As promised in our last installment (Part 11), where we outlined the baseline capabilities that are needed for a solution to qualify as a modern spend analysis solution, here are some vendors that you can consider that meet most of the requirements. Note that, where spend analysis is concerned, some companies actually use two solutions, one as part of the platform ecosystem that they use that serves as the centralized master data store for spend analysis with the central “cube” and pre-configured reports for management, and a standalone best-of-breed powerhouse tool for free-form what-if analytics, where the power analysts can slice, dice, and reconfigure the data as they wish without impacting anyone else in the organization. Thus, it’s okay to choose two different, complementary, solutions if that meets your needs better than one (or keeps your users happy and using a system vs. trying to bypass it).

Note that, as with the list of e-Procurement Vendors we provided in Part 7, this list is in no-way complete (as no analyst is aware of every company), is only valid as of the date of posting (as companies sometimes go out of business and acquisitions happen all of the time in our space), and does not include generic business intelligence or analytic applications offered by providers without any specialization in spend analysis. (Nor does it include vendors that are only focussed on one vertical. While a couple of vendors below have a primary vertical, our understanding is that they can support other, related, verticals and have some generic elements of spend analysis.)

Also note that, and we want to be very clear here, not all vendors are equal, and we’d venture to say that NONE of the following are equal. The companies listed below are of all sizes (very small to very large, relative to vendor sizes in our space), cover the baselines differently (in terms of percentage of features offered, how deep those features are, how integrated analytics is [or can be] with other modules, and how customized the solution can be for an organization or the vertical in which it plays), offer different additional features, have different types of service offerings (backed up by different expertise), focus on different company sizes, and focus on different ecosystems (such as plugging into other platforms/ecosystems, serving as the Source-to-Pay master data repository or controller, offering a plug-and-play model for a larger, or different, ecosystem) etc.

Do your research, and reach out to an expert for help if you need it in compiling a starting short list of relevant, comparable, vendors for your organization and its specific needs. For many of these vendors, good starting points can again be found in the Sourcing Innovation archives, Spend Matters Pro, and Gartner Cool Vendor write-ups if any of these sources has a write-up on the vendor.

And, again, note that if we say Source-to-Pay, it means that the vendor offers modules that also cover baseline capability across most of Sourcing, Supplier/Vendor Management, Contract Management, e-Procurement, and/or e-Invoicing/Accounts Payable/Invoice-to-Pay. As to whether or not SI would consider those modules as meeting the majority of baseline functional requirements, you will have to (wait for and) check the starting vendor lists in those areas.

Onwards to Part 13!