Spend Matters is also developing a growing number of ‘Specialty’ market fits that focus on a specific purpose instead of the company size, which informs the Large, Mid or SME market fits. Whenever you open up a module and see ‘Market Fit ALL’, you have encountered such a specialty module. These include:
- Direct: Specific to the Sourcing module, direct solutions are designed for the upstream of supply chain processes, specifically direct materials sourcing and quality.
- Risk: Specific to the supplier management (SxM) module, risk solutions are designed for third-party supplier risk mitigation, compliance and governance.
- Optimization: Specific to the sourcing module, this market fit pertains to solutions that enable strategic supply change management and spend.
Specialty weightings by module
We emphasize the following Specialty weightings by module:
- Direct: For a Direct market fit solution’s core platform, we give most significance to core underlying technology and standards and integrations. We emphasize metric management and project management the least. The sourcing module-specific capabilities we emphasize are direct integrations, RFx modeling and creation and bill of materials (BoM), such as BoM integration with sourcing, and support for RFx creation and automation are essential functionalities of a Direct market fit solution. The least emphasized module-specific capabilities include sourcing services and contract/negotiation support because even though these features are nice to have, they are not key functionalities.
- Risk: For a Risk market fit solution, we emphasize core underlying technology and data management the most and de-emphasize market personalization and project management. For module-specific capabilities, we give most relevance to supplier risk monitoring and supplier performance management; customers want applications with complex support for supplier risk modeling, monitoring and mutation and supplier performance metrics and ratings. The SxM module-specific capabilities we de-emphasize include SxM knowledge management and issue/dispute management because support for risk management issue resolution and SxM best practices are optional features.
- Optimization: For an Optimization market fit solution’s core platform, we emphasize core underlying technology and RFx modeling and creation the most and project management the least. For the market fit’s module-specific capabilities, we emphasize optimization core and optimization constraint support, as sophisticated constraint analysis and foundations and modeling are essential features for an Optimization tool. We least emphasize supplier discovery and intelligence and contracting negotiations support.
Specialty modifier weightings
In addition to capability weightings, Spend Matters also uses modifiers that vary by market fit in order to account for factors such as price, geography and value beyond technology (VBT) to better account for the needs of particular markets. Each market fit also receives an overall weighting emphasis, meaning market-fit-level modifiers are applied more heavily (or not) based on the market use case.
Modifier weights of Specialty market fit modules vary depending on the specific functionalities essential to each:
- For Direct market fit solutions, price is weighted heavily, as customers are looking for cost-effective ways to manage direct materials sourcing. Geography has little relevance, and VBT has almost no modifying weight, as it is not relevant for direct sourcing solutions.
- The Risk market fit places emphasis on geography, due to a risk management solution’s focus on global-level compliance while de-emphasizing VBT and price modifiers.
- The Optimization market fit places most emphasis on price, while placing no emphasis on VBT or geography. This is because customers are seeking cost-effective optimization solutions that will improve their spend management. VBT and geography are not relevant factors for Optimization solutions.
