This Spring 2020 SolutionMap analyzes a select group of strategic procurement technology suite providers (inclusive of spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management and contract lifecycle management).
The Spend Matters SolutionMap Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM): Provider Scoring Summary is only available to SolutionMap Members. This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) providers. It is part of our Spring 2020 SolutionMap report series, also featuring spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management (including supplier information management, performance management and risk management), e-procurement and invoice-to-pay providers.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Spring/Q1 2020 SolutionMap release for the following five categories: Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, and Strategic Procurement Technologies Suite. The note reviews the process we follow and highlights what has changed since the last release.
Also, SolutionMap is shifting from quarterly updates to spring and fall updates. This is the last quarterly release and the first spring release, so you’ll see it labeled “Spring/Q1.”
Changes to Spring/Q1 2020 SolutionMap
In the above individual areas, the following providers have been added for this release:
* Conga is a new participant in the Contract Lifecycle Management SolutionMap category.
* Rosslyn Analytics is a new participant in the Spend & Procurement Analytics SolutionMap category.
* Suplari is a new participant in the Spend & Procurement Analytics SolutionMap category.
* Xeeva is a new participant in the Spend & Procurement Analytics SolutionMap category.
Wax Digital, has changed its name to Wax Digital / Medius, and Orpheus was acquired by McKinsey. Their offering is now “Spend Intelligence by McKinsey.”
In addition, 72 new or refreshed customer references (and 60 individual map references) were added in the Strategic Procurement Technology areas.
Get a first look at the Spring/Q1 2020 SolutionMap comparative quadrant graphics here.
SolutionMap Insider members: Access the latest Provider Scoring Summary reports right here.
Spend Matters today has updated its free SolutionMap benchmark rankings for the new Spring/Q1 2020 release. The latest SolutionMap compares 69 procurement technology providers across 13 categories — which includes a new ranking map for Accounts Payable (AP) Automation vendors.
Six providers are featured in the first AP Automation category, which reflects the growing importance that vendors are placing on payments.
SolutionMap began in 2017 and has become the definitive procurement technology benchmark. It will now be updated in the spring and fall instead of each quarter.
Click on the headline above to find out which vendors are in the new AP Automation category — and to learn about new vendors to SolutionMap.
In the first installment of this series, we discussed how contract management was morphing from a document-centric risk transfer legal vehicle to a broader commercial value management (CVM) competency that helps businesses:
* Perform spend planning rather than spent analysis
* Gain earlier and deeper visibility into financial obligations rather than just using the general ledger
* Operationalizing risk management rather than just one-off (or high-level) efforts
* Integrating upstream strategic sourcing to downstream P2P (of course)
* Explicitly tying sourcing and contracts into supplier management
In this installment, we will dive a little deeper into how next-generation contract management helps facilitate the flow of value (and prevent “value leakage”) within the source-to-pay process, but also the broader swaths of enterprise processes where controlling the contracts means controlling the spend — and how finance and procurement groups can use this to their advantage.
Spend Matters reported last week that DocuSign, which offers its eponymous e-signature product and a CLM solution (formerly SpringCM), had entered a $188 million all-cash agreement to purchase AI and contract analytics specialist Seal Software. The transaction brings Seal’s capabilities for enterprise-wide contract discovery and analysis firmly into the wheelhouse of a growing CLM presence for DocuSign (beyond digital signatures), as well as raises the competitive bar for CLM specialists, suite providers of many forms and even for “digital platforms.”
But what exactly is DocuSign’s current positioning in the CLM market, and what does acquiring Seal Software bring to the provider’s platform — the “DocuSign Agreement Cloud”?
This Spend Matters PRO brief provides an overview of DocuSign’s current set of capabilities and applicability to the buy-side CLM market, as well as a reprise of Seal Software’s core functionality and offerings. It also includes a comparative rundown of where both specialist CLM vendors and S2P suites are in their own AI development journeys, along with our projection for how DocuSign’s CLM strategy will play out in the broader CLM space and potentially as a disruptive offering in the amorphous digital platform market.
To cut to the chase: The CLM market and digital platform market may never be the same.
Spend Matters recently predicted that DocuSign, the electronic signature specialist, would buy the AI-assisted contract analytics firm Seal Software (another reason that subscribers to our PRO research are ahead of the market). As the prediction noted in January, “we can’t help but think that DocuSign will be actively looking for inorganic growth options in 2020, and Seal Software might be an obvious choice given its previous $15 million investment. DocuSign will also likely need to focus its attention to the buy-side to bring some parity to its SpringCM pickup.” And so the prediction came true. Perhaps faster than we might have guessed (although the transaction will not close until later this year).
In the coming weeks, Spend Matters Nexus will publish a series of briefs covering the transaction and what it means from a corporate strategy standpoint for DocuSign in regards to targeting CLM. Our approach will include exploring remaining gaps in buy-side CLM for DocuSign.
But let’s start today by focusing on DocuSign’s inventory of assets and what Seal brings to the table, specifically alongside SpringCM.
