Complexity is the name of the game in today’s globalized, interconnected business world. Who companies are connected to and how you communicate and collaborate matters more than ever. This means that whether you’re a Fortune 50 manufacturer or a Global 2000 CPG firm, you need to pay your suppliers in a reasonable timeframe. There are several ways to make this happen, but one of the most advanced is called a business network.

Nipendo, an Israel-based company, provides just such a network. In particular, the Nipendo Supplier Cloud automates the procure-to-pay (P2P) process through its cloud-based platform that allows buyers and suppliers to submit, process, and pay invoices through the same portal by connecting directly machine to machine, or via a cloud-based printer. This is all done with the goal of connecting buyers and their suppliers in such a way to allow their eInvoicing capabilities to keep up with the speed of business.

The Foundation

CEO Eyal Rosenberg and CTO Alon Rosenberg co-founded the company in 2007 with the goal of connecting businesses to their suppliers in a seamless, paperless, and frictionless manner. Seven years later, Nipendo boasts thousands of suppliers on their platform and a plug-and-play solution that avoids the hassle of custom coding and long implementations.

Nipendo’s long focus on the P2P market has led to insights into what the line-of-business user cares about and prioritizes. As Nipendo VP of Marketing Eran Livneh noted to us recently, Nipendo sees most companies focus on managing specific P2P activities rather than taking a more comprehensive approach to the area. Rather than looking at P2P as a holistic issue, he said, companies have tended to look for different solutions to the different problems and sub-processes that exist across P2P: indirect PO generation gets one provider, direct gets another, and invoicing is an entirely different consideration altogether. Nipendo seeks to provide that more holistic P2P solution that allows for everything to happen within the same platform. But how?

Where Nipendo Fits In

Nipendo Supplier Cloud, like many business networks, has as its premise the connection of buyers and suppliers. The basic thought is that if you can connect companies on both sides of the accounts payable equation via the same system, you can move more quickly to straight-through processing, which limits human interaction and errors and allows for fewer full-time accounts payable staff to process the same–or higher–numbers of invoices.

Nipendo is intriguing because of its plug-and-play nature. Some companies, according to Livneh, look at Nipendo as a way to augment their current EDI programs, while others (including some high-tech clients) view the Nipendo solution as a way to leapfrog EDI all together.

According to CEO Rosenberg, Nipendo’s ultimate goal is to become the best-of-breed P2P solution in the marketplace and Nipendo has taken a partnership approach in the near-term to get there, enhancing its solution footprint through a number of strategic partnerships. A few months ago, we wrote about one such deal with Integrate Financial. Another is with SynerTrade, which allows Nipendo to actively compete in larger “source-to-settle” suite deals. More broadly, Nipendo sees its solution as a platform that can be used to offer other providers’ solutions or “apps” that can be accessed seamlessly within the Nipendo network (a concept similar to Apple’s App store)

Getting Priorities in Order

About 60% of Nipendo’s revenues goes toward research and development, Rosenberg told us recently. This is critical for the company at large, since Nipendo’s grand vision is to make its Supplier Cloud the P2P platform of choice for end-users and the partner of choice for other technology providers. Investments are being made to make the platform as open as possible so that new partners and new applications can be easily launched and accessed by network participants.

With its open platform, Nipendo prioritizes adding more capabilities through strategic partnerships and its own development, which it believes will enable the momentum of customer and supplier growth to continue. This current size and growth of their network is what makes partnerships so appealing for third parties like SynerTrade, which is potentially able to access an entirely new customer base.

Why a Business Network?

Business networks, as we’ve previously explained (What Every Executive Should Know about B2B Networks), are gaining momentum in this age that values speed, connectivity, and collaboration. Between President Obama’s SupplierPay initiative and the recent push in the United Kingdom to pay small suppliers faster, it’s no wonder that interest in speeding the procure-to-pay process has gained in importance.

Nipendo’s solution fits in the business network space with a focus on eInvoicing, and so far connects thousands of trading partners through their cloud-based platform, including big name customers such as HP, IBM, Motorola, and Teva. Companies large and small have signed onto Nipendo’s supplier cloud platform, which may have something to do with the software’s simplicity and Nipendo’s guarantee on the levels of eInvoicing automation each customer will achieve.

The Nipendo Supplier Cloud Formula

Nipendo focuses on three processes in their supplier cloud offering: (1) the PO process (2) the goods receipt process, and (3) invoicing. In each instance, Nipendo touts an advanced, but configurable, workflow.

Nipendo’s goal for each of the three processes is to enable an automated end-to-end process, allowing Nipendo to help many of its customers achieve a reported 90% straight-through processing rate for all invoices (well above the industry average of 27% as discussed in our recent research). One key reason Nipendo’s customers are able to achieve such high levels of straight-through processing is the invoice validation process that suppliers face before they can submit an invoice in the Nipendo solution. At the buyer’s discretion, supplier invoices can be validated in the Nipendo system against any number of documents including the PO, contract, and goods receipt. These validation parameters require suppliers to fix any invoice errors or issues before their invoices can be submitted, speeding the process on the buyer side once an invoice is received.

Nipendo’s solution works on a plug-and-play methodology somewhat akin to plugging a USB flash drive into your computer. The cloud-based system has standard integrations with the most common ERPs and supports common file standards such as EDI and cXML, among others. There’s also a secure gateway in the Nipendo solution for managed file transfer, and a Cloud Printer application that allows suppliers to “print” a PDF invoice directly into the Nipendo platform. Nipendo’s management was quick to note that they can integrate with practically any back-end system, which is apparent from their partnership strategy to add functionality.

What’s Coming Next?

With regards to the Nipendo Supplier Cloud itself, CEO & Co-founder, Eyal Rosenberg said that the company plans to focus on extending its current solution set more broadly into P2P automation and will do so via the development of its own solutions and more strategic partnerships.

While Nipendo is a newer name in the U.S., they’re not a new entrant to the larger market, having begun in Israel in 2007. And, with its core solution and a strong track record with its customers in Israel, Nipendo has a great foundation that will help it advance and compete in both the business network and P2P solutions markets. Whatever the next six months brings, it’s sure to be interesting for Nipendo, its customers, and its partners.

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Tagged in: Networks, P2P, Solution Providers, Source-to-Settle, Sourcing, Suppliers, Technology