Procurement organizations have an increasing number of choices when it comes to selecting an e-procurement solution. With both full suite and smaller independent providers — not to mention ERP vendors — improving and expanding their capabilities in this area, it has never been a better time to purchase a new technology or make the switch from an older platform.
Within this market, BuyerQuest delivers a number of nuanced capabilities that differentiate it from peers. This third and final installment of our Spend Matters Vendor Snapshot covering BuyerQuest provides a SWOT analysis of the provider, as well as a segmentation and comparison of competitors. It also includes a recommended shortlist of candidates that could serve as alternative vendors to BuyerQuest for e-procurement and procure-to-pay (P2P). Finally, we conclude with a summary analysis and recommendations for organizations considering BuyerQuest.
The barriers to entry for any provider wanting to create an e-procurement or procure-to-pay (P2P) solution are perhaps the highest of any technology area in the procurement sector. Not only must solutions combine a world-class experience for all frontline users from a shopping and buying experience to be competitive, they also must feature entirely different sets of capabilities to enable both procurement organizations (and suppliers) to collectively manage dozens of elements to ensure that all purchases are in compliance with company policies, contracts and supplier agreements. Ideally, these two elements combine to guide users to an optimal buying experience both for their own requirements and the company, steering them in ways they may not even be aware of.
BuyerQuest is one of only a select number of new entrants to gain traction in the e-procurement — and more recently, the P2P — market in recent years by meeting these requirements, often in differentiated ways. This Spend Matters PRO Vendor Snapshot explores BuyerQuest’s strengths and weaknesses, providing facts and expert analysis to help procurement organizations decide whether they should consider the provider. Part 1 of our analysis provided a company and detailed solution overview and a recommend fit list of criteria for firms considering BuyerQuest. The third part of this series will offer a SWOT analysis, user selection guide, competitive alternatives, and additional evaluation and selection considerations.
In a recent discussion I had with Basware, we talked about the firm’s recently announced partnership with Scanmarket. Although the provider’s comments referenced the customer benefits of its newly minted S2P capability, the people I spoke to never backed off talking about the firm’s ability to drive 100% spend coverage. It caught my attention, because in a S2P context it’s smart, especially when considering how ripe the savings opportunities are for spend categories that have never before been covered/managed/competitively sourced.
How important is technology to procurement? In a word: quite. And it’s not as if there aren’t enough to keep tabs on, running the gamut from cloud, B2B connectivity, user-designed solutions, analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning — many of which are already influencing today’s cutting-edge offerings. To help practitioners wrap their heads around it all, the Spend Matters Analyst Team has penned a new report, "E-Procurement and Invoice-to-Pay Disruption: 'Best' and 'Next' Technologies," that shares summary insights into the technology, product and functional levels of “best” practices today and tomorrow’s “next” practices for procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions.
Unless you’ve been stuck in a cave, sheltered from procurement and supply chain industry news for the last three weeks, you may have noticed Spend Matters’ rollout of the Procure-to-Pay SolutionMap — comparative rankings of technology vendors offering e-procurement, invoice-to-pay and procure-to-pay suite solutions. To help quick-guide you through the SolutionMap, we’re offering you a couple Choose Your Own Adventure-style options.
Huzzah! The rankings and comparative graphics for the third and final solution area — procure-to-pay (P2P) suites — of our SolutionMap℠ Q2 2017 report have finally arrived.
With these last 6 'quadrant'-like comparisons, the Spend Matters Analyst team has now provided a holistic look at a number of technology vendors providing e-procurement and invoice-to-pay solutions, as well as procure-to-pay suites.
What You Need to Know About SolutionMap
Participating vendors are scored both on Solution Capability and on Customer Value.
SolutionMap features vendor rankings based on common procurement organization “personas” (more below).
The SolutionMap will be updated quarterly to actively reflect market developments.
SolutionMap graphics and high-level summaries are available for free and we encourage you to re-post and share them with your network.
If interested in digging deeper into the back-end data and listings of typical user requirements, vendor selection tips and background on the vendor rankings, subscribe to Spend Matters PRO for full access.
What Say? Personas?
No two procurement organizations are alike. Each has its own “persona” that reflects not only its own value proposition and engagement approach, but also the stakeholders it serves. The same principle holds true of procure-to-pay (P2P) application providers. Each has a persona that reflects its value proposition, solution strategy and targeted customer segments.
