Category Archives: Marketplaces

Data is Too Darn Expensive Today … But It Won’t Be For Long

THE PROPHET, who has recently discovered ranting is his new favourite thing to do (on LinkedIn), recently complained that Procurement, Commodity, and Supplier Data is Too Darn Expensive.

And while he’s right in that data is often too expensive for what it is, it’s not going to stay that way. Next generation providers are going to commoditize quality data and lower anonymized community data subscriptions to win (and keep) clients, because they know that there’s no value in advanced technology alone (and especially in analytics, optimization, and AI wihtout quality data to feed it) but there are three key points he missed in his rant where he complained about data prices and advocated the use of LLMs and Gen-AI as a substitute (which they are not, and considering how much they hallucinate, we wouldn’t even trust them to be directionally accurate — just feed the historical data you can get your hands on into Excel and do some basic trend plotting if directionality is enough).

1) As Lisa Reisman noted in the comments, sometimes you need highly granular accurate data by geography, volume, and production methodology. When pennies make a difference, because you are buying tens or hundreds of millions worth of the material for a global operation, it matters.

2) Most firms are still ignoring their own data, which, when run through something like Covalyze (which THE PROPHET should love as it was founded and designed by economists), gives very accurate target cost models on any category the firm has enough historical data on, allowing them to pinpoint where they need more data and why for cost breakdowns (and should cost models to refine the target cost models), and which suppliers they actually need those expensive profiles on. Then they can go to pay by the sip providers like Veridion for basic supplier data or other emerging commodity and supplier data portals.

3) The amount of data most firms need is much less than they think. In the tail, most of the spend is not significant enough for any market data to provide insight on a significant savings potential beyond what you will get from analyzing your own historical data and market quotes. When pennies won’t make a difference, you don’t do detailed cost breakdowns by raw material. When the product is a commodity that can be supplied by multiple suppliers at similar price points and equal quality levels, you don’t do deep risk profiles because you can just go to the next supplier in the queue if the first one fails you. And so on. You only do detailed analysis where there is statistical likelihood of a real opportunity or a real risk. Otherwise it’s a waste of time, money, and resources as no organization today even comes close to fully analyzing the significant categories and risks they have in any given year. Thinking you will do more is delusional and not worth it if you don’t have the basics covered.

By the time firms actually need more data, you can bet a next generation of data providers will have it readily available and cheap by today’s standards.

Sourcing Innovation stands by it’s statement that the USA is …

… math stupid that it made in it’s post explaining why the lack of adoption of analytics is NOT complicated. the doctor knows it ruffled a few feathers, but it’s not the doctor claiming that, it’s the OECD data (which is available here).

At least the doctor didn’t point out in that post that the USA is effectively failing across the board as it is below average in literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving (and significantly below average in numeracy, as we pointed out in our last article), that there should be no reason for this when the USA is seventh in the world in nominal GDP per capita (beaten only by Iceland*, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, and Luxembourg*, where the * countries are not in the OECD rankings), and that the USA could afford to have the best educated people in the world if it desired (and it could allocate the budget if it desired, considering the percentage it spends on defence is more than twice the global average, and that’s before all of the foreign military aid).

However, he feels it is now very important that he does point this out because too many Americans are heralding the budget cuts to the Federal Department of Education (on the basis that funding should be tied to performance, which is a justifiable goal, but the best way to do that needs to be carefully considered) without a plan instead of insisting that it be restructured to address the serious educational deficiencies or replaced with more state level agencies (where funding is tied to specific focal points and not allowed to be disbursed on whims).

To nail these points home, here is the relevant data:

Literacy

Country Rank Score
Finland 1st 296
Canada 10th 271
Czechia 14th 260
AVERAGE 260
USA 16th 258

(which is a 12 point drop for the USA since the last OECD ranking!)

