SciQuest released the latest version of its spend automation suite this week. Last week, however, Jason Busch, Spend Matters founder and head of strategy, wrote about what the Spend Matters team expected and was hoping for in the 15.3 release in a recent article, "SciQuest Reverses Course – Taking Rising Stock of the 'Anti-Coupa.'" SciQuest has already done a lot in 2015, and the new release will likely give the provider a “boost” going into 2016, Jason said
SciQuest released its latest version of its spend automation suite today, something we have been anticipating here at Spend Matters for some time. The provider said the latest release offers new mobile capabilities, including a SciQuest Mobile App, and usability features that give procurement organizations extra insight into overall spend and supplier management.
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post by Michelle Perkins at SciQuest. With so much data going into your spend analysis, it can be difficult to know where you’re going. Make sense of it all then build your sourcing roadmap accordingly. Data analytics has been a hot topic this year, but is all the hype worth the business value it provides? In short, it can be, but you need to look at the right things. Luckily, there are spend analysis tools available to help make sense of all this information.
Spend Matters welcomes this guest post written by Mark Digman of SciQuest. I’m a “process, flow chart, build a plan and work the plan” type of person. This is not associated with marketing, which tends to be labeled or positioned as “creative types.” One of the things I like about the professionals in the procurement community is their pragmatic and often passionate approach. They drive efficiency and cost savings on behalf of their organizations. They have ideas of what they need to do – and they want to “get it done.”
Our next Ask the Expert webinar for Plus and PRO members is this Thursday, 9/12, from 10-10:30am Central. This week we feature lead analyst Thomas Kase with a presentation titled Sourcing Optimization is Easier than Ever: What's Next? Optimization has been a scary word in sourcing - many buyers are either afraid of it or have dismissed it, and even fewer understand it. Several solution providers throw the word around fairly loosely and others are far more rigorous. The bottom line is that sourcing optimization is easier than ever - ready to use for most organizations. But we're here to talk about the next level - the "end-to-end suite optimization" provider. Thomas will then take a special look at what the CombineNet offering can deliver at its new home, SciQuest before answering audience questions on that deal and more. PRO/Plus members, click on through to register.
Today we’re providing analysis specifically for SciQuest and CombineNet customers regarding the transaction (the recommendations might be useful to consultants who work with either firm and channel partners as well). The deal was just announced earlier this week, so don’t feel like you’re behind the customer or partner 8 ball in trying to make sense of it! Look for a list of specific action items to tick off as a current SciQuest or CombineNet customer post-acquisition -- and what to expect in the future.
After the market closed yesterday, SciQuest announced it was acquiring CombineNet. Today we will limit our PRO analysis to our initial take on the transaction from a market perspective, pending additional insight and briefings from the SciQuest and CombineNet teams and discussions with customers at the CombineNet Customer and Partner Conference taking place later in September (which both Jason Busch and Pierre Mitchell will be attending). While we will explore competitive and product implications of the announcement in separate PRO coverage, it is important to note that this announcement is likely to accelerate further moves in the market by competitors (e.g., Ariba/SAP and Oracle) to either get in or get out of the sourcing market – or simply give away functionality as part of broader deals. Plus and PRO members, click through for the latest in-depth coverage of the deal.
The supplier network world is heating up. And one could argue that it’s growing faster than either eProcurement or e-invoicing, all of the related services and capabilities that networks can provide: software-based onboarding and enablement for running campaigns analogous to CRM and marketing automation tools on the supply side, supplier management/enrollment services desks/teams, transaction management and document routing/translation, catalog and content management, intelligent routing/workflow/exception management for invoices, supplier search, supplier portals…the list goes on. Network providers such as Ariba, Hubwoo, OB10, Basware, IBX, Perfect, and Tradeshift are increasingly fighting for a piece of a fast-growing pie.
In my first post, I talked about the prohibitive cost of resisting change for public sector procurement departments. Since then, I’ve read a very interesting article that provides the hard numbers to fortify my comments. According to a report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government could save upwards of $12 billion annually by adopting procurement practices that are commonplace in the private sector. And that’s only the federal government – no mention of dollars being lost by hundreds upon hundreds of local government procurement offices.
Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Mark Digman, VP of product marketing and strategy at SciQuest. Be sure to join Spend Matters and SciQuest […]
For a company its size, SciQuest has been among the most acquisitive of all providers in the procurement and supply chain solution sector (including technology, […]
For a company that expects to generate $90 million of revenue in 2013, three acquisitions is a lot to take on, even over a period of 2+ years, especially when weaving disparate stand-alone assets into an integrated vision and procurement solutions suite. Compared to other solution vendors, SciQuest has expanded its suite with best-of-breed components through more non-organic development (i.e., not internally built) than any other provider in the market. Moreover, they continue to enhance its core set of solutions in the eProcurement area and roll out new ones in adjacent sectors, like e-invoicing and AP services.