CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with another assortment of solution provider news and updates from the past month to share with our community. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you have news to share with us, please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!

Beeline and IQNavigator Announce Post-Merger Product Updates

Back in December, VMS powerhouses Beeline and IQNavigator shocked the contingent workforce industry by announcing a merger, bringing together two of the market’s biggest technology providers under a single company. Now, three months after merging under the Beeline brand, the two companies have announced some initial synergies. Beeline customers can now experience faster software integrations with drag-and-drop capability, and compare data using the Automated Talent Ontology Machine. Likewise, IQN customers can now source directly from talent pools without supplier interference, and optimize their VMS performance with web acceleration. Customers from both companies will eventually be able to utilize mobile approval, time entry, and MSP communication capabilities using either iPhone or Android applications. They will soon also have access to supplier guidance functionality, mainly supplier comparisons, trends, and recommendations.

Coupa Acquires Trade Extensions

In case you missed it, Coupa Software (Nasdaq: Coup), the San Francisco-based provider of supply management solutions in the cloud, announced that it has acquired Trade Extensions, the Sweden-based provider of advanced sourcing solutions, in a deal worth $45 million in cash and stock. The acquisition appears to be a strategic move for Coupa to round out its strategic sourcing capabilities, and is its second acquisition of the year. It also forms a pattern for Coupa in acquiring niche solution providers to build out its end-to-end, source-to-settle offerings. Readers may recall that in early January, Coupa acquired Spend360 (click here to read our coverage) in a move to bolster its spend analytics capabilities. Founded in 2009 by President and CEO, Rob Bernshteyn (click here and here to read our “Procurement Influencer” profile articles of Rob), Coupa became a publicly-traded company in October 2016.

SAP Ariba Partners with OutsideIQ to Bolster Supplier Risk Management

It was recently announced that SAP Ariba has partnered with OutsideIQ in an effort to bolster Ariba’s supplier risk management capabilities on the Ariba Network. The partnership will allow SAP Ariba customers to leverage OutsideIQ’s DDIQ (“Due Diligence IQ”) supplier risk assessment solution and enable them to better vet their extended supplier base and avoid/manage the inherent risks across their supply chain.

DDIQ leverages machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, or what they call “cognitive” capabilities, to simulate human due diligence/research activities and develop risk profiles. It then applies these profiles to corporate entities and individuals, scours the open and deep web for structured and unstructured data that could be problematic, and flags it for review. This allows users to scale their research efforts across a wider target set to fulfill due diligence and compliance duties. SAP Ariba intends to integrate DDIQ onto its Supplier Risk application and enable users to apply it to third parties.

Product features include automated, continuous monitoring in real-time, as well as the ability to view flagged risks at a particular point in time, and compile the events in an auditable report. Other features include the ability to search within 48 different languages across different countries and jurisdictions, as well as ancillary searches that are automatically conducted on the company officers and directors of flagged companies. Information retrieved is automatically placed within the company’s risk report for further review.

Accenture Partners with SAP Ariba, Launches Sourcing and Procurement Solution

In more Ariba News, Chicago-based Accenture, the management consulting firm and technology systems integrator, recently announced that it has partnered with Ariba to launch what it calls its “High Velocity Sourcing and Procurement” solution. This appears to be a re-packaged version of SAP Ariba’s cloud-based source-to-pay solution that incorporates lessons learned from past implementations. Accenture is offering the solution after assisting with more than 75 SAP Ariba solution implementations, and is passing on a “pre-configured, fully functional, cloud-based package” to prospective SAP Ariba customers that seek a faster, smoother, lower-risk implementation.

Jaggaer Announces Gazelle 17.1 Update for Product Line

Jaggaer, the North Carolina-based eProcurement spend management solutions company formerly known as SciQuest, very recently announced Phase One of a product update for its spend management solution it has dubbed Gazelle 17.1. The Ardent Partners analyst team had the chance to speak with members of the Jaggaer team, who provided some additional color to the update. Gazelle, a fast-moving game animal that is elusive to hunters (sidenote: Jaggaer is a derivative of the German word for hunter), is the first in a series of product updates that the company will deploy this year. Phase One updates include:

• enhanced Spend Analytics with a hybrid search engine and data visualization;
• new search criteria for its Portfolio Savings Manager application;
• an updated contract management solution that delivers greater contract risk management via improved contract review processes and controls;
• integration with DocuSign to enhance supplier collaboration, registration, and payment remittance;
• simplified bidding and award controls, like pre-configured tables, that ought to help users compare prices between vendors and reduce costs.

Post Script: Are you free next Thursday, April 27 at 2 PM EST? Ardent Partners’ Chief Research Officer, Andrew Bartolini, will deliver a free, half-hour webinar previewing the results from his annual benchmark research report, CPO Rising 2017: The Tools of the Trade. It’s free to attend. Simply click this link to register!

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