Numeracy

Country Rank Score
Finland 1st 294
Canada 12th 271
AVERAGE 263
Croatia 21st 254
USA 25th 249

(which is a 7 point drop for the USA since the last OECD ranking)

Adaptive Problem Solving

Country Rank Score
Finland 1st 276
Canada 10th 259
AVERAGE 250
Slovak Republic 19th 247
USA 19th 247

I’m old enough to remember when the US education system was the envy of the world (even though the US has scored in the lower half, and sometimes the bottom, of the FIMS, FISS, and the IEA — which measured the global performance of the primary and secondary education systems across 12 to 20 countries back in the 1960s through 1980s), because, post Sputnik, the US poured money into public education in an attempt to produce the best students in the world to enter post-secondary STEM programs and become the best engineers in the world … and its Universities took prominence as the Universities you wanted to be admitted to (bypassing centuries old Universities in the UK and Europe in popularity).

Now it’s true that the US should have improved substantially based on this investment (which means that there are fundamental issues that have never been addressed), but just saying “it doesn’t work” and attempting to tear it down without a plan to put something better in place is not only unhelpful but sends a message to the world that the US no longer values having the best education system. I’m afraid this will have ripple effects on the popularity of US institutions, which rely a lot on full tuition foreign students to maintain their top-tier quality programs, and lead to further degradation in adult literacy, numeracy, and problem solving skills (which are now barely on par with countries North Americans grew up believing, partially thanks to propaganda, to be significantly below us).

For those of you who not only want your American-based companies to continue to be the best in the world, but also want America to attract global headquarters (or at least regional headquarters) of more multi-nationals, the sincere hope is that you will fix this. In this increasingly unstable global economy (thanks to natural and man-made disasters), the winners will be those with the best educated people who have the skills to use the best tools at their disposal to make the best decisions fast enough to survive. As a result, companies that want to weather the storms should now be more inclined to choose the Nordics, Japan, or Canada (which top the adaptive problem solving list with high literacy and numeracy scores, and don’t have the energy issues Germany is dealing with or the lack of local population that Estonia is dealing with). Now, while that last option is good for the doctor, let’s face it, for the past eigthy years, the market dynamics worked best when the biggest companies were in America and, through mutual trade agreements (NAFTA or USCMA), Canada supported.*

* Although it must be admitted that maybe the time of American dominance with Canadian and Mexican support has, unfortunately, come to an end. Especially since Canada is still “Open” on the Civicus Human Rights Watchlist and not one of the two countries that recently had their score narrowed significantly in the March 2025 update. While research needs to be done on the subject, when you consider that 17 of the top 31 countries are “open” and 11 are “narrowed” in terms of human rights and civic freedoms on the Civicus rating scale, there does seem to be a high correlation between civic freedom and average educational level as only 2 countries are “obstructed” and only 1 country is “repressed”. And while the repressed country of Singapore comes in high at #13 if you take the average across the 3 scores, the two “obstructed” countries come in low at 22 and 26 respectively.)

Everyone In the Procurement Ecosystem Exists For a Reason — But Do You Know Why …

… and more importantly, when you should use them?

Joël Collin-Demers recently commented on a LinkedIn post that

Everyone in the ecosystem exists for a reason. Big consulting and analyst firms are great tools for organizations in particular contexts (e.g. a big firm is a great way to get a lot of smart people deployed on a problem quickly).

The point I’m trying to make is that we tend to over-rely on big consulting and analysts.

