Last week we noted that if you were stuck with an ERP, you do have options! Specifically, we noted that you could acquire a best-of-breed solution that runs on your ERP backbone to automate and enhance Procurement in ways that ERP never dreamed of (and will likely never aspire to) and extract the value that your smaller competitors, not locked into an ERP, are extracting with the big names in stand-alone best-of-breed Procurement, which, with the recent SAP acquisition of Ariba, now include relative newcomers (to this side of the Atlantic) like Coupa, iValua, and GEP (which was formerly Global eProcure and which acquired Enporion).
In addition to the traditional, known options of (CC-)Hubwoo and Capgemini’s IBX, you have a European player by the name of Wallmedien which has been around for fifteen (15) years, has over one hundred (100) customers (with dozens of big names including Johnson Controls, Continental Tire, Syngenta, Ford, Alstom, Bayer, BASF, and Alcoa), has offices on three continents, has enabled over sixty thousand (60K) suppliers globally, and, most importantly, has rolled out their solution in twenty-six (26) languages across forty-five (45) countries! In the sourcing and procurement world, this last feat is rare and somewhat astounding when you consider most of the smaller companies still haven’t hit double digits in the language metric.
Wallmedien has a powerful Procurement Automation Suite that includes all of the standard features in a new, consumer-inspired, easy-to-use cart-based UI which allows for easy catalog-based purchasing (whether it be through EDI, cXML, or a custom database), punch-out to a supplier’s online store, and services procurement as well as straight forward RFX capability which can be used with our without their private supplier network portal. Their portal is a standard web-based supplier interface that allows for easy supplier communication and document exchange. And it all runs seamlessly on top of SAP, with or without SAP SRM, and Oracle (although most of their customers are currently SAP, as that is the ERP platform they cut their teeth on).
And like BravoSolution, which is rapidly becoming a global best-of-breed leader in (e-)Sourcing, especially now that IBM has scooped up Emptoris, Wallmedien backs all this up with an extensive suite of end-to-end services that cover implementation, integration, hosting, catalog and application management, benchmarking, and, most importantly, a wide-range of consulting services including process improvement, technical backbone improvement, sourcing integration, and getting the most from your SAP (SRM) (or Oracle) ERP implementation.
And the new North American team of Wallmedien consists of the market leaders who previously brought you ground-breaking sourcing and procurement innovation at GE, TPN Register, B2EMarkets, VerticalNet, and Vinimaya … just to name a few. This company is going to become a force to be reckoned with in the global procurement space, especially since their platform works just as well if you don’t have SAP and they have pretty much been-there, done-that where all of the international (e-)procurement headaches are concerned. Keep your eye on ’em. On this side of the ocean, they’re movin’ on up.