Procurement functions are increasingly tasked with managing and optimizing what are sometimes conflicting objectives in the supply base, including cost reduction, new product/market innovations and reduced risk. As the complexity of supply is increasing for most organizations, a large part of all B2B spend happens without appropriate governance and oversight. Without this, companies are overspending by an average of 20-25% on goods and services needed to run and grow their businesses. Maximum spend discipline comes from having iron-clad purchasing policies and practices across the business and tied to real-time analytics to know when and where to optimize. Learn to tackle these issues in a webinar from Spend Matters and Data Intensity. Register here.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap Insider release note provides insight into the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release for Source-to-Pay, reviewing the process that we followed for this quarter’s release.
The providers in the Q2 2019 Source-to-Pay SolutionMap include Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua and SynerTrade. All of these providers were required to participate in SolutionMap for each underlying module, as well. These individual areas include Sourcing, Spend and Procurement Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management & Risk, Contract Lifecycle Management, E-Procurement and Invoice-to-Pay. All of these providers are also included in the individual Strategic Procurement Technologies (SPT) and Procure-to-Pay (P2P) suite views.
The five providers above have updated their RFIs and received updated scoring following the submission and demonstration of new and updated capabilities based on production releases of their platform. (Non-GA capabilities are not considered in SolutionMap scoring.)
SAP Ariba and Zycus did not update their scoring and, as a result, had their scores adjusted based on a common shift factor (that preserves positional integrity relative to peers) and any platform updates, or lack thereof, that the analysts have received since the last time the RFIs were filled out. These providers requested a short-term delay because of the intensive nature of the expanded RFI (with nearly 800 requirements for Source-to-Pay), but we expect them to participate in upcoming 2019 releases.
The Source-to-Pay customer data set is composed of a subset of the 792 individual organization references included in the overall SolutionMap scoring as of Q2 2019*.
This SolutionMap Insider research note provides insight into the nature of the expanded RFI, methodology, customer references and additional changes in the Q2 2019 SolutionMap release.
*Customers using more than one module that a vendor provides can opt to fill out a single survey within each individual suite area (e.g., a customer using two modules for P2P and four modules for SPT would need to fill out only two surveys).
No two businesses are alike. Each one has their own goals, internal policies and procedures. At Amazon Business we obsess around the differences in our customers, and how we can best support their internal procurement, reconciliation and payment teams to streamline their procure-to-pay processes. To do this, Amazon Business is helping innovate on behalf of its customers by offering a customizable invoicing payment method for businesses of all sizes and industries — Pay by Invoice.
Pay by Invoice allows eligible customers the option to buy now and pay later with payment terms and a purchasing line offered on Amazon Business.
Amazon Business believes a trusted invoicing experience enables worry-free purchasing — and we do this by making invoicing configurable, accessible and dependable for customers. Pay by Invoice provides Amazon Business customers access to millions of suppliers, with the convenience of using a single configurable invoicing solution to purchase. The vision of Pay by Invoice was to put businesses back in the driver’s seat. No need to change internal policies to work with a supplier or have separate negotiated terms with each individual supplier. With Pay by Invoice, the customer chooses what works for them.
Imagine walking into a car dealership and the first question the salesperson asks you is, “How much do you want to overpay?” It’s a ridiculous question, right? No one wants to pay more for a product than they absolutely have to. Yet, this is exactly what too many corporate buyers unwittingly do, every day.
While most procurement managers would likely concede that there was “room for improvement” in their organizations’ MRO spending execution, few have the visibility and analytics capability necessary to accurately measure what their performance level truly is. If they did, my guess is they would be shocked at how often they overpaid for their indirect materials.
Find out what happened when EqualLevel deployed AI in part of its e-procurement solution to find the best prices.
It is one of the few source-to-pay suite vendors on the market that can offer at least adequate functional support across all six modular areas that Spend Matters tracks for S2P using only its internally developed capabilities. This stands in contrast to several of its biggest competitors, which have to varying degrees of success acquired and integrated best-in-class vendors or other suites to bolster their own capabilities.
And while Zycus cannot today claim its technology runs its suite of applications on a single data model, more than 95% of the solution is unified, and when compared against the market, it generally presents broad-based and out-of-the-box capability. Its solutions not only provide strong baseline (sometimes above-the-benchmark) functionality but they come from a single provider that is responsible for making it all work together.
This Spend Matters SolutionMap analysis examines Zycus’ solutions by modular and suite view to help interested parties understand the best components that make up the vendor’s end-to-end offering. It provides insight into which areas Zycus is strong in (and where it lags), how competitive individual modules are compared with best-in-class alternatives, and how combinations in the form of procure-to-pay (P2P), strategic procurement technology (SPT) and source-to-pay (S2P) suites stack up in comparison to Zycus’ broader peer group, including Coupa, Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Ivalua and SynerTrade.
