Spend Analysis. Every company needs it, but not every company knows what they need or how to use it. As per our first post, it could be defined as:
* An extensive set of canned reports across a defined data set * User Defined Reports and Views on a static ROLAP Cube * Dynamic Cube Construction and View Creation on a predefined data set * Dynamic Cube Construction and Federation on an extensible, user-defined data set
Depending on the provider, it may or may not include:
* Data Consolidation and Cleansing * Data Enrichment * Data Classification and Categorization * Data Synchronization with Source Systems
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on what one has to consider before even inviting a pool of candidates to an RFI, yet alone whittling down to three that all have the core capabilities the organization needs and that can all, more-or-less, be compared apples-to-apples when the RFIs come in.
That’s why in the first part of this three-part series we took our time to define Orpheus and its solutions, including components and capabilities not offered by every spend analysis vendor on the market. Then, in Part 2, we dove deep into the solution, highlighting particular strengths and bringing to light some of the weaknesses compared to peers (which may or may not matter depending on what your organization is looking for). Now, in our third and final part, we will provide a SWOT analysis, a competitive market analysis and a summary with commentary.
In Part 1 of Spend Matters’ three-part PRO Vendor Snapshot on Orpheus, we started out by explaining how the definition of spend analysis differs from client to client and how it is a buyer-beware market — as not all vendors have the same technological capabilities, and you can’t compare their quotes as apples-to-apples. That’s why it’s important to understand what a vendor can do, and what it can’t, before whittling down to the final three and definitely before making a selection — because not all vendors will have what Oprheus has to offer.
While many vendors can slice and dice, cube and derive, and find opportunities on the fly — not all have initiative tracking, not all have AI, and not all have the experience of classifying over half a billion transactions across 4 million suppliers for 15 years of operation. This is pretty distinctive, and we’ve only completed the introduction so far.
In today’s post, we will dive into the strengths and weaknesses, giving you deep insight into the platform.
In Part 3, we will provide a SWOT analysis of Orpheus and discuss the competitive market that surrounds it. We will conclude with some commentary and hopefully will leave you with deep insights into who Orpheus is and what it can do.
“Spend analysis” is one of the most misused terms in the solution space, especially since the exact scope of what a vendor offers with respect to spend analysis varies by vendor and the scope of what a buyer expects when they buy a spend-analysis solution varies by the buyer. You see, what a vendor offers depends upon their philosophy to analysis and where they are on the development curve with respect to that. What a buyer expects depends upon their level of procurement maturity, what they are aware of as being possible with a modern spend analysis tool, and their level of master data maturity.
You see, "spend analysis" has been, is and will be defined in various ways by various vendors. Depending on the vendor, it could be defined as:
* An extensive set of canned reports across a defined data set * User Defined Reports and Views on a static ROLAP Cube * Dynamic Cube Construction and View Creation on a pre-defined data set * Dynamic Cube Construction and Federation on an extensible, user defined data set
Depending on the provider, it may or may not include:
* Data Consolidation and Cleansing * Data Enrichment * Data Classification and Categorization * Data Synchronization with Source Systems
And depending on the provider philosophy, the classification may be:
* Rules-based * Automated using statistical / clustering / neural networks * Machine learning that adjusts the rules to improve the classification over time * Hybrid approach that does auto-classification and allows for pre-classification using fixed rules and post-classification for mapping corrections * Machine learning that identifies fixed, deterministic classification rules that are applied with user defined rules for all classification
And the data may or may not be limited to:
* Integrated data sources in the platform that the analysis tool is integrated into * Integrated data sources, pre-integrated ERP and select API feeds * A data lake maintained by the provider * Any data you can push into the data lake it is configured to work on
And so on. In other words, what a vendor offers when they offer spend analysis varies by the vendor, and what a buyer might get can vary widely.
So in this three-part Spend Matters Pro Vendor Snapshot on Orpheus, we will try to leave you with a clear understanding of exactly what Orpheus offers with respect to spend analysis and whether they might be the right provider for you.
In Part 1, we will provide a brief company overview and a look at Oprheus' main offerings.
For Part 2, we will provide a breakdown of what is comparatively good (and maybe not so good) about the solution.
In Part 3, we’ll offer a high-level SWOT analysis, some market implications and a summary.
Brightfield — a New York City-based artificial intelligence and big data analytics company that optimizes contract labor spend and program performance for employers, MSPs and staffing firms — announced today that it has received an investment of $53 million to fuel its market expansion and the continuing development of its platform, Talent Data Exchange (TDX).
The Series A round was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation by MissionOG, CapitalOne Growth Ventures and Telescope Partners. A valuation for the company has not been disclosed.
Spend Matters has been covering Brightfield and the development of TDX for several years, and tracing the arc of Brightfield’s evolution from a consulting firm to a subscription-based data analytics platform business.
Read this coverage now and look for our analysis later.
In Part 1 of this Spend Matters PRO series, the topic of community-based procurement focused on some examples of communities of interest within practitioner organizations (e.g., category communities and cross-supplier quality communities) and provider organizations such as group purchasing organizations (GPOs). In this second installment, the focus will shift to the following:
* Community of Interest around procurement transformation — and how to use the community (and tools and services) to accelerate that transformation * The role of automated community-based benchmarking and capability assessments * Using the community to drive new forms of collective intelligence baked explicitly into a solution’s delivery model and even the solution itself * Some insight from our SolutionMap database on our requirement titled “community knowledge and collective intelligence” * A final example on community-based sourcing with Coupa’s new “Source Together” offering — which tears some “market making” pages out of the old Ariba/Freemarkets playbook and then even rewrites that book itself
The needs of each procurement organization — as well as procurement-solution providers’ organizations — are too nuanced for “one size fits all”-style rankings and recommendations from other industry intelligence firms and experts. That’s why Spend Matters ranks procurement and supply chain software providers through the prism of buying personas. With the Q3 2019 SolutionMap released today, let's revisit why this is an essential approach to the procurement technology market.
