Technology Disrupters Content

Core e-sourcing has taken a bit of a hiatus as a standalone technology buying priority for many procurement organizations of late. If anything, basic solutions have been bundled in with broader spend analytics, supplier management or even full-suite deals, and solutions designed to tackle specialized categories or advanced sourcing have created a market niche unto themselves. Granted, a handful of lower-cost solution providers have continued to plod the market with their wares. And some have enjoyed solid growth, albeit from a tiny base.

GM announced earlier this week a $500 million investment in ridesharing company Lyft as part of a $1 billion fundraising round. The partnership entails joint development of a network of autonomous GM vehicles that can be summoned via the Lyft mobile app. GM’s move here has many lessons for procurement and supply chain organizations that we’ll discuss in future posts, but as an interesting side note, one of the providers linking into AppLink is Concur.

In two months, Amazon’s Prentis Wilson, vice president of Amazon Business, will give a keynote address at ISM and Spend Matters' first annual Global Procurement Technology Summit. We challenged Prentis to be as disruptive as possible with his thesis, and we think the topic of his chat will certainly raise some eyebrows — Amazon Business: This is the Future of Procurement.

Certainly you’ve heard of bitcoin. But do you know about blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin? If not, you should. We believe it has the potential to be one of the top technologies in the supply chain. Few have written about blockchain to date with the same level of analysis as bitcoin, but those who have been are singing blockchain’s praises. “Pivotal” and “potent,” as it’s been called, the technology could meet the growing demand for transparency in the supply chain.

In Part 1 of our series on procurement platforms, we started discussing various characteristics of platforms and gave some examples of these solutions, namely Concur (now a part of SAP). In this PRO research brief, we will analyze what Concur and its platform offers and how the provider brings the platform benefits to life. But how has Concur built its platform? And how, exactly, does the provider differentiate itself from all these other procurement platform “posers?” Read on! We will also discuss how procurement organizations can distinguish between actual platforms and those just using this powerful term as a sales tactic.

Have you noticed that more procurement solution providers lay claim to being “platform” providers these days? What is the difference between an app provider and a platform provider? And does it even matter to procurement or others in general? We think it does, and we’ll tell you why. In subsequent briefs, Spend Matters will continue to clarify and elaborate on the platform concept/model and its importance for procurement.