Editor’s Note: Welcome to February’s edition of our Technology Round-Up. Over the past month, we’ve tracked so many exciting developments within the supply management solution provider market that we decided to publish this month’s Technology Round-Up in three parts. Part I (published this morning) and Part II (below) feature solution innovation and provider partnerships, while Part III (next week) will feature financial news from the solution provider market. There’s something for everyone in this month’s edition, so we invite you to stay tuned. Now, without further ado, here’s the other half of the news that’s fit to print….
Technology Round-Up – February 17, 2015 – Part II
Coupa Acquires ZenPurchase, Partners with Trustweaver
Last week, California-based Coupa Software, a provider of cloud-based spend management solutions, announced that it has acquired ZenPurchase, an eProcurement solution provider also located in California. Coupa will incorporate ZenPurchase’s cloud-based, collaborative procurement tool into its own cloud-based application, with the aim to simplify the procurement process for users of Coupa’s platform. According to Coupa’s CEO, Rob Bernshteyn, “Like Coupa, ZenPurchase was founded with the belief that traditional procurement systems were far too complicated for companies to adopt them across their organizations. The addition of ZenPurchase’s team and technology will strengthen our products and deliver key capabilities that Coupa customers can use to drive real savings and enhance their company profitability.” In that vein, ZenPurchase’s employees have joined the Coupa team and will continue to develop innovative yet simplified procurement and spend management solutions under the Coupa brand.
Coupa also announced last month that it has partnered with TrustWeaver, a global value-added tax (VAT) compliance solution provider based in Sweden to integrate its tool into Coupa’s array of cloud-based e-invoicing solutions. The inclusion of TrustWeaver’s solution into Coupa’s cloud-based platform allows local, regional, national, and global VAT to be updated in real-time, ensuring that COupa users are working with the most up-to-date VAT standards, and driving higher compliance. According to Coupa, its users transact with over a million suppliers in over 100 countries, illustrating the wide applicability of the feature. Thus, “Coupa’s unique implementation of TrustWeaver delivers all the benefits of electronic invoicing in jurisdictions across the globe – without the need for our customers to monitor changing law and regulations,” said Raja Hammoud, vice president of product management at Coupa.
Vinimaya Announces Visual Search Capability for New eProcurement Solution
On February 4, Cincinnati-based Vinimaya, an eProcurement and supplier catalog management solution provider, announced that its newest eProcurement system, the cloud-based vMarketPlace tool, now features a visual search capability that can greatly improve the enterprise buying experience for its users. The tool allows users to search multiple online supplier catalogs and pull results into a heat map that is organized based on search criteria. Users can then drill down on specific products and refine their results in the process, allowing buyers to have the most relevant and helpful results automatically brought to them. According to Vinimaya CEO, John Hutchinson, “It will significantly advance the simplicity and relevance of corporate buying and transform the way vMarketPlace shoppers find supplier goods and services.”
BSI Launches Two New Supply Risk and Compliance Management Tools
In late January, London-based BSI Supply Chain Solutions Group (BSI) announced that it has recently launched two new supply risk and compliance management tools, Supply Compliance Manager (SCM) and Supply Chain Risk Exposure Evaluation Network (SCREEN) that will help supply management professionals visualize and analyze global supply risks. SCREEN provides enterprise users with actionable risk intelligence based on more than 20 risk indicators from over 200 countries, covering man-made and natural-disaster risks, as well as corporate social responsibility and business continuity risks across the globe. For its part, SCM provides enterprise procurement teams with an automated and customizable risk visualization, scoring, and assessment tool that allows teams to perform internal audits and risk assessments on individual suppliers, categories, or regions.
When used in conjunction, SCREEN and SCM can help enterprise risk management teams paint a clearer and more holistic picture of the risks that they need to manage, particularly as enterprise risk management has become a moving target with an ever increasing list of risks to track and manage. As Dan Purtell, Sr. Vice President of GRC Solutions put it, “BSI’s SCREEN and SCM solutions allow firms to map, quantify and predict the hidden exposures within their global supply chain operations and trade compliance programs. The expansion into risk-based Social Responsibility and Business Continuity compliance allows firms to manage all their trade compliance programs in a single solution.”
Insight Venture Partners Acquires E2Open
Earlier this month, E2Open (NASDAQ:EOPN), a cloud-based supply chain management and business planning and execution solution provider headquartered in California, announced that it is being acquired by private equity firm, Insight Venture Partners in a deal worth roughly $273 million. E2Open shareholders are being asked to tender their shares, which are valued at $8.60, and are 41% higher than E2Open’s stock at market’s close on February 4. E2Open’s Board of Directors has unanimously approved the deal, which should be completed by the end of the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2016. According to Mark Woodward, E2Open’s CEO and President, “we are excited about the prospect of partnering with Insight Venture Partners, a firm with an established track record and deep domain expertise in software.” As a result of the acquisition, Woodward expects that “E2open will be able to focus on long-term investment and growth, which will benefit our employees, customers and partners.”
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