listed on the ‘Know’ list for 10+ years.

“With the emergence of new procurement software and services offerings, decisions on who makes the lists are only getting tougher. We hope that the annual releases of our 50/50 lists, complemented by the Future 5 (now in its sixth year) and the inaugural Spend Matters Hall of Fame, continue to inspire debate about future technology investments, and we look forward to continuing to release these lists in the years to come.”

Learn more

Webinar

To explain what’s behind our 50/50 and Future 5 decision-making process, our analyst team hosted a webinar on October 31 , the recording of which you can still watch.

Methodology

To understand more about our decision-making process see our Watch and Know lists selection methodology.

Contact Us

As always, for anything else you’d like Spend Matters help with, please reach out.

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