We receive requests by the score
A thousand items, sometimes more
It’s up to you what you use ’em for
We just process those POs …

Eyvo was founded in 2012 to develop a Procurement solution that worked. One that people would use because it mimicked and enabled the process they did every day and made it easier to use the system than bypass it. The founders’ goal, to use the 30 years of experience they had at the time (now 40 years) to build a SaaS system that enabled everyone involved in Procurement.

They did this by starting with they processes they did on a daily basis, defining the processes that would make it easy for the organizational consumers (the requesters) to find what they need it and for them to get real-time updates into what it was, documenting the processes that management used for approvals, and designing a system that would support all three. They focussed on designing it to be highly configurable to account for the small variances in processes between organizations (and we mean small, as we’ve noted a few times, the fundamentals of Procurement haven’t changed since the first manual was published back in 1887 (Handbook of Railway Supplies). Then they focussed on working with their first few customers, and the buyers in particular, to make sure that the system worked for the customers, and the buyers (approvers, and requesters) in particular.

And they also did this by picking their niche … the intersection of primary industries — market size — S2P modular focus that they saw as the intersection between the greatest market need and their expertise. In particular, they choose to focus on service (particularly legal, finance, and insurance related) and hospitality (restaurant, hotel, and spa/retreat chains). And, most importantly, to build a unique brand of augmented Procurement solution with built-in Inventory and Asset Management as well as unique capabilities and configurations for typical procurement departments in those industries.

The platform is a modern cloud-hosted multi-tenant Procurement Spend Management application with automated workflow, user and role-based security, multi-currency support, multi-lingual support for every language supported by Google Translate, and extensive rules-based configuration capability. A platform that supports full request intake, freeform / catalog / RFX procurement, full invoice / receiving / 3-way match / payment management, inventory management (including fulfillment from inventory), asset management (for assets), carbon tracking, supplier onboarding and information / insurance / compliance (& diversity) management, and deep reporting (with a new analytics module slated for Q4). It’s everything the clients in their target industries need. And that’s the point.

So what does it do? Let’s take it piece-by-piece.

Request (Intake) Portal

One of the core modules is the request portal which provides a (multi-tab) one screen interface for organizational employees to make the purchasing requests they need quickly and easily and without any hassle. (Intake, no third-party solution with nothing under the kimono required!) Through this portal, they can also access a complete list of their requests and see exactly where the request is in the procurement process, or go direct to a past request with the request number.

On the main request screen, the user can see the current status (likely “in process”), and the auto-populated request number, approval status (required), delivery name, address, method, account, etc. The user just has to add their items (from a catalog, punch-out, upload file, “basket”, “recipe” or free-form) and submit. If anything needs to be modified from the defaults, then the user can click over to the distribution tab, terms & conditions tab, and attached documents. On the main tab, they can bring up the budget assigned to them, or, if they have budgets per category, the budget for the category they are assigning the requisition to.

Catalog search is as simple as an online storefront search. Simply enter the search terms and all of the relevant items are returned. These can be quickly filtered by category and supplier. When it comes to punch-out catalogs, it’s simply a matter of selecting the supplier, popping over to the site, adding the product to the cart, and pushing it back, as with any other e-Procurement system.

If a requester wants to buy items across more than one category, they can individually assign each item to a (non-default) category. And the approval rules and chains will update depending on what products are selected, what suppliers are selected, and what the total request amount is.

If the organization typically orders sets of items together, such as suite furnishings for a hotel, or a new employee starter kit for a services firm, these can be pre-defined and the selection thereof will populate a request with all appropriate items. If the client is in hospitality and contains a restaurant, the platform also supports recipe management, which is not just a basket of items, but also calculates how much is needed of each item for a certain number of recipes and specifying the recipe and forecasted order volume populates a purchase order accordingly.

