Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from RiseNow Managing Partner Matt Stewart.
With an endless list of options in the procurement software space, how is it possible to choose between spend management solutions like Ariba, Basware, Coupa and Jaggaer? Should you even consider such options when your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is capable of handling basic spend management needs?
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely considered or are considering whether best-in-class source-to-pay (S2P)/procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions are worth your time, money and effort. You’ve probably wondered how the benefits compare between the solutions, whether one far exceeds another in ROI, what is best for your end users and suppliers, and if the rate of adoption is greater with one solution over another.
This story offers a few good places to start when determining whether your ERP provider or a best-in-class spend management solution is best for your organization.
Companies in the U.S. spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on travel and entertainment — and a study from Certify Inc., an expense report software company, surveyed executives and finance leaders to get a snapshot of how many still use manual methods versus how many have upgraded their T&E management technology. In the study, officials note that travel and entertainment costs can be a significant part of companies’ budgets, which means efficiently managing employees’ expense reports can greatly affect a company’s profits. Since 2013, the “Expense Management Trends Report: Annual T&E Outlook and Benchmarks” by Certify has worked to help companies of various sizes recognize best practices to consider in travel and entertainment reporting and as methods to benchmark such companies’ current processes against their peers.
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.
As the industrial internet of things (IoT) integration grows more complex and the cost of broad-based IoT integration and monitoring continues to fall, businesses are becoming aware of the limitations of their enterprise software in making use of IoT data, a survey finds. IoT involves the monitoring of all aspects of manufacturing or a business by imbedding monitors in things like components, production lines or fleets of vehicles, so it’s easy to see how they would create a flood of data. IFS North America, a business software provider who commissioned the study with researcher IEN and analyzed the results, asked 200 IoT decision makers across a range of industries how well their software facilitated IoT data integration in 2017 and 2018. The results show a decline in confidence.
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Doug Hudgeon, a business automation expert.
P2P software is painful to buy and painful to implement. In order to get the biggest benefit, you need to rip the purchasing spinal cord out of your company and replace it with an end-to-end P2P system. This is a big project, requires a big budget and, if you are going to deliver on the promised benefits, you must have an unwavering commitment to change. Sales cycles are long but, fortunately for P2P vendors, the margins on the deals that do get across the line can be pretty good. But the competitive landscape is about to shift.
Just when you thought the contract lifecycle management (CLM) software market fit within a neatly defined 2x2 graph, along comes a vendor that breaks the mold, offering top functional capabilities while also redefining exactly what a CLM provider is capable of.
Who is this vendor, you ask?
SirionLabs.
Although it is fully capable of competing in the “traditional” CLM sector, SirionLabs is a powerful, specialized CLM solution that organizations have used primarily to manage and optimize the performance of large, complex, often multi-year services contracts. The solution combines core CLM components with added supplier management capabilities, like performance management, relationship management and risk management. And it works for contracts of all shapes and sizes, delivering Value Leader (upper right quadrant) performances across every CLM SolutionMap buying persona.
As of Q3 2018, Spend Matters SolutionMap consists of functional and customer satisfaction benchmarks on more than 50 vendors within the procurement, finance and legal software markets. To date, Spend Matters’ analysts have evaluated 13 providers in the contract lifecycle management software segment, including SirionLabs. But where does SirionLabs stand out most, and why should this matter to procurement and legal organizations? Let’s dive into the CLM SolutionMap benchmark to find out.
“What Makes It Great” is a recurring column that shares insights from each quarterly SolutionMap report for SolutionMap Insider subscribers. Based on both our rigorous evaluation process and customer reference reviews, each brief offers quick facts on the provider, describes where it excels, provides hard data on where it beats the SolutionMap benchmark and concludes with a checklist for ideal customer scenarios in which procurement, finance and supply chain organizations should consider it.
Unlike Salesforce, Tradeshift embarked on building both an applications and platform technology business at the same time, commingling the value proposition of each to create something that it hoped would prove larger than either could be individually. Flash forward less than a decade since the provider launched, and Tradeshift has remained true to this vision. But how does the provider stack up to others in the market given it can be difficult to compare it with traditional cloud applications providers without the platform element? And how should prospective customers know when to consider Tradeshift vs. others?