Procurement organizations should seek providers whose personas best align to theirs. Here are our six personas:
Nimble
Deep
DIY
Mega
ERP Wrapper
Industry
More detail on these in the full article — log in or sign up for FREE below.
The Procure-to-Pay SolutionMap – Q2 2017
Access the additional 5 graphics by persona (including an all-in-one PDF) and a summary of the personas' key criteria in the full article.
This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of procure-to-pay solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap report series, also featuring e-procurement and invoice-to-pay solution providers individually (including an expanded set of providers in each area).
Spend Matters tracks more than 50 procure-to-pay solution providers. This analysis features many of the largest procure-to-pay providers, specifically Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, Pool4Tool, SAP Ariba, Vroozi and Zycus. We will be adding additional providers for the Q3 and Q4 2017 updates (as well as in 2018 and beyond).
SolutionMap ratings provide comparative rankings and insight into how each provider scored from a solution and customer value perspective. It provides a breakdown of solution scoring for each vendor on the category level (e.g., catalog management, shopping/requisitioning, ordering/order management, receiving, supplier network, configurability, technology/architecture and services, invoice structure/capture, invoice collaboration and compliance, additional invoicing technology components, financing/payment, supplier network, configurability, technology/architecture and services). It also provides insight into how customers scored procure-to-pay vendors (e.g., likelihood of recommending the provider, level of value perceived, business value, ability to meet expectations, deployment speed, ROI, TCO and innovation).
Solution scoring is based on analysis of individual vendor capability, including in-depth tech reviews, a highly detailed Spend Matters RFI, and live demonstrations and Q&A by the Spend Matters team. The Customer Value score stems from aggregated direct customer input (survey based).
While Spend Matters does not recommend that existing and potential customers of providers use technology and customer scoring alone to shortlist or evaluate technology providers, the insight, along with SolutionMap’s persona-based ratings, provides a point-in-time perspective that may be useful as either a starting point in an evaluation or a contributing factor to a formal software selection process.
More detailed information on comparative technology subcategory-level scoring can be found in individual Spend Matters PRO SolutionMap Vendor Analyses (publishing in April 2017). Spend Matters reserves its most granular level of scoring and analysis for its practitioner advisory clients, and we invite procurement organizations to contact us for more information.
No two procurement or finance organizations are alike. Each has its own persona that reflects not only its own value proposition and engagement approach but also the stakeholders it serves — and its supply base. The same principle holds true of procure-to-pay (P2P) application providers. Each has a persona (or more than persona) that reflects its value proposition, solution strategy and targeted customer segments. Therefore, companies should seek providers whose personas best align to theirs. In other words, there is no “magic” solution provider, and finding the right fit is critical, because a P2P application represents the main interface for most of procurement’s internal customers — and a common face to suppliers, as well.
To that end, we are excited to break down our approach to Spend Matters SolutionMapTM, a comparative analytical framework for practitioners to evaluate relevant solutions to meet their procurement needs. Our SolutionMap initiative depicts vendor rankings based on specific buyer personas to reflect the unique value proposition, solution strategy and customer segments served by a vendor. Participating vendors are scored both on their solution as well as on customer value, based on in-depth tech reviews (including live demos) by the Spend Matters analyst team and aggregated direct customer input from surveys. Each SolutionMap is updated quarterly rather than in 12-month (or longer) cycles, to accurately reflect the pace of market developments.
As part of our Spend Matters SolutionMap vendor comparison ranking, for procure-to-pay solutions (publishing in the coming days, with subsequent quarterly updates), the Spend Matters analyst team has dedicated considerable time to developing the unique organizational “personas” that we’ve most often seen in our decades of experience working with procurement organizations. We have used these personas to weight the requirements that we used in solution scoring, which includes customer satisfaction scoring by solution customers.
This particular SolutionMap charts a select group of invoice-to-pay (I2P) solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap report, also featuring e-procurement solution providers and procure-to-pay suites (coming next week).
What You Need to Know About SolutionMap
Participating vendors are scored both on Solution Capability and on Customer Value.
SolutionMap features vendor rankings based on common procurement organization “personas.”
The SolutionMap will be updated quarterly to actively reflect market developments
SolutionMap graphics and high-level summaries are available for free and we encourage you to re-post and share them with your network
If interested in digging deeper into the back-end data and listings of typical user requirements, vendor selection tips and background on the vendor rankings, subscribe to Spend Matters PRO for full access.
The Invoice-to-Pay SolutionMap – Q2 2017
Access the additional 5 personas (including an all-in-one PDF), a summary of their key criteria and more detailed info in the full article.