And he was correct. Big X consultancies, niche consultancies, implementors/integrators, analyst firms, suite vendors, best of breed vendors, etc. were all started for a reason and continue to exist for a reason. Understanding both of these helps you determine when you should use them, why, and what you should (and should not) expect. In this post on where we asked If You Really Want Success … or Just Say You Do, we made it abundantly clear that Analyst Firms, Big X, Implementors, and even Vendors (beyond a certain point) ultimately don’t care about your success because

Big Analyst Firms (that produce the pay-to-play maps) make money pushing the solutions of the vendors that pay them the most, not on making sure those solutions solve your problems. While there was a time you could always count on the best unbiased advice from an analyst firm, that was long ago. Ever since the first big vendor realized it was faster (and cheaper) to buy influence by sponsoring reports or cutting big research access POs, the end of unbiased recommendations began. (And it’s more your fault than the vendor’s because you came to expect free reports, but no one can work for free, which means the vendors had to pick up the entire cost, which means those reports say what the vendors sponsoring them want said, not what you need to hear.)

Big X need to keep their benches employed addressing your problems, and if a vendor’s solution took care of everything, what else would they do? This doesn’t mean they are going to screw you, but it does mean they are only going to address what you ask them to, that they are going to try to do it with a diamond/platinum/sycophant partner to keep their top-tier consultancy status, and assign the weakest resources they think they can get away with to keep their top tier resources free to top paying clients. Moreover, as we discussed in our article on When Should You Use Big X, the vast majority of Big X did not start out as IT consultancies or Procurement Tech shops and this is still their weakest area (as the “wild west” tech players and boutique consultancies get the majority of best talent), so even if they are doing their best, it’s only so good. (Compared to their core strengths, which, as we said in the latter post, you’d be foolish NOT to take advantage of.) The reality is, many Big X are now mostly body shops who have to keep those junior consultants employed while keeping their big software partners happy. And that’s a difficult balancing act, especially considering their overheads and the luxurious lifestyle these partners have grown accustomed to.

Implementors make money implementing solutions — if that solution solved everything for the next five to ten years, how would they keep their bench employed as well. Now, they are going to make sure it’s implemented to the best of their ability, but since they weren’t hired as a consultancy, they aren’t going to be the ones to tell you when a solution is not the best for a certain task — they are going to do what they are paid to do (so that, when you realize you need another solution in a year and then use the same Big X again to recommend it, they get that contract too).

Vendors need to keep their investors happy, which means securing sales as fast as possible, not ensuring they are the perfect fit and/or outlining where they will fall short. Now, of everyone in the ecosystem, they definitely want you to succeed, but the reality is, they can only spend so much time on you because they took too much money from investors at too high a multiple, aren’t growing at the expected rate, and the management and sales team risk being fired (and the entire company being shut down) if they don’t continually increase the rate they bring on new customers (whether they can reasonably support them or not). It’s all about “what their solution can do for you” and not about “is their solution right for you”.

And so on.

Niche Consultancies are the best IF they do not have preferred vendor partnerships (which require a certain level of business to maintain) as they know they have to perform to get their next contract, but these are few and far between. And even though it is critically important, almost no one does Project Assurance for their ProcureTech project (and then wonders why we have had Two and a Half Decades of Project Failure).

Short story, everyone in the ecosystem exists to make money off of YOU. While that’s not a bad thing IF they provide value (and heck, I’ll happily give you a dollar if I am guaranteed two dollars in return in a reasonable time frame), not all of them do … and those that do are not equal in the value they provide (primarily due to conflicting pressures, not intent). Until you understand that, your returns will be limited.

The important thing to remember is that if you’re just starting your best-in-class Procurement journey, you typically don’t need an end to end suite, and if you’re Procurement maturity is still elementary school, you don’t need a 7-figure mega suite when a low 6-figure mini suite, which can be implemented in 1/4 to 1/6 the time, can get you 80% of potential savings. Especially when this level of savings will take you 3-6 years to realize. Then, when you’re ready (and know how to get the additional ROI the mega-suite can provide), you can upgrade to the seven figure mega-suite in confidence you’ll achieve the same level of ROI. (Instead of being the next ProcureTech disaster. And while you may believe in a beautiful disaster, there is no such thing where tech is involved.)

Think you can’t afford modern S2P as a SME? Think Again and Auxionize!

