The competitive landscape for e-procurement software still counts dozens of vendors globally that offer varying degrees of solution breadth, depth and focus. One provider that drives to the core of e-procurement requirements (search, shopping, catalog management, compliance, requisitioning and approvals) with a set of deep and differentiated capabilities is Aquiire.
This third and final installment of our Vendor Snapshot covering Aquiire provides an objective SWOT analysis of the vendor and offers a competitive segmentation analysis and comparison. It also includes recommended shortlist candidates that could serve as alternatives to Aquiire and offers provider selection guidance. Part 1 provided an in-depth look at Aquiire as a technology provider and its specific solutions. Part 2 gave a detailed analysis of solution strengths and weaknesses.
Despite what Coupa and SAP Ariba would like companies to believe, the e-procurement market is far from consolidated. Moreover, some of the lesser-known vendors in the sector are not only driving some of the more unique areas of spend management innovation, but can also be the most adaptable to unique requirements that fall outside of the standard e-procurement box (which might include a single “buyer” or even a broader consortia of organizations coming together to buy in a “marketplace”). Aquiire is one such provider.
This Spend Matters PRO Vendor Snapshot explores Aquiire’s strengths and weaknesses, providing facts and expert analysis to help procurement organizations decide whether they should consider the vendor. Part 1 of our analysis provided a company and detailed solution overview, as well as a recommend fit list of criteria for firms considering Aquiire. The third part of this series will offer a SWOT analysis, user selection guide, competitive alternatives, and additional evaluation and selection considerations.
In September 2016, Vinimaya announced the launch of Aquiire, a cloud-based, real-time procure-to-pay (P2P) software suite. While Vinimaya had always been in the e-procurement business, Aquiire was an entirely new solution, built from the ground up, albeit one that took advantage of the company’s federated search, shopping and marketplace product roots.
Fast-forward to today, and that new product has become the future of Vinimaya. In fact, the company officially changed its corporate name in February 2017 to Aquiire Inc., extending both the brand and the philosophy behind its e-procurement solution across the entire company. Today, Aquiire competes primarily against a select group of e-procurement specialists (e.g., BuyerQuest and Vroozi) and is winning business against top-tier suite providers (e.g., Coupa, Ivalua, Jaggaer, SAP Ariba).
But it can also serve as a broader buy-side marketplace as well (when requirements extend outside the standard e-procurement box). In fact, many of Aquiire's customers integrate its real-time B2B marketplace and catalog management functionality into competitor’s platforms (e.g. SAP Ariba) to complement and extend indirect purchasing and catalog management capabilities.
This Spend Matters PRO Vendor Snapshot uses facts and expert analysis to help procurement organizations make informed decisions about Aquiire’s e-procurement and P2P software solutions. Part 1 of our analysis provides a company background and detailed solution overview, as well as suggestions for when organizations should consider Aquiire. The remainder of this multipart research brief covers product strengths and weaknesses, competitor and SWOT analysis, user selection guides, and insider evaluation and selection considerations.
In this series, we have been discussing the glue that binds together different areas of procurement workflow: the overall program management of both individual tasks and collective activities across the source-to-pay continuum, along with the technology components that support this end-to-end perspective. As a whole, this Spend Matters PRO series provides deep insight into what effective program management technology capabilities encapsulate from a design, platform and functional perspective.
We started this series by exploring design principles on which effective program management technology is based across the source-to-pay continuum. We then provided insights into the building blocks of effective program management technology components including best-of-breed project management, performance management, program compliance, program collaboration and other areas. We then highlighted specific examples of category management requirements and supplier management requirements before our series wrap-up with e-procurement and broader P2P.
In our last article (Part 9 — E-Procurement Components), we defined the P2P program counterparts to the sourcing-centric programs and began a deep dive into the platform components required to support the programs covered in our last entry. In this final installment on P2P, we conclude the platform components required to support modern procurement programs.
If you are getting ready to roll out an e-procurement platform and you don't have a steering committee in place, you could be in for a rockier road ahead than is necessary. If you have already celebrated your go-live launch, it’s not too late the pave the road ahead for subsequent phases of your procurement digitization program.
Spend Matters today released its Q3 2018 SolutionMap, ranking 54 procurement software companies across 12 different solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management and Contract Lifecycle Management — in addition to the first-ever release of the Contingent Workforce & Services SolutionMap. Click on this article to see how to access rankings for free!
