Mastercard is ramping up its effort to be a player in the B2B payments market by adding payment tools for Mastercard Track, its product launched in 2018 that intends to make inroads into the procure-to-pay technology space.
This week, Mastercard Track announced in a press release that it has added the product Business Payment Service, describing it as “a single connection bringing together multiple payment types, greater control and richer data to optimize B2B transactions for both suppliers and buyers.”
Automation of accounts payable and facilitating payments are hot topics in P2P, and Spend Matters’ analysts have been covering the issues with our PRO subscription series defining AP automation and an in-depth look at Mastercard Track, introducing its capabilities and analyzing its potential to disrupt the market.
Welcome to the September 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 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.
We’ll look at several hot topics: Upwork’s review of disagreements about the size of the freelance economy, changes in worker classification, drone deliveries, a funding round by healthcare jobs marketplace provider Nomad Health, and how freelancers are changing banking and finance.
Welcome to the August 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. This edition looks at the new Beeline-Avature partnership; another look at the size and scope of the gig economy; developments in freelancer banks with news from Shine and Revolut; and more ...
By Spend Matters’ count, there are hundreds of cloud technology providers in the procurement technology sector, and well over a thousand if you count providers with a solution orientation (which may include market/category intelligence, consulting, advisory and related capabilities). Investor and M&A interest across this landscape of providers — from both strategic and financial buyers — is at an all-time high.
We define procurement solutions as technologies and services that target a range of areas that include:
— Core procurement (i.e., source-to-pay, procure-to-pay, etc.)
— Direct procurement
— Services procurement
— Contract management (that goes beyond supplier contracts)
— Accounts payable
— Trade financing (B2B Fintech)
— B2B (transactional connectivity, marketplaces, aggregation and GPO models)
— Third-party (supplier) management, from a GRC standpoint as much as from a procurement standpoint
In the first installment of the series, we introduced the first five groups of providers attracting the most investor and buyout attention: procurement technology suites, transaction-focused solutions, payment/financing providers, nimble solutions and leveraged buying/GPO models.
Today, we continue our focus on the “who” — exploring the final five groups of providers, including sharing illustrative providers in each segment and why buyers are attracted to each group. The five groups are:
Series Abstract: This multi-part Spend Matters PRO research brief explores the “who” (i.e., what types of companies are attracting the most interest and the profile of different buyers), the “why” (i.e., typical investment theses) and the “how” (i.e., the mechanics of deal processes and what is unique to the solution area, including where buyers that are new to the sector often have a higher learning curve than expected). It also explores some important dynamics in the market that have changed in recent months as buyer interest from both the strategic and financial sides increases.
Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR), the online marketplace for digital creative services, priced its 5.3 million IPO shares Wednesday night at $21 per, raising about $111 million in new funding. On Thursday morning, shares began trading at $26, but when the market closed in the afternoon, Fiverr’s share price had risen to $39.96 (nearly doubling). Based on the closing price per share and an estimated 31 million shares outstanding, Fiverr’s market cap would be about $1.2 billion, or 16 times revenue.
We will provide further analytic post-IPO coverage soon. In the meantime, check out our recent PRO series: Fiverr, the Online Services Marketplace, Is Going Public: What You Need to Know — Part 1 and Part 2.
Welcome to the June 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 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. Uber, Deliveroo, Doordash and Fiverr are among the companies making news.
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: Alumina refinery restarts in Brazil after a spill last year, Modi's re-election in India has chance to move markets, China may curb rare earth mining over trade war with U.S.
The mutual insurance firm FM Global this week released its 2019 Resilience Index, examining economic indicators, risk factors and supply chain issues in 130 countries around the world — ranking the nations by the resilience of their business environments. The index is meant to be a tool for senior executives to conduct “vulnerability assessments and build their companies’ resilience around the world,” according to FM Global, which focuses on property loss issues. Norway topped the list, and Haiti came in last. Read on to find out about the U.S., China and Russia.
Late in April, SAP announced that it was bringing its procurement assets under a single operating umbrella. The announcement of the new business unit, tucked into the body of a press release with the headline of a leadership promotion, notes that the “SAP Intelligent Spend Group” will be “comprised of SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass and SAP Concur.” The group, according to the announcement, would be headed by SAP Ariba and Concur veteran Barry Padgett, but this week we learned that Padgett left SAP. Regardless of leadership, the Intelligent Spend Group will move forward. This Spend Matters PRO brief provides an analysis of what the creation of a single organization within SAP for these solutions may mean for each individual solution line and customers.
At Spend Matters, most of our time is spent actually looking at solutions and evaluating and validating detailed RFI responses. So when a procurement organization asks us, for example, “how does SAP Ariba compare to Coupa for source-to-pay,” we can provide a detailed explanation across hundreds of different functional specifications and customer satisfaction benchmarks about how the two precisely compare and differentiate. We get questions on these two providers a lot.
Technology vendors reach a milestone when other providers (as well as practitioner and consultants) start using them as a yardstick to measure and compare capabilities. And now with Ivaluareaching unicorn status and sharing current growth metrics that generally dwarf that of its larger peers — based on organic product growth — we expect to hear more and more procurement organizations ask about Ivalua in the same way they ask about SAP Ariba and Coupa. And of course from a SolutionMap perspective when it comes to technology selection, we can answer that question with hard, objective data on a capability-by-capability basis (now mapped to procurement business requirements).
But off-the-cuff, how does Ivalua and its unified suite compare to others?
I asked my colleagues on the Spend Matters analyst team who know different areas of Ivalua (and its peers) to comment not using the SolutionMap benchmark, but their own opinion.
So without further adieu, let’s read the Spend Matters analyst team’s candid take of how Ivalua’s source-to-pay competitors measure up to it (including positives and negatives comparisons for each). Our analysis explores, on an overall company basis, subjective views about how the following vendors compare to Ivalua: Coupa, Determine (now part of Corcentric), GEP, Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Oracle, SynerTrade and Zycus.
Do you want the objective, hard comparative data on a functional and product basis to understand how Ivalua stacks up to peers? Check out SolutionMap Insider.
Ivalua, likely the fastest growing privately held source-to-pay procurement suite technology provider, announced Tuesday morning that, with its latest funding round, it has gained “unicorn” status for start-ups by reaching $1 billion in valuation.
It raised $60 million from a new investor, Tiger Global Management, and Ardian Growth, one of Ivalua’s early investors that raised its investment level. Tiger Global joins Ivalua’s founders, KKR and Ardian as shareholders, the announcement said.
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. We scour the landscape for what matters — from price movements to policy decisions. This week: Domestic steel price weakness, sustainable mining, and U.S-China trade tariffs and talks fallout.
