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Broad-Based Vendors
These are best-in-breed software vendors who sell technology that
they say will support. you across the full range of sourcing functions
and spend categories
In our report, we divide these functions into eight categories:
strategy, analysis, catalog (data cleansing), RFx, auction, award,
contract, and monitoring.
Most broad-based vendors have been in business for only a few years,
have relatively few customers, and their support has some holes
in it. When you tease what they actually have away from their ambitions
and their claims, you will see really good support for certain functions,
really good support for certain spend categories, and a desire to
fill in the gaps depending upon what their expanding customer base
wants. (Obviously, these generalizations themselves apply more or
less well to different vendors.)
In young markets like these, with vendors whose product set is
not perfectly filled in, your ability to get value depends heavily
on fit. If you're good at strategy, have clean data already, have
a well-organized smart group of buyers, and want to focus on indirect
procurement, a broad-based vendor that is really good at RFx/auction
software might be just the thing.
One caution. The processes supported by broad-based vendors tend
to work better for some spend categories rather than others. A vendor
that supports "any" spend category tends to be best at
procurement of indirect goods and some commodities, though there
is wide variation. In the list below, we have grouped the vendors
who are best at direct procurement in a special category.
The other thing we think exceedingly important is the ability for
the company you're buying from to deliver expertise
and intellectual property, as well as software. Companies
that say, "We're a software company; we'll let our consulting
partners help you figure this out," are at best complicating
your buy and at worst leaving you in the lurch.
That said, there are some excellent companies among the
list shown below.
To get our publicly available information about them, click on
the logo. To get the full scoop, contact Rick McLaughlin at (617)
864-9032 or rick@b2banalysts.com.
No Clear Spend Category Specialization
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