In our last Spend Matters PRO brief, we introduced you to GoProcure, a four-year-old provider based out of Duluth, Georgia, that is deploying a B2B marketplace and platform for tail-spend management. Bringing together basic RFQ and requisitioning tools, a marketplace for procuring goods and services, and complementary services like a buying desk, GoProcure is positioning itself as capable of covering the full range of tail spend in a market where most vendors address some but not all of the tail. And while its coverage is not necessarily exhaustive, GoProcure’s current iteration does encompass a lot of capabilities — albeit in a bit of a fragmented manner. Whether it’s a fit for a procurement organization’s unique challenges and needs, however, will come down to how exactly one conceives and chooses to tackle the tail.
Part 1 of this brief provided some background on GoProcure and an overview of its offering. In Part 2, we provide a breakdown of what is comparatively good (and not so good) about the solution, a high-level SWOT analysis and a short selection requirements checklist that outlines the typical company for which GoProcure might be a good fit. We also give some final conclusions and takeaways.
The question of how procurement organizations can best address the long tail of spend is still an open one, with multiple vendors offering their own flavor of the optimal tail-spend “solution.” For some, tackling the 80% of spend that is opaque and unmanaged is a matter of applying RFQ tools and automation to quickly bring dark purchasing into the light. (Recently profiled Fairmarkit is one example of this.) For others, a patchwork approach is the right fit, extending currently used P2P suites into the long-tail territory via punchout and integration methods. (Coupa’s combination strategy of using Aquiire’s web agent technology to crawl the internet as if it were a virtual catalog while also offering direct integration of Amazon Business content into e-procurement search results is one prominent example.)
Yet alongside these technology-first models another option is emerging. Some vendors are combining the possibilities of RFQ and catalog management tools with a BPO-lite, providing a combination of technology and services somewhat analogous to a managed services provider (MSP) for tail spend. (Chicago and Dubai-based Simfoni, which we cover in our SolutionMap for Spend and Procurement Analytics, is a notable example with a range of tail spend-specific tools.) The intended result is to capture the full range of tail purchases by creating routes for everyday users to easily request or source needed lower-value goods and services from suppliers that are not strategically managed while capturing the exceptions through the optional service layer. For more insights on how these tail-spend management approaches are all competing (and converging), see our tail spend management research study report here.
This multi-pronged approach is the strategy behind GoProcure, a four-year-old vendor out of Duluth, Georgia. GoProcure bills itself as a B2B e-commerce platform for all-in-one tail-spend management. Combining basic RFQ and requisitioning tools with a marketplace for procuring both goods and services, along with complementary services like a buying desk, GoProcure is positioning itself as capable of covering the full range of tail spend in a market where most vendors address some but not all of the tail, allowing it to claim procurement organizations at Global 2000, mid-market and private equity portfolio companies as clients.
This Spend Matters PRO Vendor Introduction offers a candid take on GoProcure and its capabilities. The two-part series includes an overview of GoProcure’s offering, a breakdown of what is comparatively good (and not so good) about the solution, a SWOT analysis and a selection requirements checklist for companies that might consider the provider.
While the benefits of adopting a purchase-to-pay (P2P) solution seem clear on paper, just about everyone who has been around the market on either the procurement, consultant or vendor side has heard horror stories of implementations gone wrong — or horribly wrong, in certain cases. Of course the culprit is usually staring the organization in the mirror. But more importantly, this line between success and failure, as measured by hard dollars, led us to ask a two-part question: What really is the price and when is it worth paying that price to implement a P2P solution?
In our last Spend Matters PRO brief, we introduced you to Prodigo, an 11-year-old provider based near Pittsburgh that is deploying a platform that’s specific to healthcare procurement and contract management. With 20% of the U.S.’s largest integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and more than 30% of Gartner’s top hospital supply chain departments as customers, Prodigo has numerous use cases and a large pile of healthcare-related data on which it has built a strong core product. And although it is not always best-in-class when compared against leading P2P providers that lack a vertical focus, Prodigo’s willingness to target the needs of a specific market have led to some commendable product strengths as well.
Part 1 of this brief provided background on the company and an overview of Prodigo’s offering. In Part 2, we provide a breakdown of what is comparatively good (and not so good) about the solution, a high-level SWOT analysis, a short selection requirements checklist that outlines the typical company for which Prodigo might be a good fit, and some final conclusions and takeaways.