Request Approvals

Approvals are easy and can be done using the preferred method of the approver. They can approve natively in the platform (if they log in for other reasons), through an app (if they have a modern phone and like apps), or through email through a single click (which takes them to a web-based approval screen where they can enter any notes or simply send off the orders to the suppliers).

Request Management

Requests can be accessed and processed on a request-by-request basis at any time, they can be changed to be fulfilled from inventory, and batched together to be fulfilled through an RFX, PO to a preferred supplier, and then from inventory when the RFX or batch PO is complete.

Receiving, Fulfillment, Inventory, and Asset Management

When goods are received, they buyer can quickly enter the quantity of goods received, as well as any that are rejected, and then the goods can be entered into inventory and assigned an inventory location or sent direct to the buyer. If the good is considered an asset (such as an expensive laptop that the organization wants to track), each individual good can have identifying information tracked and be associated with the organizational employee it is assigned to.

If a request is for an item that is inventory, then the request can be fulfilled from inventory, and a buyer can override the catalog request to fulfill from inventory. If an item is considered an asset, it can be booked as an asset the minute that the inventory arrives and depreciation, which the system also tracks, can start from the data of acquisition or the date of assignment to a user.

Invoice Management

Invoices can come in as a PO flip through the vendor portal (which we’ll discuss later) or through e-mail. Invoices that come in through e-mail are auto-parsed through AI (to the extent possible with high-confidence) and presented to a designated user for verification (and, if necessary, completion) and approval before it is entered into the system.

Once an invoice is received, it is three-way matched to the goods receipt and purchase order before it goes into the payment queue, and as soon as it is accessed by an accounts payable clerk, they can bring up the 3-way match to identify any discrepancies that may need resolution before payment. The 3-way match contains all of the relevant information on a line-item basis: units ordered, purchase order amount, units received, invoiced amount, un-invoiced amount, amount paid to date (if any partial payments were made), and unpaid amount to date.

Carbon Tracking

Given that carbon management is becoming top of mind at many companies, and top of priority at any that need to do carbon reporting, Eyvo decided to build it in at a line-item level so that a requester can see the carbon impact of every requisition from the time of requisition and buyers can see it at the time of approval and Purchase Order generation, invoice receipt, and then roll it up by the category and by time period so that the organization can produce reports by time period by category, and then roll those up across the organization.

RFQs: Requests for Quotes

RFQs are very straight forward. The buyer selects the items of interest it, the platform suggests suppliers, the buyer cherry picks the ones she wants, and can even invite potential new suppliers with a custom URL (and, if the supplier responds, this will kick off an onboarding process where the supplier will be accepted or rejected). Suppliers can respond positively simply by specifying the unit price, lead time, and, if allowed, quantity they can supply. (Or they can give the buyer permission to record a response on their behalf and the buyer can do so and the system will explicitly record that the buyer recorded on the supplier’s behalf for audit purposes.) They can also decline (and provide a reason), and if they don’t respond in the requested timeline, the buyer can record the non-response (as statistics are kept on supplier response rate to help a buyer decide whether or not they should invite a supplier to an RFQ in the future).

When all the bids are in, or time is up, the buyer can see a list of bids side by side and do a full award or partial award to each supplier and then generate the purchase orders.

Also, the platform can also publish open RFQs to a buyer portal that can be accessed publicly by any current or potential supplier that can bid, if they are an existing onboarded supplier, or express interest and register for onboarding, if a new supplier.

Dashboard

The entry point to the application is a widget-based dashboard that can be custom configured from dozens of pre-built widgets that provide report-based insights into different parts of the application (requests, POs, invoices, inventory, assets, carbon, and spend, among others) with built-in filters that allow users to drill down to get the insights they need. (And some widgets can be customized to have a transaction level view.)

