CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with another assortment of supply management technology 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!

Sparks fly for Scout RFP’s Supplier Performance Management

Coupa Announces Q4 and FY 2018 Financial Performance Results

Transparency-One Adds New Features to Supply Chain Platform

Equidato Technologies, Ernst & Young Partner on Automotive Blockchain Platform

Resilinc, RapidRatings Partner, Mate Supply Chain Resiliency with Corporate Financial Health Ratings

Infor and Deem Collaborate on T&E Expense Management

Sparks fly for Scout RFP’s Supplier Performance Management

In case you missed it, Scout RFP, the San Francisco-based provider of cloud-based strategic sourcing tools, announced at at SPARK last month the release of its newest cloud-based application, Supplier Performance Management (click here to read Andrew’s coverage of the event). Based on customer feedback, Scout’s release of Supplier Performance Management (SPM) is part of a larger product release that it is undertaking throughout 2018. In this initial launch, SPM bridges the gap between sourcing events and supplier risk management, bringing together enterprise stakeholders within the application and enabling them to coordinate and collaborate seamlessly. It allows procurement teams to be able to assess past and current supplier erformance and using that assessment, to then be able to conduct future analysis, include supplier risk analysis. SPM also includes a supplier development tool that allows procurement teams to be able to put together supplier development plans and to be able to track supplier performance within the tool.

Coupa Announces Q4 and FY 2018 Financial Performance Results

Very recently, Coupa Software (NASDAQ: COUP), a San Francisco-based spend management solutions provider, released financial performance results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year for 2018, which ended on January 31 of this year. According to Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa, the company had a record-breaking year. It nearly doubled the amount of spend under management its products were able to pull for its customers, climbing from $365 billion in 2017 to $680 billion in 2018. Rob has set the company’s sites on capturing greater market share and by 2019 reaching a trillion dollars of spend under management. Highlights from Q4 2018 include:

• $53.8 million in total revenue, up 41% from Q4 2017;
• $46.6 million in subscription-based revenues, up 38% from Q4 2017;
• $9.1 million in operating losses, up nearly 30% from Q4 2017;
• $8.7 in net losses, up roughly 25% from Q4 2017;
• -$1.7 million in operating cash flows and -$2.6 million in free cash flows

Although the fourth quarter was a bit dicey for Coupa, 2018 performance as a whole was brighter:

• $186.8 million in total revenue, up 40% from 2017;
• $164.9 million in subscription-based revenues, up 38% from Q 2017;
• $45 million in operating losses, up nearly 28% from 2017;
• $43.8 in net losses, up roughly 16% from 2017;
• $19.8 million in operating cash flows and $15.3 million in free cash flows

Transparency-One Adds New Features to Supply Chain Platform

Earlier this month, Transparency-One, a Boston- and Paris-based provider of supply chain intelligence and risk management solutions, announced that it has added several robust features to its platform, most notably a more granular data analytics capability, drill-down capability, Blockchain ledgers, and data visualization tools. Users now have the ability to analyze very granular product and component information, down to batches and POs, and track and trace them from “source to store.” Users can also use drill down from their global supply chain map to a granular level of detail to undertake specific actions, like pulling specific batches of products during a recall rather than a mass recall.

Transparency-One has also announced the availability of its Blockchain digital ledger that it has integrated within its platform, allowing users to load all of their supplier, supplier certification, category, batch lot, and purchase order information onto the Blockchain to serve as a permanent, irreversible, and secure system of record. Readers might recall that back in October, we covered Transparency-One’s partnership with Microsoft to integrate the Azure-based Blockchain onto Transparency-One’s platform. Since then, they have taken a hybrid approach to integrating the Blockchain by centralizing it within the Transparency-One platform while enabling users to own it in a decentralized manner. In doing so, Transparency-One users will now be able to leverage the power of each other’s data on the Blockchain while still maintaining ownership on their end.

Transparency-One has also added several other features to its platform, like: the ability to monitor critical supply chain information, such as CSR, safety, and sustainability measures; the ability to gather data from suppliers via surveys and inquire about things like CSR, safety, sustainability, and compliance measures; the ability to visualize their supply chains and supplier bases from a very high level down to a very granular level, looking at things like risk of modern slavery in their supply chains, compliance to regulations, etc.; and the ability to create custom dashboards that tracks specific things, like supply chains, suppliers, risks, and compliance levels.

Equidato Technologies, Ernst & Young Partner on Automotive Blockchain Platform

Earlier this month, Equidato Technologies, a Switzerland-based provider of the Blockchain platform, SophiaTX, informed us that it has partnered with management consulting firm, Ernst & Young, in an effort to develop a Blockchain digital ledger specifically for the automotive industry. The idea behind this partnership is to get all of the various stakeholders that are involved in the automotive production process operating on a common system that will drive transparency, traceabillity, reliability, security, and permanence through the automotive supply chain.

Equidato and Ernst & Young are also looking to enable the Blockchain solution to integrate with ERP and ERP-type solutions in order to help manufacturers and suppliers use the Blockchain to enhance their inventory management, stock optimization, just-in-time deliveries, and the like. Being able to cut down on lost, stolen, damaged, or defective goods and components, as well as decrease on-hand inventory levels, increase cash liquidity, and tighten the overall automotive manufacturing process ultimately ought to result in lower costs all around — from the suppliers and manufacturers all the way down to the customers.

Resilinc, RapidRatings Partner, Mate Supply Chain Resiliency with Corporate Financial Health Ratings

Earlier this month, California-based Resilinc, which develops cloud-based global supply chain risk intelligence and management solutions, announced that it has partnered with RapidRatings, a New York-based provider of financial health analytics, in an effort to embed Rapid’s financial health analytics tool onto Resilinc’s WAVZ supply chain risk intelligence platform. Rapid’s tool, which provides financial health assessments and ratings from 12 months to 10 years, will join Resilinc’s platform via an API. Both the platform and the analytic tool will be available to each other’s customers and provide them with a unified view into supply chain risk and supplier financial health, in particular, without having to toggle between different applications or sources. It will also enable users to look across their supply chains and drill down into supply chains, looking for single-source or high-risk suppliers, suppliers operating in higher risk locations, their supply chain resiliency, the resiliency of a supplier site, etc.

Infor and Deem Collaborate on T&E Expense Management

Lastly, Infor, the New York-based provider of business applications and solutions for the cloud, announced that it has partnered with Deem, the San Francisco-based provider of cloud-based expense management solutions, in an effort to integrate their travel and expense (T&E)  management solutions. Specifically, the two companies will integrate Deem’s Work Fource with Infor’s Expense Management tool to synergize capabilities available on both offerings. Work Fource will enable users to book travel and related expenses and automatically load that data onto the T&E tool for records keeping, approval, and individual employee management. And pairing it with Infor’s Expense Management tool means having access to a cloud-based, mobile ready application that gives travelers access to their information while on the go.

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