As part of the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release, the Strategic Procurement Technologies (SPT), Source-to-Pay (S2P) suites, and Contingent Workforce & Services (CW/S) Technology Provider Scoring Summary reports are available today on SolutionMap Insider.
Rogue spend is a common problem for procurement in all industries, but in healthcare the issue is on a whole other level. Whereas the typical organization can see about 30% of indirect spend that falls into the off-contract category, that number can climb to as much as 60%.
There are multiple factors that drive these rogue purchases. Notably, in healthcare the distinction between direct and indirect spend is less of an issue than the difference between clinical spend (that is directly related to patient care) and non-clinical spend. These categories are managed a little differently from how procurement organizations typically approach direct and indirect purchases. Internal demand for clinical items can vary significantly, and since not having an item in inventory could be a matter of life and death, the need to spot buy specific medical devices or materials isn’t analogous to an ad hoc spot buy that you might find for many indirect spend categories.
Healthcare spend is also nuanced because the requestors — the medical personnel — often have a stronger say in what is purchased and to what degree cost is a factor than procurement gets compared with other verticals. This includes “physician preference items” where a physician MUST have a certain medical device/instrument that is different than the hospital system standard (and hopefully not because the MD is getting wined and dined by the manufacturer or distributor!).
This industry dynamic applies to the healthcare supply markets, as well, where unique features and quirks, including a much higher use of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and strong influences by medical device manufacturers over how their products are priced and used within hospitals, only further complicate procurement efforts to bring spending under control. Over 90% of GPO revenue is from supplier-funded “administrative fees” (i.e., rebates that are exempted from federal government kickback regulations), and until this commercial model goes away, hospitals still need to automate them (including percentages of those fees shared back with the hospital) and other supply chain requirements such as distributor owned/managed inventory within the system.
These healthcare-specific challenges are well-known to Prodigo Solutions, a purchasing technology solutions company based in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally grown out of the UPMC’s needs for better managing its own internal purchases, Prodigo today operates as a standalone software provider, offering tools that support e-procurement with healthcare-specific controls and post-signature contract management and compliance. Its customers include both integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and small community hospitals alike, and its healthcare marketplace currently facilitates transaction volumes in excess of $15 billion.
This two-part Spend Matters PRO Vendor Introduction series offers a candid take on Prodigo and its capabilities. It will include an overview of Prodigo’s offering, a breakdown of what is comparatively good (and not so good) about the solution, a SWOT analysis, and a selection requirements checklist for companies that might consider the provider.
As part of the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release, the E-Procurement, Invoice-to-Pay and Procure-to-Pay Provider Scoring Summary reports are available today on SolutionMap Insider.
Spend Matters today released its Q2 2019 SolutionMap, ranking 54 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 learn about SolutionMap's biggest revamp yet, and to see how to access rankings for free!
This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of E-Procurement solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2019 SolutionMap report series, also featuring Spend Analytics, Sourcing, Supplier Management, Contract Management and Invoice-to-Pay providers. Our Q1 release also features SolutionMap for Procure-to-Pay and Strategic Procurement Technology suites.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q2 2019 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua and SynerTrade. 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.
The five providers above have updated their RFIs and received updated scoring following the submission and demonstration of new and updated capabilities based on production releases of their platform. (Non-GA capabilities are not considered in SolutionMap scoring.)
SAP Ariba and Zycus 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. These providers requested a short-term delay because of the intensive nature of the expanded RFI (with nearly 800 requirements for Source-to-Pay), but we expect them to participate in upcoming 2019 releases.
The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 792 individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q2 2019*.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into the nature of the expanded RFI, methodology, customer references and additional changes in the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release.
*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 Q2 2019 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 Q2 2019 SolutionMap features the release of a new and improved RFI to providers, including new scoring scales resulting in important changes. The E-Procurement, I2P and P2P customer reference set added 73 new individual customer references in Q2. Just one new provider was added for Q2 — Procurify for E-Procurement.
Most of the providers participating in the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release for E-Procurement, I2P and P2P have updated their RFIs and received updated scoring following the submission and demonstration of new and updated capabilities based on production releases of their platform, including Basware, Coupa and Ivalua. (Non-GA capabilities are not considered in SolutionMap scoring.) A handful of other providers did not update their scoring in Q2 2019.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into these and additional changes in the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release.
Coupa made two announcements Tuesday morning: It’s expanding its relationship with Amazon Web Services to help enterprises with technology spend, and it bolstered its business spend management (BSM) with several new developments.
