As a preamble, in today’s post we’re not going to discuss whether or not optimization is right for you because the answer is an unqualified “it is” because there does not exist a vertical that is unable to benefit from an appropriate optimization solution that supports the right model. If you are a 100M+ company, you should be using optimization. Maybe not on all categories, because you don’t source categories where the return doesn’t exceed the cost of the effort, but on the large and strategic ones.

Instead, as a follow-up to yesterday’s post, we are going to discuss whether or not Keelvar is right for you.

Right now, most of the companies that use optimization are in the high-end of the market, with a few leading companies at the high-end of the mid-market dabbling in it. Furthermore, most of the optimization solution vendors out there are focussing on this market. As a result, as per a previous post, most of the mid-market is not using optimization because they see it as too costly and too difficult. Seeing this, Keelvar decided that what was needed was a solution that was focussed entirely on the mid-market and, more specifically, at the lower end of the mid-market. That’s the solution they built.

This has advantages, in that they have a large market they can go after, and disadvantages in that the simplifications required to make the solution useable by that market limit the solution’s flexibility and power for large problems that require complex models and powerful solutions capabilities. But since the high end market already has good solutions, that’s okay. Given the different needs of the lower mid-market, the higher mid-market, and the global multi-nationals that need almost customized solutions, and the different needs of well-staffed and well-educated Supply Management organizations and poorly-staffed organizations that need to augment their solutions with a lot of services, there is still plenty of room in the market for a new entrant as even the six market segments just defined (3 tiers, without services and services required) aren’t adequately covered by the current players.

So if you’re in the lower-end of the mid-market and you’re ready to start optimizing your sourcing, you should head on over to Keelvar’s site and check them-out. The solution might just work for you, and with event pricing starting in the low five figures and unlimited annual licenses starting in the extremely low six figures, it won’t take long to see an ROI — especially since Keelvar makes optimization affordable on an event basis on categories as low as 500K to 1M and on an unlimited basis on categories as low as 100K to 250K (because if you have an unlimited license, why not use it on every event — it doesn’t take long for 10K savings to add up!).