The last time the doctor covered Procurence was on Spend Matters in 2019 in a two-part series that provided a Vendor Introduction and a SWOT, Selection Checklist, and Market Overview.
In that coverage, we covered the supplier management solution, customized for direct supplier management, that supported the following areas of supplier management:
- information management
- performance / KPI management
- risk assessment
- quality audits
- incident and warning management
- NPI / PPAP / APQP support (with NCR / 8D)
- administration management
We also noted at the time that some of the positives and unique capabilities of the platform were:
- extensive task support and tracking
- deep support for technical assessments and QMRs
- great self-service administration support
- extremely deep KPI support
- flexible report construction
For deeper details, if you have access, we highly recommend checking out the links above (as well as Bertrand’s 2022 follow-up: Part 1: SXM and New Modules and Part 2: SWOT), which also contains the foundations of a SWOT in its 8-page summary.
Today we’ll provide an update and dive into the key capabilities of the platform, which has evolved from a supplier management focussed offering to a source-to-pay collaboration and management platform that addresses so much more than just the supplier lifecycle, with Source-to-Pay capabilities launching this quarter with appropriately enhanced SRM and Compliance capabilities.
Procurence Meercat is a modular platform where an organization can buy only what they need after starting with the core module. The platform contains offerings in six key areas:
- Supplier Relationship Management (Core)
- Source to Pay
- Compliance & Risk
- Materials & Quality Management
(SRM++ for Direct that also encapsulates aspects of part and production management)
- ESG
- Project & Resource Management
Procurence Meercat is unique in that while they are a smaller niche vendor, the platform was made to support even the largest of enterprise customers, and do so with ease. We’re going to take the six areas one-by-one, focussing primarily on what’s new or unique:
Supplier Relationship Management
Procurence Meercat is a leading Supplier Management Platform with extremely deep supplier profiles that supports custom onboarding workflows, prequalification (in compliance with EU regulations), supplier master data management, documents (inc. contracts and translations), audits, and even supplier development. The SRM module is the core module and provides you with a complete Supplier 360 where you can quickly access any and all information associated with the supplier across the modules you have installed.
Procurence Meercat can handle all of your supplier (related) master data management because it sits between external systems and data providers and internal back-office / ERP platforms (and even existing S2P systems if you prefer to maintain those, especially for indirect/services sourcing and procurement).
Since the platform is highly integrated, onboarding can take advantage of all of the compliance, risk, and ESG data collected as well as all of the part and production data collected and give a buyer complete 360-degree insight into the supplier during the pre-qualification to ensure that no non-compliant (or sanctioned) suppliers get into the system at approval time. Moreover, the onboarding process cna be configured to have as few, or as many, steps as your organization needs to collect all the required information; do all of the external risk, compliance, and ESG validations; verify the contact information; and complete any regulatory KYS (Know Your Supplier) requirements.
One key capability is that it allows you to track all of the relations(hips) associated with a supplier by subsidiary, business unit, location and/or primary commodity type as well as who owns the relationship, what the terms (of the contracts typically) are, and the status of the supplier down to that level. (i.e. You might want to block a supplier only from certain subsidiaries or business units in certain commodities or areas due to poor performance in those commodities or areas but still allow them to do business with you for other commodities in other areas where they are meeting all the regulatory requirements and not causing you any problems.)
Another key capability that comes into effect during onboarding, information management, and procurement is bank account validation. In order to greatly reduce payment fraud, they have introduced multi-step approvals to create or change a bank account profile to ensure only verified information gets into the system.
Another overlooked capability is the ability to define rules that will automatically assign the different individuals required for different aspects of supplier management: overall relationship, assessments, risk, compliance, purchase orders, (payment) approvals, etc. etc. etc. based on role, team or other factors. The platform includes features that support high workforce mobility including temporary delegations and permanent delegations which can be done using rules that reassign tasks in bulk or individually, ensuring that a task always has someone assigned to it. (It also has automatic blocking of user access on a bounced email, helping with ISO 27001 compliance, a certification which they hold.)