For this analysis, our report uses the aggregate results of nine SolutionMaps from Q4 2018 (the most recent in our quarterly update cycle), comparing a total of 58 solution providers across more than 600 granular functional benchmarks, which are aggregated into more manageable, tiered buckets for the purpose of this analysis. (Those procurement organizations leveraging SolutionMap for a software selection process gain insight into comparative performance at a significantly more granular level of detail that maps business requirements to functional performance.) The SolutionMap analyst ratings, also called the Solution scoring, used in this analysis are based on more than 3,000 hours of live product demonstrations and validated vendor RFI responses.
In subsequent briefs exploring SynerTrade and others, we will take a similar approach to analyzing source-to-pay providers, breaking down where end-to-end platforms excel (or fall below the functional benchmark) on module and suite bases. Previously, we covered the suite performances of Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Ivalua and Coupa.
Spend analytics solutions often get passed over when it comes to claims of ROI. But spend analysis can provide just as much value as better-explored options like e-procurement or sourcing systems, sometimes providing ROI immediately after being turned on. Yet quick wins and short-term value are only the starting point.
To help procurement pull its head out of the past and begin to see (and plan for) the future, here are three outside-the-box areas where spend analysis can unlock new sources of long-term value.
Digital disruption remained a force in 2018 with brands such as Uber, Amazon and Lyft jockeying for position in the top 10 most-expensed vendors, according to Certify’s 2018 SpendSmart Year in Review Report on travel and expense filings. Companies and business travelers are increasingly choosing digital brands over traditional providers for everything from meals to office supplies to transportation, according to the Portland, Maine-based provider of spend management solutions. In compiling the Year in Review, Certify drew from more than 50 million expenses and $3.3 billion in expense transactions across its North American customer base.
Editor’s note: This “What Makes It Great” column is normally reserved for SolutionMap Insider Subscribers, but SpendHQ has generously agreed to support access for readers who are not yet members.
Spend and procurement analytics solutions are fundamentally designed for business users rather than IT organizations — or should be. Why? Because procurement is their master.
But all too often, IT-led business intelligence initiatives — or spend analytics solutions built on the premise of BI-centric reports rather than a design-centric philosophy around procurement and category management needs — end up becoming the vehicle by which an organization looks at its spend and supplier data. The result? Some of the most salient potential insights go unfound.
SpendHQ, a solution built “by procurement and for procurement users,” takes a different approach entirely to the spend analytics process and the presentation of spend and category intelligence. This is reflected in what its customers have to say about its solution and how their experience compares to users of more traditional, BI-centric spend analytics.
As of December 2018, the Spend Matters SolutionMap contains functional and customer satisfaction benchmarks on more than 50 providers within the procurement technology landscape. But where does SpendHQ stand out most and help “set the bar” in spend analytics from a customer-ratings perspective, and why should this matter for procurement and finance organizations?
Let’s delve into the SolutionMap benchmark to find out where SpendHQ is great, sharing both customer anecdotes and ratings.
“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.
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Graham Kelly, PrimeRevenue’s chief revenue officer.
Gone are the days when CFOs created value solely by spending time on traditional finance activities. Today’s finance executives are involved in a range of strategy-related activities that help set their companies apart in the digital economy.
According to a recent McKinsey Global Survey, this includes setting overall corporate strategy, devising pricing plans and collaborating on digitization, analytics and talent-management initiatives.
Winning in all these areas requires technology that delivers a massive amount of connected data. But, how do you compile and use data constructively to deliver transformative results?
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from RiseNow Managing Partner Matt Stewart.
With an endless list of options in the procurement software space, how is it possible to choose between spend management solutions like Ariba, Basware, Coupa and Jaggaer? Should you even consider such options when your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is capable of handling basic spend management needs?
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely considered or are considering whether best-in-class source-to-pay (S2P)/procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions are worth your time, money and effort. You’ve probably wondered how the benefits compare between the solutions, whether one far exceeds another in ROI, what is best for your end users and suppliers, and if the rate of adoption is greater with one solution over another.
This story offers a few good places to start when determining whether your ERP provider or a best-in-class spend management solution is best for your organization.
Many of the most effective ways to curb maverick spend — like using e-procurement tools with approved supplier catalogs or better contract management tools integrated into the buying process — still have not been implemented by more than half of most organizations, a survey by The Hackett Group found. And it found that perceptions of the causes and solutions for maverick spend can vary depending on a worker’s role.
Procure-to-pay technology provider Basware used the research for its study, “Perception and Reality: A Report on Maverick Spend,” which examined the practice of making purchases outside the compliant procurement process. Maverick spending can take many forms, including purchases made outside a preferred channel or supplier, or those that do not follow contract terms and miss out on negotiated savings. Some of the rogue purchases happen because employees or their managers consider the transaction to be too small to matter.
Business spend management vendor Coupa announced Monday morning that it has acquired Hiperos, a provider of third-party risk management. Coupa bought Hiperos from Opus. Alacra and all other Opus assets were not part of the transaction. The move lets Coupa, which is based in San Mateo, California, add more supplier compliance and risk intelligence insight into spend transactions and put a greater focus on reducing third-party risk. Spend Matters will have updates on the breaking news and an analysis later today.
