Spend Radar’s Beacon Expands (Part 2)

( For Part 1, click here.)

One of the questions asked by some of Spend Radar’s channel partners (and customers ) when first hearing of the tool is simple: does the world really need another spend-classification and -analysis product? Aren’t there enough already? The answer to this is not as simple as it might seem. Yes, there are far too many products on the market; even the ERP providers have gotten around to finally releasing decent stand-alone offerings that include both the cleansing/classification and analytics bit. But few, if any, new providers tackle classification at the core of their offerings first, delivering a solution focused on simplicity of execution (making the hard stuff look easy), transparency, and flexibility. That is, of course, until Spend Radar launched out of the starting gates at a speed steadily ramping up to a breakneck pace only a few quarters past its incorporation date. But what caused Spend Radar to gain traction so quickly, especially considering that solid, albeit more complicated, solutions (e.g., transactional procurement providers like Coupa) had such a challenge with revenue growth early on?
I think the answer lies in a few key areas. For one, the transparency of Spend Radar’s approach is second to none. As with Oracle’s spend-classification tool, any analyst can classify spend on their own desktop without shipping it to a low-cost country or relying on a batch-based refresh by a third-party contractor they’ve never met.

Speed is another reason. With Spend Radar, I’ve seen very large datasets initially classified in 2-4 weeks versus the 6-12+ week turnaround that is more common (but certainly not always the rule). Moreover, Spend Radar is achieving a level of accuracy that is higher than the norm, guaranteeing 95%, but usually delivering upwards of 99%…