Category Archives: Market Intelligence

Coupa Enters into a Share Purchase Agreement for Majority Ownership of Trade Extensions

SI typically does not do analyze of acquisitions and, unlike it’s brethren, does not do public analysis of transactions until the deal is done because it ain’t over until the fat lady sings, or in silicon valley, it ain’t over until the money hits the bank. And even though the chances of this deal not completing are, in the doctor‘s view, extremely small, he’s still going to withhold his analysis until the deal is done.

That being said, there are huge implications for both parties once the deal completes, and just like you should be doing risk mitigation when a potential disruption event is identified in your supply chain, you should be doing a cost/benefit advantage/disadvantage analysis as soon as a large acquisition that impacts your primary platform is announced. Every acquisition brings with it opportunities, but if an organization is highly resistant to change or locked into an existing platform or, even worse, a current (but now no longer) partner solution, there could be disadvantages as well. So do your homework and be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that arises.

And if you want analysis, Spend Matters US and Spend Matters UK have chimed in already. You can start there. SI is providing these links as information only. While the doctor did provide his insight into the Trade Extensions’ technology platform strengths and capabilities for an upcoming piece on Spend Matters, he is not releasing his views on the merger (announcement) until its done and none of the speculations as to the implications of the merger in that piece are his. (However, the technology assessments of Trade Extensions are likely all his, and as these are not impacted by a business transaction, he will comment on these freely if asked. Great thing about software is it’s code, and code is algorithms, and algorithms is math, and it does what it does.)

Coupa Enters an Agreement to Buy Trade Extensions: A Game Changing Move For Strategic Sourcing by the prophet, Spend Matters US

Coupa Acquires Trade Extensions, Leading Sourcing Optimisation Software Provider by the public defender, Spend Matters UK

The SEC filing is online for those interested.

PRGX – The Biggest Analytics Provider You Don’t Know!


For those that do not know it, PRGX would appear to be one of a select number of dominant services provider in the niche market for recovery audit services — a market that unlike other procurement services faces tremendous price pressure for its core recovery, statement and related auditing and profit recovery services.
the doctor and the prophet, PRGX Intro on Spend Matters Pro (membership required)

In particular, PRGX would appear to be a recovery audit specialist for the global retail sector. And that is what they are, but that is not all they are.


PRGX has started to remake itself quietly from within — out of necessity, given these broader market trends — building and acquiring technology capabilities in the spend analytics and supplier management areas, both to expand its relevance and to start driving automation and scale in its core business.

PRGX has built the most complete, and in many ways the most advanced, analytics and recovery solution for the retail sector and, in doing so, has built one of the most complete and advanced analytics and recovery solutions for just about any sector that buys and relies on goods. Pharma, Manufacturing, and Aerospace and Defense, just to name a few, could all benefit intensely from the out-of-the-box PRGX solution.

This is because it has evolved it’s application from a simple recovery analytics application to a full featured analytics solutions with modules for:

  • Payment Analytics
  • Spend Analytics
  • Product Analytics
  • Recovery Avoidance Analytics
  • Supplier Information Management

With the latter two coming through its recent acquisition of Lavante.

It can analyze what you paid (payment analytics), what you should have paid (recovery analytics), what you are spending (spend analytics), how much that is costing you and profiting you on a product level (product analytics), and what suppliers are supplying that product and how they are performing (SIM with a hefty dose of SPM).

And it can do this analysis end to end around a product or category, and allow you to simultaneously see what you ordered, spent, overspent, took in on sales, lost on returns, and profited when all was said and done. It’s one of the most powerful analytics solutions you don’t know about. Stay tuned — there is more to come!

BREXIT Has Officially Begun

‘Nuff said.

Actually, there is no room in a blog to say all that needs to be said, so we’ll keep it brief. Time to start planning for change. And the only way to do that properly is with an advanced sourcing platform — the kind SI has been promoting for almost 11 years. New here and not sure what that is? Time to catch up on the archives. Start with optimization, analytics, and risk management first.

Supply Chains Are Complex … and the Earth is Round.

Hey, some of you might not know the earth is round! It’s only been 70 years since the first pictures of earth were taken from an altitude greater than 100 miles in space (and, up until that time, the non-believers could demand visual proof)! (To be precise, the first pictures of Earth as seen from an altitude above 100 miles was on March 7, 1947. Source: NASA)

But to not know that supply chains are complex, when “global” trade is almost as old as civilization (as purchasing is, of course, the world’s second oldest profession until such time as someone can definitely prove astronomy came first), that’s, well, really unthinkable. But yet, APICS and Michigan State University just gave us yet another report that announced yet again that supply chain leaders are citing “complexity” as the top supply chain challenge. Moreover, they decided to dive into the sources of complexity and found, surprise, surprise that they are:

  • customer accommodation
  • operations globalization
  • supplier (local sourcing) complexity
  • supply chain trends

But there’s nothing new here either. Let’s take ’em one by one.

The number of variations of a product desired is equal to the number of customers you ask. Period. Has always been. Has always will be — so the more customers you try to accommodate, the more complex your product variations, and supporting supply chain, becomes. And we’ve known this since long before Marshall M. Kirkman wrote the first Purchasing Manual.

Of course the supply chain becomes more complex as you go more global. Every locale has the potential to add languages, currencies, culture, local regulatory requirements, logistics challenges, border challenges, and so on and so on.

And then there are all the local issues faces by the suppliers — additional regulatory requirements, sustainability and CSR efforts to stay off of boycott lists, local workforce challenges, local disruption and disaster risks, and so on.

And of course trends affect complexity. They are usually the source … but they are not new issue. As we laid bare in our “future trend expose”, of the 33 trends commonly cited as future trends, only 3 were really relatively new, and only 1 was really a future trend.

Complexity has always been here, and the more global we get, the more complex we get. Nothing has changed, and if it’s not completely obvious at this point, you’re in the wrong profession.

That’s why SI has been preaching optimization and analytics since day one, since those are the only advanced sourcing solutions that can really handle the complexity of modern supply chains.

When a Quartet’s Not Enough, It’s Time for a Simfoni!

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].