When you’re first effort was essentially a duo (Trading Partners), your next a quartet (MarketMaker4), what comes next? A symphony! And that’s exactly what the founders of Simfoni are trying to create. After creating two successful Procurement companies, including Trading Partners (a former e-Auction leader) and MarketMaker4 (acquired by Xchanging), the founders of Simfoni are using their experience to try and create the perfect Procurement-as-a-Service (PaaS) for end-user organizations of various levels of maturity and consulting organizations a like. Are they succeeding? Time will tell, but they are already being used, and promoted, by PWC and Deloitte (among the largest global consulting organizations), so they’re going somewhere. Where? Time will tell, but for now, we’ll give you a brief introduction.

Founded in 2015, Simfoni is a global solutions provider and solutions integrator based out of the UK and the UAE (and with an office in Australia) that combines both its own technology, it’s services, and third-party capabilities (where relevant) to bring savings and benefits to their customers. It characterizes itself as a “mobile-first” solution provider, and all of its initial applications are built around, and embrace, the mobile platform. Even it’s analytics offering is designed so the reports look good on an iPad.

The Simfoni solution consists of four main options:

• Virtuosi
• PocketBuyer Mobile
• PocketBuyer Desktop
• iOS Assessment App

Virtuosi

Virtuoisi is Simfoni’s analytics platform. Based on Microsoft BI and augmented with “roll-your-own” customized capabilities, the Virtuosi platform is custom configured for each client organization to give Procurement, Finance, Risk Management and management teams a real-time perspective on sourcing, spend, procurement and risk related performance and opportunity. It can integrate with multiple data sources and classify the data in real time for exploration through the front-end, which can be configured by Simfoni to report on whatever data the organization needs to see in whatever way it needs to see it. This is a great benefit to the platform, but could also be a limitation to an organization that wants to roll-their-own.

PocketBuyer Mobile

PocketBuyer Mobile is an app that allows the management of all low value (tail) spend in one place, whether it originates through requisitions, travel, or daily operational management. Organizational personnel on the go can use this to request whatever they need — ground transportation (car services), a new laptop, parts for the production line they are inspecting, the office supplies order they forgot to put in before they left, and literally anything else they need — when they need it. It’s intuitive and quick to use. It’s a great tail spend tool, but missing a powerful punch for larger buys.

PocketBuyer Desktop

This is where PocketBuyer Desktop should come in. However, right now this is the desktop version of the PocketBuyer application where a user can make the same requests through a web browser that they would make through the app. Literally a big screen version, the application is just as easy to use, with the major difference being that instead of taking a picture of what you need and attaching it to a request, you attach an image file. Now, the recent acquisition of PurchasingPlatform.com could change this and give Simfoni the solid P2P foundational capability they need, but, again, time will tell.

iOS Assessment App

Simfoni’s IOS aplication is native tablet “app” that provides a procurement maturity assessment and category management tool to help consultants help their client organizations identify profit improvement strategies that can also be used by internal procurement organizations with a centralized and/or center of excellence (CoE) driven model that acts as a services provider to the business.

The app encodes a detailed multi-criteria assessment that assesses an organization’s maturity on the dimensions of strategy and rating, structure and capability, category management, sourcing, contract management, purchase to pay, vendor & risk management, warehouse, IT infrastructure, spend management and analysis. It includes pre-defined outputs/answers that represent the scale of maturity against each criteria as entered, and all the consultant (or other user) has to do is select the right one for each criteria and when all is said and done, the app will automatically compute, objectively, the maturity of the organization. Moreover, the assessment is aligned with the SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference). It may not be perfect, but it certainly gives a solid, objective, assessment of where an organization is.

In addition, Simfoni, which does have ties to other technology and consulting providers as outlined above, has its own team of internal sourcing and procurement experts that enables it to take on the services portion of engagements as well. It’s a next generation PaaS offering which might just be the right choice for many emerging Procurement organizations. For a much deeper dive into, and discussion of, Simfoni, check out the doctor and the prophet‘s upcoming in-depth series over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required].