Procurement software provider SourceDay on Wednesday announced it has received $6.5 million in Series A funding from three capital venture firms. SourceDay said it has now raised $10.8 million since the 2015 launch of its software-as-a-service cloud platform, which automates direct spend management, purchase order management and supplier collaboration. The provider integrates its solution with ERP systems to reduce manual operations for suppliers and buyers, the statement said. The Austin, Texas-based company plans to focus on product development as well as expand its sales and marketing activity, it said.
We can count on two hands the number of independent source-to-pay providers left in the global market with sufficient breadth and depth of capabilities to fully earn the moniker of “suite provider.” Wax Digital is one of them. But don’t fret if you’ve not encountered them yet.
In Part Oneof this Vendor Snapshot, we introduced you to the firm — a source-to-pay provider from the UK that you may not be familiar with, especially since it has not yet participated in SolutionMap (although that changes this quarter). Then in Part Two, we dove in deep and examined, in detail, all of the strengths and weaknesses of this widely deployed source-to-pay platform that is just becoming known in North America.
Wax Digital is a particular provider to note among others, as it one of the few providers that offers a relatively complete, integrated, source-to-pay offering on one code base that is already used globally in over 100 countries. Maybe vendors tout “one platform” when in fact their solutions do not work as seamlessly together as claimed.
Now, today, in our third and final installment in this Vendor Snapshot series, we provide a SWOT overview of Wax Digital as a whole, a comparative and competitive market overview, and provide some final summary analysis and recommendations for organizations that might consider Wax Digital as a potential solution partner.
Spend Matters today released its Q4 2018 SolutionMap, ranking 58 procurement software companies across 12 solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management and Contract Lifecycle Management — and we're adding Coupa, Wax Digital and other new providers to the SolutionMap ranks. Click on this article to see how to access rankings for free!
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 Q4 2018 SolutionMap report series, also featuring sourcing, supplier management contract management, e-procurement and invoice-to-pay providers.
This Q4 2018 SolutionMap analyzes a select group of strategic procurement technology suite providers (inclusive of spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management and contract lifecycle management).
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q4 2018 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q4 2018 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, SAP Ariba, 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.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into these and additional considerations in the Q4 2018 SolutionMap release. The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 600+ individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q4 2018*.
*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 Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q4 2018 SolutionMap release for Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, and Strategic Procurement Technologies Suite SolutionMaps, 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 Q4 2018 release:
Coupa is now participating in Supplier Relationship Management & Risk and Contract Lifecycle Management
SourceMap is participating in Supplier Relationship Management & Risk
Wax Digital is participating in Sourcing
Additionally, providers such as AnyData, Determine, Exari, Ivalua, Jaggaer Advantage and Jaggaer Indirect, Keelvar, Scanmarket, Scout RFP and Sievo have received updated scoring following the submission and demonstration of new capabilities based on production releases of individual modules. (Non-GA capabilities are not considered in SolutionMap scoring.) Perhaps most important, over 67 new or refreshed customer references (and over 100+ modular references) were added in the Strategic Procurement Technology areas for Q4.
Spend Matters has been exploring the state of artificial intelligence in procurement. Before we look into the future, let’s see where we’re at now. We started with AI in Procurement Today (Part 1 and Part 2), which was followed by AI in Procurement Tomorrow (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). This leads one to ask, what comes next? A number of vendors are already working on the tomorrow features and a few even have some in beta.
We aren't going to look too far into future because we want to stick to capabilities you should see in the next decade. So here’s a representative list of some of the more common features coming down the pipe. You should expect to see:
In this series we are discussing artificial intelligence, with AI touted by many a salesperson. Virtually every vendor is claiming AI, even though it’s a stretch to promote having a fully functioning model. However, if you are willing to settle for “assisted intelligence,” that AI exists today (as per our precursor series that you can read here: AI in Procurement Today, Part 1 and Part 2), and it won't be long before we have the “augmented intelligence” that we are discussing in this series, as some vendors already have limited beta capabilities (that are typically restricted to a subset of categories) in many of these areas. In our last article, we discussed how tomorrow's systems are going to help considerably with overspend protection. In today's article, we'll consider “ninjabots” and dive into invisible buying, automatic buying and automatic opportunity identification.
As we highlighted in our earlier series on AI in Procurement Today (see Part 1 and Part 2), artificial intelligence is the buzzword — or, more precisely, the buzz acronym — du jour in procurement software. Virtually every vendor these days is either claiming to have AI or to be working on it, even if all the vendor has, or is working on, is robotic process automation (RPA).
Whether your vendor has AI or not, however, is not the most pressing question. Because AI is coming, possibly faster than you think. Moreover, if you don't adopt (at least the precursor) technology today, your procurement organization may be left in the dust tomorrow.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most hyped-up topics in business right now. Gartner has included a number of AI applications in their 2018 Hype Cycle for most important emerging technologies. To take matters further, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently said he expects AI to become more important for humanity than even fire or electricity.
Almost every week we hear of new ways AI revolutionizing business practices, but where does this leave procurement? The good news is, if your procurement organization is ready for digital, it’s ready for AI. Here are six concrete ways you can get started.
Spend data is a gold mine of valuable information for improving the procurement process as well as driving enterprise-wide decision-making. FTSE 100 services provider Serco learned this first hand when it engaged Simfoni, a provider of spend analytics tools, to change the way it gathered, presented and analyzed its data. Using spend analytics as the tip of the spear, the Serco team developed “should cost” predictive cost models to develop better bids for potential clients — and support what every CEO wants: profitable growth.
Spend Matters hosted a recent webinar in which experts discussed the topic. Featuring Serco Head of Procurement Andrew Spafford and Simfoni Managing Director Stefan Dent, the event centered on the role that spend data should play in an organization’s decision-making process. Spend Matters Chief Research Officer Pierre Mitchell moderated.
