Last week in London I participated in one of the livelier and more spirited panel debates on the future of procurement (skills, technology and more) in recent memory. The event, held at Efficio’s offices Thursday to mark the release of its latest report, “Procurement 2025: Is Digital Transformation Driving More Effective Procurement,” included not only a handful of esteemed panelists and facilitators from the procurement/CPO, consulting and academic ranks, but also a robot — which led to many robotic process automation jokes throughout the discourse. If Efficio does something like this again, ask them for an invitation — you won’t be disappointed!
Here are three points that stuck in my mind from the different panel discussions and chats that I had.
In the real world, you plan for an event and it works out for a while. Then things fall apart. So you react and plan more — hoping to stop the problem from creating a contagion effect.
And here you are, thinking that you built this nice network finance model to finance your suppliers not just on approved invoices, but invoices that have been issued, or even more upstream, purchase orders that have been issued. And things have been working smoothly for a couple of quarters, or maybe for even a year or two.
Spend Matters today released its Q4 2018 SolutionMap, ranking 58 procurement software companies across 12 solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management and Contract Lifecycle Management — and we're adding Coupa, Wax Digital and other new providers to the SolutionMap ranks. Click on this article to see how to access rankings for free!
The Spend Matters SolutionMap Procure-to-Pay (P2P): Provider Scoring Summary is only available to SolutionMap Members. This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of procure-to-pay solution providers. It is part of our Q4 2018 SolutionMap report series, also featuring spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management, contract management, e-procurement and invoice-to-pay providers.
“I think the market is going to move from being buyer-centric ... to supplier-centric. [Suppliers] need help going digital,” says procurement veteran Gary Hare. “We really have no choice if we want to get this right.”
Hare’s assessment came during a discussion about Coupa’s purchase of Aquiire and the future of e-procurement shopping, which he says involves a way of outworking Amazon Business and turning the internet into "the world’s largest supplier network." He knows the issues because until 2009 he led Vinimaya before it rebranded as Aquiire. Hare, now the CEO of Vurbis USA, talks about the future of e-procurement in Part 2 of this Q&A, which has been edited. Part 1 ran Monday.
On the surface, Basware and Tradeshift appear to deliver similar invoice-to-pay technology capabilities as two of the top-ranked SolutionMap analyst picks for this area. (Note: We include e-invoicing, accounts payable automation, supplier network and related capabilities as components of invoice-to-pay.) After all, both beat the average functional benchmark score in the Spend Matters Q4 2018 Invoice-to-Pay SolutionMap, which publishes Dec. 4, by a material percentage.
But when you unpack how Basware and Tradeshift compare in the two “best” and core areas in which they compete, comparative strengths and weaknesses begin to emerge. Such nuances could prove all the more important when analyzing how customers and potential customers should think about each provider given the potential for them to join forces as a single, merged entity.
Join us in this unfiltered SolutionMap results analysis from our Q4 2018 dataset, along with the commentary of the Spend Matters analyst team. These “Head-to-Head” columns share the insights of each quarterly SolutionMap report for SolutionMap Insider Subscribers, providing unique comparative cuts of SolutionMap benchmark data along with the trademark quips that Spend Matters was better known for in its early years. So buckle your seat belt, prepare for some real data and expect a few sparks to fly as we pit Basware and Tradeshift against each other in the invoice-to-pay evaluation ring.
Not yet an Insider member? Here’s a preview: In certain invoice-to-pay categories — which include supplier network, configurability, technology (overall), general services, invoicing, payment/financing and overall invoice-to-pay scoring — Basware gets the nod. But in many others, Tradeshift takes the prize. Overall, the results suggest that the right solution will vary based on different organizational requirements. There’s no debate that invoice-to-pay selection processes will reward procurement organizations that tailor provider selection to their specific needs.
BuyerQuest was one of the first e-procurement providers to focus significant efforts on improving the user experience beyond just a “walk-up” shopping UI. Examples of these efforts include leveraging behavioral analysis to support guidance during the procurement process and innovation in support of purchase order management and receiving capabilities.