Auxionize is a very interesting new source-to-pay marketplace, with optional managed services, for the SME and MM indirect and off-the-shelf direct sourcing/procurement organization that gives buyers the 80% of what they need in a Source-to-Pay platform at a fraction of the cost of a larger mid-market/suite offering. (Small organizations (up to 5 buyers, only a few auctions a month) that might think they can’t afford a modern sourcing tool can start with an ultra-basic plan that starts at 600 Euro a year and MM organizations can get a decent sized solutions with the core modules starting at 2,500 Euro a year (and an all inclusive unlimited use solution for 1,000 Euro to 2,000 Euro a month, fitting it on their P-card). (And for twice that, they can get a fair bit of managed services to augment their team and significantly increase their sourcing throughput. And if they are a MM with a 8K to 10K monthly budget, full platform with more-or-less unlimited use and unlimited services for an average mid-sized organization’s needs.)

Auxionize, which is based in Sofia, Bulgaria where it was founded over a decade ago and where it launched its modern S2P-powered marketplace about 5 years ago, takes advantage of being a low-cost locale with a relatively high level of education, as it is in the EU, and its costs are half that of most major US or EU locales. Moreover, since its platform is designed for high efficiency throughput, it can keep its service costs low and service levels high and provide SMEs and MMs what they need (and the majority of what they want) at a price point they can afford. (Moreover, their sales organization is now US-led, so North American companies can work on their timezone.)

In order to discuss Auxionize, we have to unpack that first sentence. When we do, we see it has four primary offerings:

  • product catalogue (that powers the)
  • marketplace
  • source-to-pay
  • managed services

Product Catalogue

The Auxionize platform is built on a detailed product catalogue that provides very detailed descriptions for standard products and parts (which is why it’s also a good direct sourcing platform for off-the-shelf manufacturing as you can specify complete part details that are precise enough for standard manufacturing). They have a very detailed taxonomy that is built on top of the Product Information Management (PIM) of icecat that they use to organize standard products defined in the icecat PIM as well as custom products defined by buyers on the platform (which can be public or private, and will be public if supplier defined and may be public if buyer defined). For every product, you can define its features, materials, weight and dimensions, and other standard information specific to its category. Even for a screw their default profile is material, thread type, head shape, length, manufacturing standard, surface finish, diameter, grading, etc. For stationary, they will capture the weight, thickness, opacity, strength, brightness, tear resistance, tone, finish, etc. will all be captured — as will the expected packaging (size). And so on. (And if they don’t have a template, you can copy the closest one and add what you need to specify your product or part — and, as a result, can specify any part you need for indirect or off-the-shelf direct sourcing and procurement.)

The catalogue currently has over 250,000 parts, so if what you want is a standard part or product, it’s probably already in the system and very quick for you to get going on a sourcing event.

Marketplace

Auxionize started out as a marketplace before it realized that a marketplace wasn’t the right solution for sourcing and strategic procurement, but realizes it is still a valuable solution for companies just needing to do spot buys or identify suppliers to invite to a sourcing event. As a result, it’s a traditional marketplace that is free for sellers and free for buyers to search, but they need to be a (paying) customer to run an event (and make a purchase, which can be a sole-source RFX for a spot-buy).

All a supplier rep has to do is sign up, create a company profile, wait for it to be verified (in the appropriate commercial register), and then create their catalog (which can be uploaded from csv files that use the template format that can be downloaded). If the suppliers need help, Auxionize has premium plans and pay-as-you-go managed services. Their products are then in a public marketplace that all buyers can search. (And, to be clear, a company can be both a buyer and a supplier on the platform, although most sellers are not yet buyers [as with any marketplace].)

