By now, you’ve probably heard the foreshocks of the latest vendor to enter the supply management space in North America, iValua. iValua is a ten-year old French software solutions company that has slowly built up a broad e-Sourcing and e-Procurement solution that covers most of the bases that I outlined in my post where I reminded you that it’s sourcing and procurement, in which I also reminded you that you don’t have your supply management bases covered unless you have a solution, or set of integrated solutions, that cover the basics.
In that classic post, I indicated that the basic cycle was the following:
- Spend Analysis
Analyze spend related data and find the best sourcing opportunities, - RFX
solicit an RFI, RFP, and/or RFQ and/or - e-Auction
initiate an e-Auction then - Decision Optimization
make the best award using available data and - Contract Management
start the contract management lifecycle. - Requisition
A requisition is created when a good or service is required and - Approval
if it is against the existing contract, it is approved - Purchase Order
and a purchase order is created off of the contract. - Goods Receipt
When the supplier delivers, a goods receipt is created and - Invoice
the invoice is recorded and - Reconciliation
the invoice is reconciled against the goods receipt and purchase order. - Payment
Payment is made after reconcilation - Tax Reclamation
and if VAT is reclaimable, filings are made - Spend Analysis
and after time has passed, the payments are analyzed to insure spend is on target.
With respect to this cycle, iValua has modules that cover the basics for just about every phase except for decision optimization and tax reclamation. In addition, the suite also has modules that address:
- Sourcing Process Management
which allows sourcing processes to be customized and managed as sourcing projects - Procurement Process Management
which allow you to define your own requisition, approval, and purchase order creation and delivery processes - Supplier Performance Management
which allows you to create surveys and track performance metrics - Budget and Expense Management
which allows you to create budgets by organizational unit and sub-unit and capture expense reports - Customization
which is an extensive administration module that allows branding, coloring, wording, dashboards, roles, permissions, security, and default processes to be configured
All-in-all, it is one of the broadest supply management suites in the market. In my next post, I’ll provide more details on some of the various modules.