
Exploring e-Procurement Market Trends: No Winner Here
In the past quarter, we have gotten numerous calls from venture capital firms that wanted our opinion on the e-procurement (and broader Source-to-Pay) market, including growth and vendor prospects. As a favor, we try to spend a bit of time with them on the phone. But we suspect many leave more confused than when the […]

A P2P Implementation Guide: Avoid the “Dumb Ways to Die”
Given YouTube’s rising influence – or at least the time we’re all wasting watching silly clips – we decided to honor the namesake viral video with a Spend Matters research paper titled: A P2P Implementation Guide: Avoid the “Dumb Ways to Die.” Our thesis is that far too many companies get themselves into trouble with […]

Coupa’s Suite: From Procurement To Accounts Payable (Part 2)
Click here for Part 1. Before delving into Coupa’s approach to invoice management software, it’s worth doing a quick double-click on where procure to pay software priorities stand in their overall roadmap. While a major priority for development at the end of 2012, Coupa’s electronic invoicing capabilities continue to get significant product investment in 2013, […]

Coupa’s Suite: From Procurement To Accounts Payable (Part 1)
In only a few years time, Coupa has gone from a purchase-to-pay (P2P) upstart to the fastest growing eProcurement provider, besting the growth of companies many times its size in new customer wins, adoption levels and percentage revenue increases, among other metrics. In a recent press release, Coupa shared some figures around this growth, including […]

3 Essential Procurement Services For Small and Middle Market Businesses
We’re big believers that 2013 is going to be the year that procurement technology adoption takes off in the SMB procurement market. But which technologies across the source-to-pay continuum are most suited to small and middle market environments? Hint: it’s only a handful. Granted, there are opportunities for the full suite of capabilities (including strategic […]

SAP and Ariba: Initial Customer and Competitive Takeaways
Last night, Spend Matters published our initial detailed comparative analysis (for Spend Matters PRO subscribers) of the SAP/Ariba acquisition announcement from a customer vantage point in the areas of sourcing, spend analysis, supplie…

Ariba: Probing on SAP’s New Procurement and Supplier Network “Angel”
When a company goes through the due diligence process looking to acquire another organization prior to the signing of a definitive agreement or announcement, it typically has a code name for the project. Historically, the suitor uses t…

Sony’s IP Disaster and Amazon’s Cloud Crash — Rough Times Ahead for Hosted Solutions and Data?
It’s been a challenging few weeks for those dependent on the cloud, despite the continued stratospheric valuations of some companies embracing virtual deployment and network business models. Even though we’re not as likely to be i…

Handicapping Ariba’s Ultimate Potential — Two Perspectives (If You Believe and if You Don’t)
Following Ariba’s quarterly results, which showed solid growth last week (yet I believe are at least partially representative of a rising tide lifting many procurement vendor boats), I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the poten…

Rant: Custom Software Development – Is There a Point?
I had a demonstration earlier this year with an organization (that will go unnamed) that decided to build its own internal Spend Management applications, starting first with an application to span the traditional purchase to pay (…