This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of E-Procurement solution providers. It is part of our Q3 2018 SolutionMap report series, also featuring Spend Analytics, Sourcing, Supplier Management, Contract Management and Invoice-to-Pay providers. Our Q3 release also features SolutionMap for Procure-to-Pay and Strategic Procurement Technology suites.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider Release Note provides insight into the Q3 2018 SolutionMap release for E-Procurement, Invoice-to-Pay (I2P) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P), reviewing the process that we follow and highlighting what has changed since the last release.
The Q3 2018 SolutionMap release saw a number of changes from the Q2 2018 release. This includes the addition of the following new providers: ProProcure (ePRO), BirchStreet (ePRO, and a new appearance in I2P) and Jaggaer Direct (previously Pool4Tool in Q2 2017). Additionally, a number of providers have received updated scoring based on the submission and demonstration of new production technology release capabilities. In addition, the Procure-to-Pay customer reference set added 36 new individual customer references in Q3.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into these and additional changes in the Q3 2018 SolutionMap release.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider Release Note provides insight into the Q3 2018 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q3 2018 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include 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 Q3 2018 SolutionMap release. The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 500+ individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q3 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 only need to fill out two surveys).
Our ongoing Head-to-Head comparison series has been immensely popular with members of our new SolutionMap Insider subscription service. But for Q3 2018 SolutionMap results, which have not yet published, we thought it would be fun to shake things up a bit. With functional scoring for e-procurement software vendors now finalized for the quarter (and due out in September), the Spend Matters analyst team thought we’d tweak the Head-to-Head format to create a “Battle of the Best,” pitting the highest-ranked vendors in a given procurement software category against each other.
But unlike last week, when SAP Ariba and Ivalua faced off in the supplier management ring, we’re not talking about just two vendors. Today we’re adding a third company to the mix. In this SolutionMap Insider research brief, we pit against each other the three top-ranked e-procurement functional providers for Q3 2018: Coupa, Ivalua and SAP Ariba.
That’s right. Ivalua is the new sheriff in town, and it ties at least one of the other two in the functional rankings. But how does Ivalua stack up overall in this new e-procurement company?
In certain categories within our functional requirements for e-procurement — including catalog management, shopping and requisitioning, ordering, receiving, supplier network, configurability, technology, general services and overall average score — Coupa or SAP Ariba either come out on top or tie each other. But in two areas, Ivalua sneaks in a stealthy blow, besting the better-known e-procurement leaders.
And overall, it’s incredibly close. But one vendor gets the nod, taking the prize as the last procurement software company standing in this three-vendor ultimate ninja battle. Take note, however, that the right solution will vary based on different initiative and organizational requirements, as well as how much “heavy lifting” a procurement or finance organization wants to take on to enable different e-procurement scenarios.
Still, there’s no debate that e-procurement selection processes will reward procurement organizations that tailor vendor selection to their specific needs and even specific initiative requirements in cases where e-procurement will not be at the core of a suite-based selection.
In these articles on program management, we have been discussing the glue that binds together different areas of procurement workflow: the overall program management of both individual tasks and collective activities across the source-to-pay (S2P) continuum. This Spend Matters PRO series, as a whole, provides deep insight into what effective program management technology capabilities encapsulate from a design, platform and functional perspective.
We started this broad series by exploring design principles on which effective program management technology is based within source-to-pay. We then provided insights into the building blocks of effective program management technology components today, including best-of-breed project management, performance management, program compliance and program collaboration. We also dove into category management requirements and supplier management requirements before beginning to wrap up the series with e-procurement (and broader P2P).
In our last article, an introduction to e-procurement programs, we defined the P2P program counterparts to the sourcing programs. In this, the first of our final two entries in the series, we begin a deep dive into the platform components required to support these procurement programs covered in our last entry.
When President Trump first took office, it was clear that the new administration expected government agencies to start buying IT more like “a business.” Nearly two years later, that directive has not changed. In fact, the White House wants a technology business management (TBM) framework to be embraced government-wide by 2022, a feat that is not feasible unless agencies first embrace a more modern procurement framework. If the White House wants to change how agencies buy IT, infrastructure or any other system or service, it first needs to encourage broader investment in the technology required to more efficiently execute, track and evaluate every purchase.
