In late June, the 30 NBA teams spent an evening drafting the top college and international prospects in the world of basketball. In many ways, selecting the right supply management solution(s) is like the NBA Draft. There are published reports and there are experts and there is coverage of the market (As our loyal readers know, Ardent Partners does all three of these things and we believe we compare favorably to others both large and small in the market). And, just like the NBA draft, decisions are high-profile and have a lasting impact — selecting the right solution can drive a multi-year transformation, just as selecting the wrong solution can drive a procurement or P2P team directly into a ditch and cause a few heads to roll.
This brings us to our first annual CPO Rising Hot Tech Prospect list where we introduce and analyze the hot new prospects in the supply management technology market for 2014. Before we begin, let’s answer the big question — What’s the criteria for selecting a new prospect? [Sidebar: please feel free to direct any additional questions to me or editor@]
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 (they were drafted years ago and are seasoned veterans if we are to continue the NBA analogy). Second, like the top picks in this year’s NBA draft, the members of our “CPO Rising Class of 2014” have had their early successes and are now ready for the big leagues (literally).
The solutions provided by each Class of 2014 member vary, but what unifies them is that, over the past 12-18 months, each has arrived or graduated fully into the competitive supply management enterprise technology market (Note: There is context in the evaluation as our analyst team has been following each of these providers since their earliest days). What also unifies this year’s draft class is that we believe that each prospect is worthy of your consideration when you run your next supply management tech RFPs and select your supply management solutions. Ladies and gentlemen, your CPO Rising Hot Tech Prospect: Class of 2014.
CPO Rising Hot Tech Prospect (2014) — Tradeshift
Prospect “Bio”: Originally focused on eInvoicing when it was founded in 2009, the San Francisco-based Tradeshift expanded its solution focus to include a business network and platform that enables transactions, communication, and interaction between trading partners. Tradeshift reports that more than 500,000 suppliers are currently enabled on its network. The company has strategic partnerships with Intuit, which allows users to sign on to Tradeshift from within QuickBooks, and also Invoiceware International, which specializes in eInvoicing for Latin America – where there are specific regulations around eInvoicing. Tradeshift has offices in the U.S. London, and Copenhagen.
Ardent Partners Expert Analysis: Tradeshift is a not only a hot tech prospect in the world of supply management, it is also a hot tech prospect in all of business software. The company was founded in Denmark, but its CEO relocated to San Francisco to gain better access smart money (investors) and smart talent (employees). Today, Tradeshift is both well-funded and well-staffed, and has great momentum in the business network and P2P markets. The number of participants on the Tradeshift network is impressive considering the company’s young age; this is best explained by Tradeshift’s state-of-the art platform with highly usable and intuitive features that are similar, in many ways, to what is available in social networks today. Beyond growing a vibrant business network, Tradeshift also has the ambitious vision to become a platform for third-party developers to offer their solutions to their network’s participants; Tradeshift says that 30 apps are available today. With strong recent success and a vision to match, CPO Rising congratulates Tradeshift as a CPO Rising 2014 Hot Tech Prospect.
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