Part 3 of this Vendor Snapshot series explores these questions and others. This Spend Matters PRO report provides facts and expert analysis to help procurement organizations make informed decisions about Tradeshift’s solutions and products. Part 1 of our analysis provided a company background and detailed solution overview, as well as a summary recommended fit suggestion for when organizations should consider Tradeshift in the procurement, supply chain and finance technology areas. Part 2 covered product strengths and weaknesses, and this final installment offers a competitor and SWOT analysis, along with evaluation and selection considerations.
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Melissa Hendrick, VP of marketing at Yooz North America.
Today, automation technology is one of the inevitable trends for companies wanting to improve their efficiency and agility in a complex economic environment. The reasons are clear: cost reduction, process optimization, data security, regulatory compliance and many more.
If you are considering automating your invoice payment processing workflows in accounts payables, or are already investigating solution providers, your success will be based on following some basic guidelines and avoiding some common pitfalls.
With that in mind, here are some insights to help you identify the pitfalls on your journey to AP automation, combining practical information with a little tongue-in-cheek humor.
Spend Matters’ recent coverage of Coupa’s purchase of Aquiire details Coupa’s acquisition rationale and the general wisdom of its decision — but the deal also calls attention to a useful context that evaluators of “Amazon-like” e-procurement systems would be well served to understand. As these systems are tailored for different industries, they should be evaluated for how they differ, not how they're the same. Let's look at three types of marketplaces spawned by the Amazon model.
Coupa (cleverly) has been snapping up specialized technology in the e-procurement market to further enhance its capabilities (re: Simeno and Aquiire). In doing so, it has also acted as consolidator, reducing the available e-procurement supply market for both customers and competitors. In North America today (and globally, as far as we are aware), there are only two specialist independent e-procurement specialists remaining in the market: BuyerQuest and Vroozi.
Of course to this list you need to add a few folks in Europe — Wescale (which has not expressed interest in pursuing North American sales opportunities, at least with our clients), OpusCapita and Proactis. And lest we not forget larger providers such as Basware, Ivalua, Jaggaer, etc. (in addition to Oracle and SAP Ariba). But the non-suite, best-of-breed supply market for e-procurement, at least in North America, is getting very thin.
This two-part Spend Matters PRO analysis provides Spend Matters commentary on what Coupa’s acquisitive tendencies, in particular the purchase of Aquiire this week, might suggest for competitors and future competitors. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but continued sector M&A was a top prediction we suggested earlier in 2018.
The research brief begins by sharing our updated 2018 market forecast (CAGR, size, etc.) for e-procurement based on 1H 2018 activity. Then we provide commentary and analysis focusing on the implications of continued market consolidation for three segments of the competitive market: ERP providers that have not yet placed their best foot forward when it comes to e-procurement and procure-to-pay (including NetSuite/Oracle, Sage and Workday), Coupa suite competitors (e.g., Basware, Ivalua, Jaggaer, Oracle, SAP Ariba, etc.) and specialist providers (e.g., BuyerQuest, Vroozi, Wescale, etc.).
Part 2 of this analysis will provide a closer analysis of what Coupa’s increasing “post punch-out” product / IP arsenal (inclusive of Aquiire) might have on top e-procurement competitors when it comes to how customers actually look at and use these technologies — both during a software selection and when deploying/scaling e-procurement programs.
Within the procurement technology arena, Oracle is not as well known as many of its peers with similar market share. There are numerous reasons for this, but in starting with the obvious, we would note that Oracle has so many product lines (and so many procurement products) that any individual application or suite of combined modules is likely to get lost in the brand shuffle (i.e., there is no SAP Ariba of Oracle). When thinking of these products, many procurement practitioners will likely conjure up a now somewhat dated perception that getting value from Oracle technology solutions takes time — sometimes lots of time. But there is no longer a need to “wait” for Oracle procurement value.
Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of Jonas’ story about an ominously last-minute meeting with the Rio de Janeiro headquarters of his oil and gas company, right before an ERP launch. Missed Part 1? Read it here.
The year 2016 showed us how political events, market movements and social trends could be more easily mapped to emotional triggers than axioms of behavioral economics or underlying transactional data. In 2017, we are likely to see more of the same.
