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. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
EcoVadis, a provider of ratings on sustainability, CSR and ESG, today announced a $200 million investment from CVC Growth Partners that puts three CVC executives on the EcoVadis board and sets the company up to expand. “EcoVadis plans to leverage the funding to expand internationally, break into new countries and further invest in its technology platform, sustainability intelligence solutions and network of rated companies,” according to its press release.
Coupa announced today that it is buying Yapta, a website that monitors airline and hotel prices in real time and rebooks at the lowest price. The addition to Coupa’s business spend management suite of offerings bolsters its travel and expense capabilities, according to the announcement.
Spend Matters Europe Editor Nancy Clinton has collected 2020 predictions from a range of procurement software experts like Basware, Ivalua, Efficio, VORTAL, State of Flux and more. The posts have run on the days leading up to the New Year, and more will run in the coming week. Here, we've consolidated the predictions and provided a highlight from each vendor.
These were the most viewed posts on Spend Matters for 2019, with a countdown to the No. 1 news story. Revisit news about Jaggaer's sale, the Avetta-Browz deal, our lists of vendors to Know and Watch, and changes at SAP. Thanks for reading Spend Matters in 2019 — and Happy New Year!
Many procurement technology firms have a short history before flaming out or being acquired, but one stalwart firm has hit a rare milestone — and has secured a strong future for itself. Scanmarket, the Denmark-based provider of strategic sourcing software, turned 20 this year — and made sure that the family business will carry on with the same mission. To learn more about what it takes to run a long-standing best-of-breed sourcing business, we talked to Scanmarket CEO Betina Nygaard for her insights about the past and the future of e-sourcing. "I think the e-sourcing process will change completely," she said.
Welcome to the December 2019 edition of Spend Matters Insider’s Hot List, a monthly look at the contingent workforce and services (CW/S) space that’s available to our PLUS and PRO subscribers. For those new to the Hot List, each edition covers the prior month’s important or interesting technology and innovation developments in the CW/S space.
As we head into December and the holiday season, we look back on the developments in November: Small service providers now ‘Open for Business’ on LinkedIn; Is the job board Indeed going gig?; Fiverr grows topline, not bottom; crowdsource testing; and news about financial services for freelancers.
SAP Ariba and Givewith today announced a partnership where Givewith’s social impact solution will be available on the SAP App Center, giving SAP clients access to a matching service that allows them to find nonprofits to give donations.
Businesses increasingly are concerned with sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and Givewith analyzes thousands of nonprofits to match with businesses’ needs to improve their social standing, which studies have shown helps the bottom line as well as aids reputations with the public and improves worker recruiting and retention.
“If just 8% of the nearly $3 trillion transacted by buyers and suppliers across the Ariba Network included Givewith, we would generate over $3 billion in funding for nonprofits,” said Paul Polizzotto, Givewith’s founder and CEO, in a press release. “As we look to tackle some of today’s most pressing social, economic and environmental challenges, we see SAP Ariba as a strong partner in unleashing the power of business transactions as an agent for social change. Together, we’re elevating the role of procurement by turning sourcing into a key component of the company’s larger business and CSR strategies.”
In a Spend Matters PRO Vendor Introduction post, our analyst Nick Heinzmann shares what he learned after spending time evaluating Givewith’s solution, Givewith Enterprise.
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. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week:
Corcentric — a source-to-pay provider targeting procurement and finance groups with various software, services and capital/payment offerings — has been on Spend Matters’ radar for years as the New Jersey-based company has acquired and created solutions for the procurement technology market.
Converged source-to-pay models similar to Corcentric’s are thriving.
"Like GEP, Corcentric proves that you don't need to be a pure-play cloud software provider alone to carve out a material chunk of the fast-growing procurement solutions market," said Jason Busch, managing director of Spend Matters Nexus, which advises sponsors, boards and CEOs on M&A in the procurement sector. “Corcentric is a successful amalgam of procurement services, payment/financing, group purchasing solutions and source-to-pay technology. While the capital markets were previously confused by everything it did — including leasing — the value proposition for customers today is much clearer."
Noted technology analyst Magnus Bergfors joins Spend Matters today after several years at Gartner, bringing a deep background in strategic sourcing, procure-to-pay and other procurement software categories.
"I'm thrilled that Magnus will be joining us,” said Jason Busch, the founder of Spend Matters, whose analysts provide solution intelligence on procurement technology. “Not only is he deeply in touch with the needs of procurement organizations, Magnus will bring a global perspective on technology analysis, selection and best-practices to our audience in North America, Europe and around the world."
Magnus lives in Sweden and will increase Spend Matters’ coverage of the industry in Europe.
“I’m incredibly excited to join the Spend Matters team,” he said. “The balance of Spend Matters being large enough to have a critical mass of resources and world-leading expertise combined with the agility of a smaller organization allows for some really exciting opportunities for innovative research and to help our clients make the right choices.”
Today was supposed to end a relaxed week, with two days of PTO for a variety of family activities. Instead, the week went wild — when Workday caught everyone slightly off-guard Monday as it announced that it would acquire Scout RFP.
That news launched a flurry of activity here, because I love real-time coverage of procurement sector M&A.
And with the investment-focused Spend Matters Nexus officially launching the same day as that breaking news, the timing, except for my scuttled plans to relax a bit more than usual, could not have been more perfect. This week I also ended up having some meetings with clients. And the lessons from the Workday and Scout news have resonated in many of the meetings. (See our Nexus coverage from this week that led to the insights.)