The Buy Side

The best part of the platform is the integration — it’s one seamlessly integrated application experience for the buyer that makes it easy for the buyer to walk up and down the process from any point. In a requisition, they can approve it, generate the purchase orders (once approved) or kick off an RFQ. They can then jump into the purchase order, see the status, and if there are any receipts or invoices associated with it, jump into those. Once in the invoice, they can bring up the 3-way match and, if all is A-OK, kick off a payment. If the supplier submits an e-mail invoice, the system auto-extracts as much data as possible (and sometimes all of it if the invoice format is known), and once they approve the extraction, they can jump into any associated good receipts or the purchase order, and walk all the way back to the source requisition if needed.

From a supplier, they can see all associated RFQ events, orders, and invoices and walk into those, or access their complete profile with profile data, insurance, compliance, and diversity data. And, of course, they can get to that supplier profile from any associated artifact. Also, the ability to jump from an invoice to receipt to inventory management helps the buyers get a grip on inventory, as well as identify any goods as assets and start tracking them accordingly. It really fits the needs of the mid-sized service and hospitality industries they go after with multiple locations that need to do regular, tactical, ordering, track the inventory, and make sure it is appropriately utilized while allowing a central buy desk to group requisitions, identify common needs, and do procurement for fulfillment from central inventory.

Configuration

All of the “data” and “codes” are fully customizable to the client organization. This includes, but is not limited to:

• account code structures
• category code structures
• currencies and conversions
• delivery points
• invoice points
• items
• documents
• supplier fields
• standard terms and conditions
• punchouts
• etc.

and the majority of this data can be modified by the end client at any time. (Except for account code structures and category code structures of course, since that drives the applications and the integrations, although the individual codes can be updated at any time.)

Onboarding

Each potential vendor is provided with a unique URL where they are walked through a customized onboarding workflow that collects the basic supplier information, contact details, financial details, insurance details, compliance details, and necessary documents. Optionally, if desired by the buyer, the supplier can also specify categories, items, and their associated carbon footprints. This is customized for each client, and can be further customized based on the categories the supplier is expected to supply and/or indicates they wish to supply.

Vendor Portal

Once a vendor is onboarded, they have access to the vendor portal where they can

• maintain their information (and the updates go into an approval queue in the suppliers section of the application for the buyer to accept or reject)
• maintain their catalog (and item updates, including prices, also go into an approval queue)
• access, and respond to, current open RFQs
• access, and review, their past RFQ responses (whether or not successful)
• maintain all of their documents (and they will receive auto-reminders when necessary insurance or compliance documents need to be updated)
• can access their purchase orders, and fulfill them
• can create invoices, either as PO flips or PDF uploads
• can track invoice status

Like the buyer application, it is a seamlessly integrated experience that is very easy to use (and, like the onboarding process, it can be customized by client on implementation) and minimizes the amount of time and effort needed by the supplier. (A non-strategic non-critical commodity goods supplier shouldn’t need to go through 27 steps to be onboarded or fulfill an order.)

Summary

Eyvo is, as we stated, a procurement spend management solution for the mid-sized service and hospitality industries that delivers what it claims — an end to end procurement and inventory management solution that meets all of the needs of a typical organization in this industry niche for all of the employees impacted by Procurement — requesters/receivers, buyers, managers, and vendors — where each has their own customized portal view that is tailored to their needs. And while there are no fancy visuals of Matt with his approved request, Gen-AI chatbots that mistake your request for a new iphone for an old rotary wired landline phone shaped like an apple when you ask for an apple phone, and no animated visuals of where the request is in the process, there is something a lot of new-generation intake-based procurement apps lack — actual Procurement functionality tailored to your needs that gets the job done quickly and easily so you can get in, get it done, and get out — with the financials, auditing, and reporting that makes accounting, compliance, and management happy too.

So if you are a mid-sized service or hospitality organization looking for a real Procurement solution, be sure to add Eyvo to your short-list. Even if they aren’t the perfect fit, we guarantee that just the understanding that you gain of what a real Procurement solution does will be worth your time.

It ain’t no trick to get done quick
If you do your work with a solution hand-picked
Like Eyvo. Like Eyvo. Like Eyvo. Like Eyvo.
Your Procurement done on time!