OpusCapita Solutions, the Finnish procurement provider known for procure-to-pay solutions and catalog management, is being sold by its parent company, Posti Group Corp., to the U.S. asset management firm Providence Equity Partners, of Rhode Island, according to an announcement. Spend Matters' analysts weigh in on the deal, which possibly sets up OpusCapita for more P2P projects.
For the buyers and category managers out there, especially those of you deep in the weeds of buying and managing commodities, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. This week: Metal prices rise, steel utilization is up; Brexit fallout still looming.
Certify and Chrome River Technologies, two travel & expense providers who also offer invoice management software, will merge in a deal that’s valued at over $1 billion, a statement Tuesday said. It also realigns the market and makes the investor in the transaction an even bigger player in this sector, two Spend Matters' analysts said. Portland, Maine-based Certify and L.A.-based Chrome River initially will operate separately but will collaborate on investing in technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and reporting, the announcement said.
The freelancer website Upwork on Tuesday released its third annual “Future Workforce Report,” which examines hiring behaviors of more than 1,000 hiring managers based in the U.S. It looks “specifically into how younger generations’ (hiring managers) are shaping the future of work.” The study is far-ranging, but our coverage will focus on some areas relevant to our procurement audience: younger generations’ attitudes toward changing work models — namely, remote work and external workforce.
Kraft Heinz’s procurement division had an accounting problem that led to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and a $25 million charge in the fourth quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. The amount pales in comparison to the company’s other bad news Thursday — when it said it wrote down the value of its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands by $15.4 billion dollars and it slashed dividends, sending the stock down 20% at one point, the Journal reports.
After 15 months of developing its unified spend management solution, Jaggaer on Tuesday announced the release of Jaggaer ONE, which it called the “cornerstone” of its suite. “Jaggaer ONE represents the next stage in the evolution of our company and is the most complete business-to-business spend management offering available globally,” said Jaggaer CEO Robert Bonavito, in a press release.
My 2019 wish is directed at healthcare’s supply chain leadership. More than encouraging investments aimed at making their supply chains more dynamic, I would like to see the gloves finally taken off and the bullying behavior of major suppliers called out for what it is. To make that happen, healthcare’s supply chain leadership must think more strategically about their supply rationalization strategies across their most important service lines. If for no reason other than to establish balance in important relationships, the effort is essential. Finally, staff must be remotivated to challenge the established order, so programs that reward them for doing it must be instituted, promoted and monitored for results.
Where is procurement going in 2019? While it would be easy to fall into the perennial trap of describing long-term trends as the next big thing, we’d like to offer a more realistic alternative. To start off the year, we suggest reaffirming some hard truths about procurement that can help decision-making in the months to come. To that end, Peter Smith, procurement veteran and outgoing editor of Spend Matters UK/Europe, decided to leave readers in December with a list of six enduring truths about the function. While this advice surely won’t be the last readers hear from Smith, he offers these points as “most of my critical IP” as he steps out of the spotlight.
Ah, the memories. When it comes to preparing for The Year in Comparative Rankings of Procurement Software Companies, it’s hard not to gravitate immediately to Spend Matters SolutionMap. For one thing, SolutionMap provides quarterly updates, keeping in real-time lockstep with advancements and innovations in the procurement software and technology market. For that reason, we saw some cool things happen over the past 12 months — and have some exciting updates to share for 2019.
In 2018, Spend Matters covered a range of technologies that are considered to be disruptive to how procurement and supply chain solutions get deployed. This list reflects those topics, like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and blockchain. But it also reflects our readers’ interest in these subjects. So here’s a list of the top 10 disruptive tech stories (with excerpts of our analysts’ and reporters’ work), ranked by popularity, starting with the year’s No. 2 most popular story on any topic with our readers.
For the buyers and category managers out there, especially those of you deep in the weeds of buying and managing commodities, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. From price movements to policy decisions, our MetalMiner editors scour the landscape for what matters. Here's what mattered this week.
World-class procurement organizations have achieved enormous advantages through automation and the adoption of technology solutions, according to a new report on digital transformation from the Hackett Group.
The 2018 benchmarking report found that top performers, thanks to their digital transformations, have 21% lower labor costs and 29% fewer full-time equivalent staff than more typical organizations. For this reason, the authors of the report proclaim that procurement is now at an inflection point: While technology has always been effective at helping procurement increase efficiency, “world-class organizations can continue to reduce costs by embracing digital technology, while the peer group can leverage the same technology to catch up faster at less cost.”
Find out how the top performers do it and how late adopters can catch up.