This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of invoice-to-pay solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap report series, also featuring invoice-to-pay solution providers and procure-to-pay suites.
Spend Matters tracks more than 50 procure-to-pay solution providers. This analysis features many of the largest invoice-to-pay providers, specifically Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, Invocus, Pool4Tool, SAP Ariba, Taulia, Tradeshift and Vroozi. We will be adding additional providers for the Q3 and Q4 2017 updates (as well as in 2018 and beyond).
SolutionMap ratings provide comparative rankings and insight into how each provider scored from a solution and customer value perspective. It provides a breakdown of solution scoring for each vendor on the category level (e.g., invoice structure/capture, invoice collaboration and compliance, additional invoicing technology components, financing/payment, supplier network, configurability, technology/architecture and services). It also provides insight into how customers scored invoice-to-pay vendors (e.g., likelihood of recommending the provider, level of value perceived, business value, ability to meet expectations, deployment speed, ROI, TCO and innovation).
Solution scoring is based on analysis of individual vendor capability, including in-depth tech reviews, a highly detailed Spend Matters RFI, and live demonstrations and Q&A by the Spend Matters team. The Customer Value score stems from aggregated direct customer input (survey based).
No two accounts payable, finance or shared services organizations are alike (or procurement departments, for that matter). Each has its own persona that reflects not only its own value proposition and engagement approach but also the stakeholders it serves — and its supply base. The same principle holds true of procure-to-pay (P2P) application providers. Each has a persona that reflects its value proposition, solution strategy and targeted customer segments. Therefore, finance and procurement organizations should seek providers whose personas best align to theirs. In other words, there is no “magic” solution provider, and finding the right fit is critical, because a P2P application represents the main interface for most of procurement’s internal customers.
To that end, we are excited to preview our approach to Spend Matters SolutionMapTM, a comparative analytical framework for practitioners to evaluate relevant solutions to meet their accounts payable, working capital and procurement needs. Our SolutionMap initiative depicts vendor rankings based on specific buyer personas to reflect the unique value proposition, solution strategy and customer segments served by a vendor. Participating vendors are scored both on their solution as well as on customer value, based on in-depth tech reviews (including live demos) by the Spend Matters analyst team and aggregated direct customer input from surveys. Each SolutionMap is updated quarterly rather than in 12-month (or longer) cycles, to accurately reflect the pace of market developments.
As part of our Spend Matters SolutionMap vendor comparison ranking for invoice-to-pay and procure-to-pay solutions (publishing next week, with subsequent quarterly updates), the Spend Matters analyst team has dedicated considerable time to developing the unique organizational “personas” that we’ve most often seen in our decades of experience working with procurement organizations. We have used these personas to weight the requirements that we used in solution scoring, which includes customer satisfaction scoring by solution customers. Having collected feedback from hundreds of invoice-to-pay users, vendors and consultants in recent months as part of our SolutionMap research, we see these personas as useful starting points for procurement organizations to classify themselves before looking at solution rankings of providers in the market.
This Spend Matters PRO analysis shares six of the most common customer personas in invoice-to-pay buying needs. Aimed at practitioners as well as vendors and the consultants advising them, this research brief will be helpful to drive the type of “mass customization” of procure-to-pay solutions needed to meet specific organizational needs.
Below, we present our six personas for invoice-to-pay. For each, we include: full definitions, typical organizational priorities (based on each persona), functional/solution and customer value emphasis and recommended selection processes. Comparative vendor rankings will be published for each persona next week on Spend Matters (and updated quarterly).
Behold, Spend Matters’ very first SolutionMap℠. This particular SolutionMap charts a select group of e-procurement solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap report, also featuring invoice-to-pay solution providers and procure-to-pay suites.
What You Need to Know About SolutionMap
Participating vendors are scored both on Solution Capability and on Customer Value.
SolutionMap features vendor rankings based on common procurement organization “personas.”
The SolutionMap will be updated quarterly to actively reflect market developments
SolutionMap graphics and high-level summaries are freely available and we encourage you to re-post and share them with your network
If interested in digging deeper into the back-end data and listings of typical user requirements, vendor selection tips and background on the vendor rankings, subscribe to Spend Matters PRO for full access.
The E-Procurement SolutionMap – Q2 2017
Access the additional 5 personas (including an all-6-in-one PDF), a summary of their key criteria and more detailed info in the full article.