Source to Pay

The platform supports standard e-Auctions and RFX (that they call pre-auction) for sourcing, award generation (which can be used to automatically generate the meta-data for the contract once it is uploaded into the system — note that the Auxionize platform does not support negotiation, and only provides a contract repository where you can associate orders, attach related documents, find associated orders and their associated invoices], and manage alerts and notifications around milestones, renewals and expiry), order creation and management, and invoice acceptance and management (as the system ends at ok-to-pay). It also provides suppliers with a portal where they can access the sourcing events they are invited to, see their orders, and upload their invoices over a secure channel.

(Pre) Auction

The core of the platform is the (pre) auction platform that the buyer uses to set up a sourcing event and that walks the users through the seven necessary steps (and doesn’t let the user publish the RFX [pre-auction] or auction until it is complete and issue free. But before we can discuss the seven step setup process, we need to discuss IPS — Integrated Product Specification.

Integrated Product Specification

Sourcing events in the Auxionize system are for complete product specifications, which consists of a (marketplace) product catalog item the buyer wants to obtain along with all of the additional specifications necessary to source that item. This will include a buyer product specification — which wraps the standard catalog item as a buyer item with internal identifiers, documents, drawings, specifications for environmental or regulatory compliance, and any additional non-standard specification — and the purchasing specifications (quantity required, unit, minimum order quantity, warranty requirements, currency, delivery location, payment terms, etc.) as well as (internal) purchasing strategy information. At this point, general terms and conditions, drawings and specifications, and general notes can also be associated with the item.

Auction Setup

Once the buyer has created one or more internal product specifications, the buyer can create a (pre)-auction following the seven step formula built-in to the Auxionize platform:

  1. Users: define the users who will have (read) only access to the sourcing event (once published)
  2. IPS: select the items, defined by IPS, that will be sourced; they can be grouped together (into sheets) if desired
  3. Type: RFX (Pre-Auction) or (Reverse) Auction
  4. Rules: the auction configuration / settings including, but not limited to, access (open, controlled, closed); award rules (product, group, all); visibility (sellers, products, prices); extension period and max offers in that period; etc.
  5. Access Control: which suppliers, and which of their representatives, have access
  6. Documents: upload any (additional) documents required to specify the sourcing event, terms and conditions, etc.
  7. Notes: add any final notes and instructions for the sellers

Once each step has been completed, with minimal, acceptable, definitions, then the event can be published and sellers can start bidding. Once the ending time, with any extensions, has been reached, the buyer can see the bids (side by side) as well as the (default) awards as per the award rules they defined in the setup (but which are hidden from the sellers). They can accept the default allocations and generate an award (which can be output for contract negotiations and which can be used to auto-index a contract, once signed and uploaded, with meta-data once it is associated with a previous sourcing event).

Note that once the auction is live, the sellers have access to a public forum to ask questions and get answers, as well as a private channel to send and receive private messages.

Order and Invoice Management

Once a sourcing event has been completed, the buyer can create one or more orders against it and send the order to the selected seller(s) — and continue to do so over time. The order is pushed into the supplier portal and sent to the supplier in an email. Once the seller has shipped the order, they can upload the inovice to the buyer direct to the system (and if they have the original order email, they can click the provided link to go right to the upload screen). (Unlike some competitors, they don’t allow email submissions because they detected multiple man-in-the-middle attacks in the past.)

If desired, Auxionize can be integrated with the ERP (in a custom project) and push orders direct to the ERP.

Odds and Ends

Supplier profiles right now are limited to basic company profiles, and if the supplier a buyer wants isn’t in the system, they can invite the supplier with a simple email.

In the next version, if the buyer negotiates a contract for something that wasn’t sourced through the system, the platform will use AI to automatically extract all identifiable metadata it has confidence in, negating the need for the buyer to manually enter all of the metadata (and instead just override any metadata that wasn’t identified to the buyer’s liking). In the current version, if the contract isn’t associated with a sourcing event, the buyer has to enter all of the metadata manually to store the contract.

The platform also computes the projected savings from each award based on the current average market price and tracks the contribution from each project, buyer, and department over time.

