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Spend Matters Future 5 2024 — Why we chose ivoflow

10/17/2024 By

ivoflow

Spend Matters is delighted to announce the 2024 roster for our ‘Future 5’ list. For the sixth year in a row, our analysts have highlighted five start-ups that excited them the most. This year, the five companies that have proven themselves as potential future trend setters are BlueBean, Covalyze, HaloAi, Ivoflow and True ValueHub.

To warrant such attention, these vendors must have a product that is ideally two to five years old, is used by more than five customers and displays an innovative application of technology. Moreover, these vendors must have less than $10 million in revenue, and our analysts must find them both sustainable and growing with a clear momentum. In this series of articles, we explain what these vendors offer, why they are likely to become future members of our ‘50 Procurement Providers to Watch’ and ‘50 Procurement Providers to Know’ lists and what challenges they may face.

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

In this post we explain our rationale behind selecting ivoflow.

Read also our interview: Introducing ivoflow.

What is ivoflow

ivoflow supports quote and cost-break-down comparisons, including landed-costs assessment and negotiation guidelines. It also provides direct materials data analytics, dashboards, KPIs, category recommendations, supplier recommendations and a designated dashboard to show its clients their ESG and compliance data.

ivoflow can extract and harmonize data from multiple ERP systems. Within the platform, ivoflow mimics the taxonomy ingested via the ERPs. This supplies a procurement architecture that displays the internal organizational structure paired with the spend category that individuals monitor.

The automated cost-saving toolbox, a key feature of the platform, helps customers identify specific areas for savings and optimization. It is fed by a combination of internal user data and third-party data.

Once opportunities are identified, customers can manage and track the execution of the initiatives with the procurement performance management module.

Why we chose ivoflow

We numbered ivoflow among the Future 5 for 2024 because it offers a focus on actionable insights and cost savings initiatives rather than just static spend analysis. It is also important to note that ivoflow focuses solely on direct spend analytics, i.e., manufacturing and direct materials, a rarity in the procurement spend analytics technology market.

ivoflow offers a valuable solution for efficiently and effectively managing direct spend. It integrates internal data and enriches it with external market intelligence data to surface new value-delivery opportunities which may remain hidden without the solution (because of the amount of data points and/or the lack of ‘market references’ to drive value).

The tool’s typical end users are commodity buyers and procurement leadership in manufacturing companies. Its cost savings toolbox and procurement performance management module ensure the tool is fit for strategic purposes. ivoflow allows customers to effectively manage initiatives to ensure that identified opportunities are actually realized and hit the bottom line.

Threats or challenges ahead?

Depending on what aspect of the tool a client desires most, the competitive landscape can be broken down into several buckets:

  1. Spend analytics solutions with direct spend capabilities
  2. Sourcing solutions with deep material analytics
  3. Pricing intelligence/costing solutions
  4. Category management solutions
  5. Consultancies

As such, part of the threat ivoflow faces is that it touches on a variety of markets; it does not have one type of competitor to ‘fight.’ In some ways, this is a blessing, as it may succeed in the category management market more than the spend analytics market, for example. However, this also comes with challenges around marketing and messaging, since the tool does not fit neatly into one pre-defined category.

This is particularly true when it comes to competing with sourcing solutions, as ivofow is missing basic sourcing support. For example, many savings initiatives in ivoflow should lead to sourcing events, but ivoflow cannot yet create these events as a draft RFx in a sourcing solution or use the results of sourcing events to update initiatives with their outcome (awards) to close the loop.

Webinar

On October 31, our analysts will host a webinar to explain their selection process and what makes a provider stand out.
Register here

Reach out if you like to know more about becoming a Future 5.

If you are thinking about buying procurement technology, try consulting Spend Matters TechMatch for a rapid shortlist.