This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of spend analytics providers. It includes coverage of spend analytics capabilities that encourages subscribers to “peel the onion” beyond cleansing, classification, enrichment and reporting capabilities alone. It is part of our Q3 2019 SolutionMap report series, also featuring sourcing, supplier management contract management, e-procurement and invoice-to-pay providers.
This Q3 2019 SolutionMap analyzes a select group of strategic procurement technology suite providers (inclusive of spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management and contract lifecycle management).
Spend Matters today released its Q3 2019 SolutionMap, ranking 56 procurement software companies across 12 solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management, Contract Lifecycle Management and Contingent Workforce & Services. Click on this article to see which new providers joined the rankings, and to see how to access rankings for free!
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into the Q3 2019 SolutionMap release for Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, and Strategic Procurement Technologies Suite SolutionMap areas, reviewing the process we follow and highlighting what has changed since the last release.
Within the individual areas covered in this brief, the following providers have been added to the Q3 2019 release:
— K2 Sourcing is a new participant in the Sourcing SolutionMap category. — Orpheus is a new participant in the Spend & Procurement Analytics SolutionMap category.
Wax Digital has added a new category to its existing participation this quarter: Supplier Relationship Management and Risk.
In addition, 38 new or refreshed customer references (and 76 individual map references) were added in the Strategic Procurement Technology areas for Q3 2019.
The following providers still did not update their scoring based on the new Q2 2019 RFI and, as a result, had their scores adjusted based on a common shift factor (that preserves positional integrity relative to peers) and any platform updates, or lack thereof, that the analysts have received since the last time the RFIs were filled out. We expect most of them to participate in upcoming Q4 2019 or Q1 2020 releases.
In Source-to-Pay: — SAP Ariba, Jaggaer (Indirect, Advantage, and Direct)*
In stand-alone Sourcing: — Keelvar and Scout RFP
In stand-alone Spend and Procurement Analytics: — Opera BIQ
In stand-alone Supplier Relationship Management and Risk: — Aravo and Sourcemap
* As Jaggaer has unified three of its product lines — Jaggaer Indirect, Jaggaer Direct and Jaggaer Advantage — into Jaggaer One, which allows customers and prospects to select the best modules from each offering to fit an organization’s unique needs, Spend Matters has broken out the naming convention for the Jaggaer offerings more specifically for Q3 2019 SolutionMap in the persona ranking graphics as follows:
— Jaggaer One is Jaggaer Sourcing, Jaggaer Supplier Management, Jaggaer Spend Analytics, Jaggaer Contracts+, and Jaggaer eProcurement, and corresponds to what was formerly Jaggaer Indirect. — Jaggaer One+ is Jaggaer Sourcing+, Jaggaer Supplier Management+, Jaggaer Analytics+, and Jaggaer Contracts, and corresponds to what was formerly Jaggaer Advantage. — Jaggaer One Direct is Jaggaer Direct Sourcing and Jaggaer Direct Supplier Management and corresponds to what was formerly Jaggaer Direct.
Please note: as none of the Jaggaer solutions have yet been evaluated against Q2 2019 RFI requirements by the Spend Matters analyst team, they are not able to appear in this quarter’s editions of the Provider Scoring Summaries. Please refer to the Q1 editions for their latest scoring.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into the methodology and additional changes in the Q3 2019 SolutionMap release.
(SolutionMap Insider members: access the Q3 Provider Scoring Summary reports right here.)
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q3 2019 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q3 2019 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, SynerTrade and Zycus. All of these providers were required to participate in SolutionMap for each underlying module, as well. These individual areas include Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, E-Procurement and Invoice-to-Pay. All of these providers are also included in the individual Strategic Procurement Technologies (SPT) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P) suite views.
SAP Ariba did not update their scoring and, as a result, had their scores adjusted based on a common shift factor (that preserves positional integrity relative to peers) and any platform updates, or lack thereof, that the analysts have received since the last time the RFIs were filled out. We expect them to participate in upcoming releases.
The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 831 individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q3 2019*.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into the nature of the expanded RFI, methodology, customer references and additional changes in the Q3 2019 SolutionMap release.
(SolutionMap Insider members: access the Q3 Provider Scoring Summary reports right here.)
*Customers using more than one module that a vendor provides can opt to fill out a single survey within each individual suite area (e.g., a customer using two modules for P2P and four modules for SPT would need to fill out only two surveys).
This week’s SolutionMap Customer Insights report focuses on customer reviews for Sievo, a top provider that analyzes business spend data. The applicable SolutionMap category for this report is in Spend and Procurement Analytics. SolutionMap Insider members can click the link in this article to read about Sievo in our latest report. In each Customer Insights report, we provide a one-page summary of data from the SolutionMap peer review process. It includes ratings on how well the vendor meets user expectations, three key differentiators for the vendor and a list of quotes about the vendor’s greatest strengths.