Once a buyer has done business with a seller, the buyer can leave a simple rating on a 5-star scale that contributes to a public supplier average that can help all buyers select trustworthy, reliable sellers in the marketplace.

Managed Services

Finally, Auxionize offers managed services that will help the buyer create their ISPs, create and run their auctions, negotiate their contracts, upload and index them, create the orders, and see whether or not a supplier has accessed the order or responded. These services start as low as 1,000 Euro a month for a buyer that runs 5 auctions or less, on a limited number of ISPs, in the EU timezone. Most smaller mid sized clients can get all the managed services they need for about 5K Euro a month (as most still only run a handful of events for a small team of users), or the cost of 1 FTE.

All-in-all, Auxionize is a fairly extensive mid-market offering at a great price point for small and smaller mid-sized organizations that might think a modern, foundational, source-to-pay platform is out of their grasp (and services a pipe-dream).

Need Some New Equipment? Then You Better Get that Financing APPROVEd!

Ten years ago, SI was one of the first sites to cover KWIPPED, which was one of the first, and now likely the oldest (and biggest), marketplace for equipment rental procurement for all your equipment rental needs. Launched to help businesses with idle equipment and equipment rental agencies connect with businesses that needed to rent equipment for the short to long term, it served a niche in complex and project procurement that the major procurement platforms weren’t (and still aren’t) solving.

It works well, and worked well since day one as it grew quite fast, and while it met a lot of the market needs, it didn’t solve all of the market problems that were out there in equipment procurement for precise/complex projects and one-time acquisitions. Namely:

  • Some buyers wanted to rent to own, but suppliers weren’t (or couldn’t afford to be) offering that
  • Some buyers wanted to lease, or lease to own, for long periods of time, but needed up front financing (which suppliers couldn’t afford)
  • Some suppliers wanted to help buyers get financing, but they could only recommend a few lenders, who were often:
    • too strict in their lending criteria
    • too costly with their rates
    • too slow, and buyers walked away
  • Some suppliers didn’t like the loss of visibility into, or control, of the sales process with current lending processes (send the buyer away to a third-party lender and hope she comes back)
  • Many lenders didn’t like random referrals they were unlikely to ever approve (which wasted their time), or the spray and pray tactics savvier buyers who knew how to find options would use (which wasted their time)

In other words, buyers and suppliers wanted financing options so they could lease to own (or even buy outright), but neither of them liked the current application and approval process, and lenders wanted an easier, more efficient way, to get requests relevant to their lending business, so they could waste less time in approvals and more on hitting their lending targets (because they need to lend to make money).

Being techies, the founders of KWIPPED, who started off by making introductions to potential lenders on behalf of suppliers they knew well and buyers who asked, realized there had to be a better way to solve this problem, because forcing buyers to go offline and deal with a lender through old-school fax and email just wasn’t a good experience for anyone. They realized that there should be a platform like Lendgo (that could obtain, and compare, personal mortgages and refinancing options side-by-side), but for business equipment financing and leasing, and, more importantly, one that meets the need of all three parties, not just the buyer or lender.

So that’s what they set out to do, and they do it through the APPROVE marketplace (which can be accessed through the KWIPPED platform, the seller’s website, or even a third-party marketplace through a plug-in).
In KWIPPED, or a supported supplier marketplace, when a buyer brings up a listing, they will see the buy-it-now price, the rental price, and the estimated financing price (per month) based on the equipment type and a predictive model based on a database of over 75,000 financing applications and 3+ responses to each (which allows them to predict, with high accuracy, the estimated financing for that item for a buyer with average or better credit rating).

To start a financing application, it’s a 60-second process for the buyer who just needs to fill in some basic details to kick the process off. At this point, the request will be routed to a supplier’s financing (assistance) department if they have one, or the APPROVE financing team who will contact the buyer for any specific information required to make a lending application, get clarity on their needs, augment the application with the right data in the right language to optimize clarity and success with the lenders, and then, when the application is ready, kick off the automatic application process in the system.