But how does BuyerQuest stack up among the 22 providers ranked in the latest e-procurement release? As of September 2018, the Spend Matters SolutionMap contains functional and customer satisfaction benchmarks on over 50 providers within the procurement technology landscape. Where does BuyerQuest stand out most and help “set the bar” in e-procurement? And why should this matter for procurement and finance organizations? Let’s delve into the SolutionMap benchmark to find out where BuyerQuest is great.
“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.
Earlier today, Basware, a Europe-based procure-to-pay provider that, through integrated partner capabilities, also offers broader source-to-pay solutions, responded to “media speculation” that it had received a takeover offer, resulting in a material run up in its share price. In a press announcement published Friday, Nov. 16, the vendor said it had been "approached with a non-binding and highly conditional indicative proposal for a possible tender offer for the entire share capital of Basware." The wording of the full release may provide some hints as to what kind of firm is considering an offer. But who the potential acquirer is perhaps matters less than what a Basware takeover could mean more broadly for the procurement technology market, in which Basware has made considerable gains within recent years.
“I saved you all $5 million,” procurement veteran Roy Anderson tried to tell one CFO he worked for. “To this day, he’s never totally believed that.”
In Part 2 of Anderson’s conversation about his career and digital changes in the industry, he talks about change management, demand management and how he did convince another CFO that Anderson’s team had saved him $150 million.
Anderson, now at Tradeshift, sat down with another procurement veteran, Pierre Mitchell of Spend Matters, to share some laughs and lessons about how the industry has adapted to technology over the last 40 years.
The following is the second of three-part series of their conversation, which has been edited for clarity. Part 1 ran Monday, and Part 3 will run Friday.
Some vendors prefer to wax poetic. Others prefer to wax digital. One such source-to-pay provider likes waxing digital so much, that it even calls itself Wax Digital. And it is our latest source-to-pay vendor to get the in-depth PRO treatment here on Spend Matters (before its debut in Q4 SolutionMap).
By now you are all familiar with its primary source-to-pay competitors, including SAP Ariba, Coupa, Determine, GEP, iValua, Jaggaer, SynerTrade and Zycus, as they have been covered extensively on PRO and appear in the SPT & S2P solution maps, and while you are quite familiar with the American S2P providers (Ariba, Coupa, Determine, GEP, Jaggaer and Zycus) and now the European S2P providers (iValua and SynerTrade), you're likely not as familiar with their English counterparts, namely Proactis and Wax Digital, as they have not had as much exposure in recent years. And Wax Digital is definitely a provider that should make your familiarization list.
Wax Digital, which has been around for almost two decades, is one of the largest European providers of source-to-pay solutions, with users in over 100 countries around the globe. It is available in 15 languages out of the box and supports all currencies under ISO 4217 for its 250,000+ global users.
Part 1 of this analysis provides a detailed company background and detailed solution overview, as well as a summary recommended fit for when organizations should consider Wax Digital. The remaining parts of this research brief will dive into product strengths and weaknesses, competitor and SWOT analyses, and insider evaluation and selection considerations.
As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, AI is the reigning buzzword of the day in procurement software. Just about every enterprise vendor out there claims to have AI, even if all they have is RPA. To help procurement organizations get up to speed, we reviewed the definition of each of the technologies in the “cognitive” stack — RPA, ML, AR, AI and cognitive — and discussed how some (but definitely not all) platforms are making use of these emerging technologies to make procurement faster, better and more productive than ever before.
Specifically, in Part 1 we discussed how the right application of these assistive technologies today can give you a platform that provides true automation, smart auto-reorder of MRO/retail stock and enhanced mobile support. We also noted that there were just a few of the applications that were available. Today, we review three more capabilities that a best-of-breed procurement platform should provide to take your (tactical) procurement to the next level.
Am I the only one who missed seeing Roy Anderson on stage in the last few years? Roy is an illustrious (and animated) CPO — and he's back in the game in a dual role as Tradeshift’s internal CPO and as its digital transformation officer. He’s also externally facing with Tradeshift customers and partners. Today in New York, Roy took the stage at Tradeshift’s analyst event, combining his mix of standup (think "Car Talk" meets procurement) and storytelling.