Remember, there is no supplier management without human interaction and oversight, and most suppliers go unmanaged because it’s usually impossible for one person to do all the work (and yet that’s how many supplier management systems were set up — one supplier owner). By allowing the work to be broken up and defined on supplier creation, a supplier actually gets managed (and then supervisors get notified when an item is past due and relationship owners notified when key tasks have not bee completed). Match this with the capability to automatically trigger workflows (that can be built up from task suggestions using existing assessments) on any change in any supplier flex status — which can be defined at the level of supplier, commodity, part, tooling, or any combination — and you have powerful, guided, semi-automated supplier (performance) management.
Source-to-Pay
Their new source-to-pay capabilities centers around two new primary modules with core support for sourcing and procurement, namely
Strategic Procurement
- RFX
- Contracts (enhanced)
- Savings Tracker
- Commodity Profiles
- Supplier Innovation Sourcing
The core of sourcing is RFX which allows the user to create (multi-round) RFX events that can be used to collect bids and specifications, create award scenarios for evaluation, and walk the user through a templated sourcing cycle (that can be adjusted on implementation and tweaked in the administration control panel). Standard parts of an RFX are settings (type, business unit, category, terms and conditions, currency, timing, etc.), specifications (documents), positions (cost breakdowns), suppliers (suggestion capability based on sourcing history, risk, and location, but the buyer can select who they want), assessments, communications (associated with the RFX), responses (final bids, displayable side-by-side), scenarios (potential awards based on rules such as cheapest supplier or position with location, position, or risk constraints or manual selection), decisions (awards), and, post award, the event can be associated with contracts and orders.
As we noted, contract management has been enhanced as they have implemented multiple AI tools to automatically scan an uploaded document, classify it, auto-extract the suggested metadata (tagged to the appropriate location in the document), and then the user can accept, override, or reject as they see fit. In addition, they’ve also integrated DeepL for automatic document translation, so the user can get a highly accurate (but not legally certified) translation of a contract or document in their native language.
The savings tracking module, which works like most other savings tracking modules you’d be familiar with, kicks in post award and allows you to track historical to projected to actuals over time based on the sourcing event. However, if you use Procurence Meercat for S2P for your direct, it will automatically populate the historicals, projections, and actuals based on each order that flows through the system, making savings tracking easy-peasy for you.
The supplier innovation sourcing is a relatively new module that allows buyers to post challenges where they need innovation to reduce cost, streamline energy requirements, minimize environmental emissions (including carbon), stay ahead of global compliance regulations, or meet an emerging market demand. Like the first generation crowd sourcing innovation platforms (remember those?), it allows suppliers to suggest innovations to meet a buyer’s needs, which, since it’s integrated, can be flipped into RFXs if the proposal sounds promising.
This is because the submission process is partially structured and, when a supplier submits an innovation idea, they can specify the expected business benefits (in terms of sales, sustainability, quality and warranty, production, procurement, process, or logistics factors), the materials that will be used, the associated financials, and the document types that are being submitted. This semi-structured approach allows for quick searching, identification, and RFX/project creation off of a submission.
Moreover, the platform can be opened up for suppliers to provide their own innovations with respect to existing parts or processes if they feel they have a way to improve the end product they are offering to the buyer.
Operational Procurement
- Purchase Order & ASN Management
- Invoice Management
- Capacity Planning
Once an award has been made, and a contract has been cut, purchase orders can be manually, or automatically using appropriate rules definitions, created and sent to the supplier. The platform can also accept ASN (Advanced Shipping Notices) from the supplier and track those as well. When the invoice is submitted, it can be captured, and if it’s an attachment, the platform uses ThinkingMachine-driven AI to automatically parse the invoice into standard metadata and line item data for matching, processing, and payment approval. The approval chains can be defined to be as simple or complex as the organization wants, with single, multi-stage, and even simultaneous approvals supported.