Unlike many of these marketplace financing/mortgage/insurance platforms, the APPROVE platform is not a spray-and-pray platform or one that relies on buyer expertise to build a short list of potential lenders to send the application to. Once all the information has been collected, they use a predictive (machine learning) model that has been trained on this data set of over 75,000 financing requests, over 300,0000 quotes, and third-party risk and financial data on the buyers and sellers to predict which vendors will approve the financing and what the rates will be, and then send it to the top 3 vendors with the lowest predicted rates and a high chance of approval. If one or more of these vendors denies, it will continue down the list of potential lenders (who are predicted to charge higher rates and/or have a lower chance of approval) until it gets 3 quotes for the buyer. And, if the financier on the APPROVE or seller team happens to know that a particular lender is more or less likely to approve a specific request based on experience, they can override the rankings and issue the request direct to the lender (but generally the platform works quite well and it’s best to let it work its predictive model).

This is a very important differentiation. You don’t want to send a financing request to just any lender because:

  • some very risk averse lenders will only approve the top top tier of buyers (the cream of the crop that could probably afford to buy outright), and you’re just wasting your time
  • some less risk averse lenders will lend to anyone, who want to pay exorbitant interest rates that are 2X to 3X prime (and should only be a last resort)
  • some lenders specialize in certain industries and equipment types, and don’t want to lend outside their domain of expertise
  • etc.

This means if you don’t target the financing applications properly, you are going to get a lot of lender rejections or a lot of bad offers that the buyer won’t accept, leading to a lot of wasted time on all parties (and platform mistrust). Through laser focussed targeting, buyers know they have a real shot of getting financing at a rate close to the predicted value, sellers know that buyers are serious if they follow through with the application, and lenders know that, if they want the business, they have (at least) a 33% chance of getting it. That gives these lenders better odds than banks offering a mortgage! Moreover, since APPROVE targets the quote requests, the odds that they will be willing to quote the application is 80% or more, compared to 50% at best for a random application. This means that APPROVE is at least 60% better for lenders than random seller referrals, making it worth the lender’s time to process buyer applications from the APPROVE platform much more quickly.

Moreover, unlike most of the market “lending” platforms out there, all parties have complete visibility into where the application is at all times.

The buyer can see when the financing request has been formally issued to the lenders, when a lender has returned a quote or rejected it, and then the 3 quotes side by side once 3 are received (and then select one to accept through the platform).

The lender has a view into the status of all of its open requests, as well as its request history, and all communications between it and either the APPROVE or supplier financing team (to collect any additional data it decides that it needs to issue a quote).

The lessor/seller can see where the process is at any time for each buyer that submitted a financing request, any communications that went back and forth between the APPROVE financing team and the lender (on the lessor/seller’s behalf), what quotes were returned, and when a buyer has accepted a quote and then begin the process on their end of completing the transaction without delay.

The APPROVE platform, especially when accessed through KWIPPED, a supplier web site, or third-party marketplace, makes the entire process of finding the right equipment, engaging with the supplier, getting the right financing, and closing the deal smooth, efficient, and relatively painless for all parties.

So while, like KWIPPED, this is NOT a typical sourcing or procurement platform that SI would normally cover, it is a very important platform nonetheless as most of your direct, indirect, and complex services sourcing platforms don’t enable the identification of rent-to-own or lease-to-own options when you need to temporarily (or permanently) acquire new equipment for a new construction, commissioning project, factory, or lab, and definitely don’t help you with financing when you can’t afford to, or don’t want to (because you have other, better, uses for your working capital now), pay for the equipment up-front. Like KWIPPED, APPROVE fills a very specific niche that is overlooked until it is desperately needed, and one that any organization that needs to rent or buy equipment, that just can’t be sourced or procured through normal S2P/P2P platforms, should know about.