We’ll also tackle what Seal’s AI provides to DocuSign, and offer some initial analysis about the fallout for the competitive landscape in this brave new CLM-meets-AI-meets-“platform” world (spanning a range of providers like Icertis, Agiloft, Coupa, SAP Ariba, Conga, LegalSifter, Kira, Luminance, LawGeex, Zycus, etc.). An aside in this regard: Other buy-side providers who used Seal will now be likely looking elsewhere for CLM support for counterparty document shredding, analytics and repository creation (Seal’s partners include PwC, KPMG, E&Y, Deloitte, IBM, Coupa, SAP Ariba and many others).
Let’s dive in.
If you are new to CLM market, we recommend starting with the following research briefs:
* Seal Software: Vendor Snapshot — Part 1: Background and Solution Overview
* Part 2: Product Strengths and Weaknesses
* Part 3: Commentary and Summary Analysis
* For SolutionMap Insider subscribers, see the CLM Scoring Summary that shows where vendors rank and details their capabilities, including both pure play providers (e.g., Icertis, Agiloft, SirionLabs) and the S2P suite vendors. We’ll be adding Conga in our spring SolutionMap release in March — and then add Apttus and hopefully DocuSign (SpringCM) in the fall release. The public can see the SolutionMap CLM vendor rankings by persona here for free.
* Commercial Value Management: Making Contracts the Commercial Core of Enterprise Value (Part 1) [PRO]
* CVM (Part 2): Using Next-Generation Contract Systems to Integrate Operations, Financials, Risk and Technology [PRO]
* CVM (Part 3): Critical Commercial Use Cases to Align Extended CLM with the Enterprise [PRO]
* 2020 Predictions for Contract Management: Where the CLM Market Is Going This Year and This Decade [PRO]
* Free content: 2020 Predicaments in Contract Management: Poor Adoption, CLM Market Fragmentation and Limited Imagination
* Free content: Artificial Intelligence in Contract Management (4-part series)
DocuSign, the electronic signature specialist, will acquire AI-assisted contract analytics firm Seal Software for $188 million in cash, DocuSign announced today in a press release. […]
In this last installment of Spend Matters’ 2020 predictions wrap-up series, we’ll dive into some additional predicament areas where there are substantive gaps to address within the digital procurement market. We’ll also explore a “mega prediction” related to digital platforms (not applications) and how this digital land grab will have an impact on picking an optimal digital platform strategy for procurement. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2 of the wrap-up series.
This week’s SolutionMap Customer Insights report focuses on customer reviews for Agiloft, a contract management software vendor.
The applicable SolutionMap category for this report is in Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). SolutionMap Insider members can read about Agiloft in our latest report.
In each Customer Insights report, we provide a one-page summary of details from the SolutionMap peer review process. It includes ratings on how well the vendor meets its customers' expectations, three key differentiators for the vendor and a list of quotes from customers about the vendor’s greatest strengths.
ERP vendors aren’t always known for their deep functionality, where best-of-breed solution providers rule the roost with specialized technology features. For example, contract lifecycle management (CLM) is such an area. While best-of-breed providers are going deep into AI for contract analytics and building sophisticated contract modeling, most ERP vendors have rudimentary capabilities that are often scattered across different modules in the ERP suite. Oracle’s Enterprise Contracts functionality is used in its Oracle Procurement Cloud suite solution (which itself is part of Oracle’s ERP Cloud suite), however Enterprise Contracts is a slightly different animal and can mostly hold its own in many areas against deeper solutions, including the CLM modules within the top source-to-pay (S2P) suites in the market.
Oracle’s Procurement Contracts Cloud is an offering that stems from the enterprise/ERP functions, and it is the focus of this Spend Matters PRO Vendor Introduction, which offers a candid take on the Procurement Contracts Cloud and its capabilities.
The Vendor Introduction includes an overview of Oracle’s solution set, a perspective on what is comparatively good (and not so good) about the solution, a SWOT analysis and a selection requirements checklist for organizations that might consider the vendor.
In our other post today on SXM predicaments in 2020, we discussed some of the current predicaments around supplier management centered on supplier data, supplier segmentation and category management.
To address these issues, buying organizations need to get serious about supplier data management as well as overall supplier management strategies. Unfortunately supplier management is often a secondary responsibility for procurement organizations where the focus tends to be on sourcing and delivering savings. The exception is in some cases in the IT space where some organizations have established vendor management offices (VMOs) to manage the more strategic and critical supplier relationships.
The sourcing and savings focus also results in a lack of interest in making sure that supplier data is managed correctly. Onboarding suppliers often falls to accounts payable organizations whose focus is on making sure that the vendor master data is accurate from a standpoint of getting invoices paid and preventing fraud.
More mature organizations have, however, realized that suppliers need to be managed (not only sourced) and that there is an enormous amount of value to be realized through better supplier management and collaboration — as well as, in some cases, co-innovation.
But we also need improvement in the applications and technology to support this. In this Spend Matters PRO article, we will explore five predictions in how we think applications and the SXM market will evolve to meet these challenges and help procurement organizations manage their suppliers better.