This week, Ardent Partners unveils its second annual list of “CPO Rising Hot Tech Prospects” where we introduce and analyze the hot new prospects in the supply management technology market for 2015. Before we begin, let’s answer the big question — What’s the criteria for selecting a new prospect?

First, the emphasis here is on “new” when we use the term prospect; as such, established providers who have been successfully selling their solutions for years are not eligible. Second, the members of our “CPO Rising Class of 2015″ have had their early successes and are ready for the big leagues.

CPO Rising Hot Tech Prospect (2015) — Seal Software

Prospect “Bio”: Founded in 2010, Seal Software is a contract analytics and contract discovery solution provider that is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has offices in London, UK and Gothenburg, Sweden. Founders Ulf Zetterberg (CEO) and Kevin Gidney (CTO) leveraged their experience working in content management to develop a platform that takes contract management to the next level, allowing business leaders to find contractual documents throughout the enterprise and be alerted to significant contract data points and milestones in order to take favorable action. Contract Discovery can be added to existing enterprise solutions, such contract lifecycle management (CLM), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and make structured and unstructured data from across the enterprise accessible. Contract Analytics can call out non-standard clauses and text, important contractual dates and milestones, and hidden costs buried within contracts. End users can even “teach” the system how to perform to their needs. According to the company, Seal has over a hundred clients using its solutions.

Ardent Partners Expert Analysis: Seal has brought to market a solution that performs many of the same functions as spend analysis, but drills into contracts instead of spend. For those procurement organizations that have benefited from automated spend analysis, consider the value of gaining better visibility and insight into supplier contracts. Seal Software’s solutions fill some significant gaps within an enterprise’s contract management processes and systems, and extend their value beyond being a mere business process. Whereas before, structured and unstructured data would remain in silos throughout an organization and not provide any added value to the process, Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics can, in their own ways, tear down the silos holding the data and connect it throughout the contract management value chain. Contract Discovery allows key terms and conditions, service-level agreements, pricing, clauses, expiration dates, and regulatory / compliance information to be accessible by multiple stakeholders within the enterprise. For its part, Contract Analytics allows end users to automatically push pertinent contractual information directly to authorized stakeholders, enabling them to be proactive vis-à-vis emerging situations rather than reactive. Procurement, Operations, Logistics, Legal, AP/Finance, and other internal stakeholders can leverage these technologies in concert with other enterprise systems, such as CLM, CRM, and ERP, for an integrated and automated contract management process that is also holistic and accessible throughout the enterprise.

Congratulations to Seal Software on becoming our first CPO Rising 2015 Hot Tech Prospect!

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