Sourcing and Categories Content

Spend Matters has updated its free SolutionMap rankings for the Spring 2021 release, with more than half of vendors updating their customer reference data. SolutionMap now compares 75 procurement technology solutions across 13 categories, like Sourcing, AP Automation, Spend Analytics and Supplier Relationship Management & Risk.

SolutionMap is notable because of its depth of analyst assessments, quantity of real-life customer inputs and frequency of release (twice a year) to accurately reflect vendor updates at the speed of the market.

For this update, we’ve refreshed the customer scores as needed, but we paused the update to our analyst scores because we’re reworking our vast RFI.

Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including US electricity consumption, green steel and graphite anodes.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including coverage of a McKinsey report on European steel, the steady oil price, a seismic shift in the copper market and much more.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

For the buyers and category managers out there, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including analysis of the aftermath of the Suez Canal blockage, a strike at ATI, steel imports and more.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

Carnival Cruise Line Chief Procurement Officer Norbert Dean joins us for this month's Procurement in Practice interview, which gives procurement professionals insights into how major players in the market handle issues that affect all procurement practitioners. Today, Dean discusses procurement technology and explains why sourcing for a 24/7, constantly moving operation poses some unique sourcing challenges.

“The difference between this industry and others, is that people stay on board. So it’s rather like sourcing for a giant hotel in terms of the breadth of products and services required. That might be the combination of food and beverages, the medical items and equipment, and especially PPE right now, the consumables people use every day, the hotel goods or the cleaning products and services. And then you have to factor in the quarterly and annual necessities, like changing out the TVs and mattresses — it’s a year-round operation," he says. "... It’s a tricky business when it comes to delivery times for all goods and services; they must be on time, because when the ship leaves, it leaves."

Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including coverage of hot rolled coil prices, Europe's automotive sector and more.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

Coupa announced it has acquired Pana, a provider of travel booking technology and the second T&E provider that Coupa has landed in its last 14 months of heavy M&A activity.

The suite provider of solutions for business spend management (BSM) said in its earnings call last week that Pana gives Coupa more capabilities with typical travel bookings and that the company’s innovative thinking, people and culture were a good fit.

In its most recent federal 10-K filing with the SEC, Coupa said it “paid aggregate cash of approximately $48.5 million and issued 23,822 shares of our common stock” in the Pana deal. Coupa’s stock prices last week ranged from about $285 to $252 per share.

Click to read CEO Rob Bernshteyn’s thoughts on the deal.

For the buyers and category managers out there, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including coverage of steel production, oil prices, housing starts and more.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

SAP Fieldglass Assignment Management is a new solution that enables organizations in asset-intensive industries (like Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Utilities) to manage the execution and accounting of day-to-day plant maintenance work conducted by external workers, the provider said in a demo with Spend Matters. Read more about the benefits of tracking projects, workers, compliance and pay in near real time. And our analysts give their key takeaways from the demo.

For the buyers and category managers out there, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, including coverage of GFG Alliance, gold prices, the ups and down of oil and much more.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

Here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets, which this week includes coverage of oil prices, housing supply and rising shipping rates.

MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters.

Beeline, the global, contingent and extended workforce technology solution provider, announced a strategic product shift today. The company, which has been known for its core VMS solution for two decades, is now going to market as an extended workforce platform.