marketdojo Opens the Dojo to Suppliers as Well

When we last checked in on MarketDojo with our posts on how you could walk your own way and plan your own path, they were a relatively new UK company that offered a basic e-Negotiation suite with category guidance. Not much, but when you consider you could:

  • try before you had to commit to a buy with their open sandpit,
  • pay per event, on your P-card and
  • see what suppliers see with toggle view

It was a good entry point for a mid-market Procurement organization that was stuck in the Procurement dark ages and unable to obtain budget for a modern suite (because the C-suite needed to have a guaranteed ROI).

While it was a good start, MarketDojo realized that is all it is — they needed that and more to conquer the mid-market, even in their native homeland. Once a lean, agile, over-tasked, and under-resourced mid-market Procurement organization gets their hand on a tool, they want to advance fast, learn faster, and apply it fast and furious — and they want to be as effective and efficient as possible.

For many companies, this means four things:

  • minimize data re-entry
  • minimize unnecessary supplier interaction
  • track relevant documents and sourcing artifacts
  • identify suppliers with potentially innovative capabilities

That is why MarketDojo has rolled out a full-featured supplier (information) management portal, called, obviously, SIMDojo and included innovation management in their primary offering (the InnovationDojo corner).

With their new SIMDojo offering, which can be used as part of the platform or standalone, which supports supplier self-identification and self-registration, buyers can create the appropriate questionnaires, have suppliers upload the appropriate documents, and lock supplier data (from updates). When suppliers change data, their profile is invalidated until reviewed by an appropriate sourcing professional, insuring only valid and validated suppliers can be included in sourcing events. The platform is simple to use on both sides, and some customers are buying it to augment other platforms they already have.

InnovationDojo is built on the RFX/Survey functionality in MarketDojo, but allows a buyer to issue innovation challenges, collect and score responses, include that information in RFPs, and track and manage innovation projects and responses separately. It’s basic, but it works quite well for the mid-market.

MarketDojo has also made functionality and usabiity enhancements to their platforms across the board, with template management in particular being noticeably improved. With few e-Sourcing companies left serving the mid-market, MarketDojo provides a solid offering, especially to those companies without (a modern) e-Sourcing solution that need to start quick, and keep it basic (to maximize efficiency and SUM [Spend Under Management]).