All Spend Matters intelligence is underpinned by SolutionMap, Spend Matters proprietary procurement technology dataset. SolutionMap data covers both new and established vendors, and two factors inform the comparisons made within the dataset: technical capability (gathered via a rigorous ‘Request for Information’ or RFI process) and customer ratings. Data is refreshed every 6-9 months.
However, a single view of the dataset isn’t nuanced enough. Companies differ. So do the solutions that fit them.
So, the Spend Matters analysts create benchmarks by averaging and weighting the analyst scoring AND by considering market-fit factors that represent different buyer types.
For example, the SME market fit needs a cheaper solution and accepts the less advanced capabilities that come with the lower price. So advanced functionalities feature less in the final score — or do not feature at all. What is featured are the functionalities that make the solution the best fit for a user’s context.
With your Insider membership, you can view any vendor participating in SolutionMap with several filtering options. As a starting point for users to find your best-fit vendor, Spend Matters has automatically applied ‘market fits’ based on the needs of many buyers in a specific market segment size:
- SME – Solutions for SMEs (revenues of <$100m/yr) and/or ‘point’ solutions that typically come with a lower cost and fewer functionalities, are quick to deploy and serve a single region. Learn what weightings are applied for this fit in greater detail.
- Mid – Solutions for upper mid-market (revenues of $100m – $1bn/yr) that typically have highly configurable functionality, are enabled with content (e.g., intelligence, templates) and can support multiple regions. Learn what weightings are applied for this market fit in greater detail.
- Large – Solutions for large, multinational enterprises (revenues >$1bn/yr) that typically have advanced functionality, complex deployment and global services and support. Learn what weightings are applied for this market fit in greater detail.
- Specialty — The specialty modules have a single market fit for All. Learn what weightings are applied for this market fit in greater detail.
The market fits are built considering key market factors — such as levels of functionality, price or geographic footprint.
Note that different market fits may apply to your organization based on your buying circumstances. For example, a large enterprise may be looking for an inexpensive, developing solution for a subset of users. In this case, it should search with the SME market fit. The market fit is intended as context to help you look for a fit-for-purpose solution.
This — along with the granular SolutionMap dataset on technological capabilities gathered from standard, well-defined scoring scales — allows buying organizations to compare ‘apples with apples.’
Elements of Insider market fits
Since your requirements are unique and include many factors other than the size of your organization, they will never exactly match a templated market fit. That is by design. The market fits are a starting point for a selection process, not a shortcut. The market fits signal to you that you can configure the data to meet your specific requirements.
What weightings can you refine to your needs? The SolutionMap market fits are configured using four overarching factors:
- Element relevance weighting. For each market fit, we set default weights that assess how relevant the 500+ requirements are to the given scenario. When it comes to Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), for example, we weigh the standard requirements for supplier portals less heavily than other rankings. Similarly, we make further adjustments to the weightings to account for how relevance differs between large enterprises and SME ones.
- Element maximum score. In addition to element relevance, we apply a maximum score in certain market fits. For the SME market fit, for example, we cap the score for some requirements at a 2 or a 3 because no SME really needs functionalities more advanced than that. In essence, we use this as a proxy for the extent of functionality that a buying organization may want relative to its maturity. If you are a mid-market organization at the beginning of a procurement transformation journey, you may not care about the ability to complete m-way matching beyond just invoices, purchase orders and goods receipts to include contracts, advanced shipping notifications or advanced scenarios; you just want three-way matching. So, we limit the max score for m-way matching in that market fit to account for three-way matching but include those higher scores in scenarios that require more advanced functionalities.
- Customer response question weighting. We do not modify customer scores, construct them ourselves or apply weights. We use a survey-driven approach that fully excludes the analysts. Note that we do not segment or weight specific customer types or overall scores differently; every customer is treated the same.
- Modifier scores. There are three additional modifiers we use to construct the rankings: price scores, geography scores and value beyond technology scores. Each is calculated using data provided by vendors, stemming directly from specific SolutionMap RFI elements or the customer survey.