In the course of our work for and discussions with large procurement departments over the past 12 months, GEP’s name has been coming up much more frequently than just a few years ago. Impressively, the solutions and services being provided by GEP in these discussions are quite broad, be it managed services, outsourcing, or solutions like spend analysis. They won one of the recent deals we were involved in and they have been on the short-list and/or a winner in several other P2P and Sourcing software deals that we’d been tracking through the end of 2014. For this reason, we decided to profile the company and discussed GEP’s services as well as its organizing principles and approach to the market (click each link to read the earlier parts). Today we share our views and feedback on the GEP solution suite based upon a demo led by Suresh Visvanathan, GEP’s Global VP of Procurement Technology Sales, as well as some recent client feedback.
SMART by GEP
For many years within procurement circles, GEP was viewed primarily as a services and outsourcing specialist that had clear domain and process expertise, a competitively-priced offering, and a global customer base to boot. But, GEP also offered a set of technology solutions that were underrated by most and seemingly a secondary focus of the company. That all changed about 15 months ago when the company launched SMART by GEP (which we discussed here), the company’s suite of solutions that is native to cloud, mobile, and touch. The launch was well-received and from our perspective showed that GEP had fully arrived as a competitive provider of supply management solutions, offering a suite that is worthy of consideration by procurement departments around the globe for their technology needs. At the time, I also felt that the launch showed that there was a clear willingness to invest in technology and that its technology suite would become an increasingly important part of the overall company’s business.
The suite is built on a single platform and is designed to manage the full breadth of sourcing and procurement processes with unified data, workflows, and reporting. But, what was most interesting at the time and still today is that the new suite properly anticipates the coming shift in the enterprise computing landscape. While most procurement departments (and enterprises as a whole) still manage their work using laptop and desktop computers, many analysts who track hardware usage believe that the shift to tablets and other smart devices is an inevitability. As Suresh told us, GEP’s product strategy is to deliver a comprehensive, cloud-based supply management suite that anticipates the new generation entering the workforce – one that is more tech-savvy and certainly more mobile – and delivers a solution suite that matches what GEP feels are the inevitable expectations of these new users. Nonetheless, what can be done in the GEP system on a laptop can also be done on a smart device. Suresh also noted other drivers behind the suite that include an increase in cross-functional collaboration and an associated need for reporting across those different functions.
Suresh tells us that the company feels strongly that because it leveraged its procurement subject matter and process expertise into its product design, GEP has developed a suite that can compete at the high end of the market, but can also compete at the point solution level. This view and approach aligns closely with GEP’s general approach to the procurement market in offering a broad set of solutions that maximize the potential entry points at a client.
From an integration or process flow standpoint, one of the areas that the team stressed to us in the demo is the seamless movement of data and information across the process or application areas. For example, a sourcing event could close with an award and that information could flow directly into a contract or from there into a catalog. Conversely, the system can also use ‘downstream’ information like a requisition or an existing contract as the basis for creating a new eRFx. This would, for example, allow a category manager to take an expiring contract and flip it into a new sourcing event. Looking at it yet another way, the system could use a requisition to create a new contract including line-item pricing or, based upon its customers’ business rules, could force a three bids and a buy competitive sourcing requirement and use the requisition information to populate a sourcing event. Additionally, it is important to note that while the SMART platform is new, the underlying capabilities have been developed by GEP over the years working with its earlier offering. This “history” has helped GEP in many ways including its ability to deliver a “new” P2P system that includes functionality typically only found in more mature solutions.
From a navigation standpoint, the system provides a series of chevrons to guide users through the different process flows and complete work activities. From a search standpoint, the GEP team described its functionality as “Amazon-like” in that it can search broadly across the system, but it can also do a targeted search within a specific business process (like sourcing or contracts) or category. From a network standpoint, GEP offers its own supplier network but also partners with Hubwoo, one of the largest business networks in the market.
Among the product innovations that have emerged since the initial SMART launch are a Category Workbench solution that delivers category best practices, tools, and templates; an Opportunity Finder that uses GEP’s proprietary methodology and the client’s business rules to identify cost-saving opportunities; a Business Network via GEP’s partnership with Hubwoo; and Financial Savings Management, which tracks savings and includes an active savings pipeline.
There were many takeaways from our demo and discussion, but, at the core, I think the main takeaway from today’s article is that GEP should be considered a competitive player in the supply management technology market.
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