Compliance & Risk
They’ve had compliance and risk management (including a risk decision matrix) since 2012, but it’s been significantly enhanced over the past few years. This includes a number of out-of-the-box integrations including riskmethods, prewave, Z2DATA, Euler Hermes, and D&B. New capabilities revolved around:
- Sanction Checks
- Semiconductor Risk
- AI Risk Review
Procurence integrates with multiple sources to check (potential) suppliers against sanctions list and these checks can be included early in the pre-qualification process (to prevent time being wasted on qualifying a supplier that your organization ultimately can’t do business with. It also integrated with multiple AI technologies in addition to third party risk ratings and can parse available data from documents and the internet to estimate certain risks and help you pre-populate models and then generate an overview of supplier risk from that model. Finally, it integrates with Z2DATA to provide you with deep insight into the semiconductor risk of every part you source that uses semiconductors (as long as you maintain your semiconductor listing in the parts management and associate the semiconductors with the parts they are used in). This isn’t hard to do because you can track the composition (level 1 of the Bill of Materials by default, but the system can track components at multiple levels if required for risk, ESG, etc.) of each part that you purchase (which you need to do for Scope3 CO2 tracking and reporting).
The risk management also includes risk monitoring (which can be continuous on every risk data element update or on a schedule), which can not only support the manual scheduling of automatic (technical) reviews based on identified risk types or scores, but automatic scheduling if a risk factor gets too high.
Materials & Quality
They’ve had part masters, material profiles, PPAP/APQP, NCR/8D, compensation claims, and even NPD for a decade, but all of the capability has been enhanced in recent years as it was spun out of core SRM (which revolved around parts linked to the supplier) into its own product development and quality module which supports highly integrated part development and management centered around a buying organization’s part, and now even supports tooling management.
Their part and material master is quite deep. For each part, in addition to tracking metadata that tracks all of the classification data (id, eClass, HTS, SIC, HS, CN, TARIC, CAS, ECN, SCIP, etc.), it also tracks the default units, criticality, risk, type, tooling, specification documents, related plants, projects, materials, and whether or not it uses semiconductors. It maintains RoHS Data, validations, and current status. Finally, it maintains the lifecycle status, timelines, and cost models required for purchasing; associated RFXs; and, post award, the associated factories, purchase orders, ASNs, and information on received lots.
ESG
They’ve always had the ability to support ESG, as you could extend supplier and part profiles to capture whatever you wanted, but with the recent rise of ESG in the EU (especially around Scope-3 reporting and the German Supply Chain Act [LkSG]), they now have custom capabilities to support both of these requirements, and even have a whistleblower portal. They also have out of the box integrations with ecovadis, and Integrity Next.
As we noted above, you can track the carbon down to the part component level, and this includes the packaging and logistics emissions, where you can track the logistics emissions at the route level, with the emissions tracked for each leg of the route (which might use a different method or carrier). In other words, in Procurence Meercat, your Scope 3 calculations can approach 100% accuracy and, more importantly, you can not only identify real opportunities for Scope 3 improvement (based upon different plant or production efficiencies and production rebalancing) but quick improvements through packaging changes and packaging reduction, better routings, etc. — which is sometimes the only improvements you can really make (if your parts are custom and you can’t easily switch factories, or you’ve already optimized the production and the only way to further reduce carbon is a redesign that takes months or years, etc.).
Project & Resource Management
They’ve had basic project management since last decade, but with a growing customer base in a few key industries (including wind power), they have expanded their capabilities significantly to also support staffing and resourcing profiles (including HSE Compliance), with training requirements, down to the individual employee — like an Avetta but specifically designed for complex industrial supply chains.
Communication
Finally, they have a 7th core module that serves as the communication hub across your organization and its supply base that centralizes asynchronous online communication, mass mailings and notifications, generic platform content in a CMS/Library, and even a generic portal for supplier/third party access to communications. The platform even supports the definition of meeting protocols with topic specific templates to guide staff through supplier meetings.
Procurence Meercat has come a long way since its humble beginnings when it first poked it’s head out of the hole to take it’s first shift in watching over the supply chain landscape, and it’s one Meercat you definitely shouldn’t overlook!
