On Friday, October 16, Selectica, Inc, the San Mateo, CA-based provider of supply management solutions, and the parent company of Iasta and b-pack, announced that it has rebranded itself as Determine, Inc, and is consolidating its subsidiaries and solutions under one brand and platform, strengthening its position as a source-to-pay (S2P) solution provider. As of Monday, October 19th Determine, Inc. will now be traded on the NASDAQ as DTRM. The rebranding and consolidation comes just six months after Selectica acquired procure-to-pay (P2P) solution provider, b-pack, and more than a year after it acquired sourcing and supplier management solution provider, Iasta (interested readers can find Ardent Partners’ analysis of the deals by clicking on the following articles: Selectica Selects Iasta (Announces Plan to Acquire), Instant Analysis: Selectica Acquires b-pack for $12.5 Million).
The analyst team at Ardent Partners caught up with Constantine Limberakis, Director of Product Marketing at Determine, to learn more about the rebranding effort, what a consolidated Determine will bring to the supply management market, and where they see the company and market heading in 2016 and beyond.
What’s Old is New Again
According to Limberakis, “the name Selectica didn’t evoke the meaning and the concept that we wanted to portray in the marketplace.” So in the quest to succinctly and neatly capture all that Selectica, Iasta, and b-pack bring to the table – (spend analytics, sourcing, contract management, enterprise contract lifecycle management (ECLM), supplier management, and P2P) – the executive team considered their options. Ultimately, they decided to use a name that Selectica had acquired some years back, Determine, providing a single name with a meaning on its own.
“While we had deep experience in our respective solution areas as three companies, today we are one company under a unified technology platform. Going forward with a new name and logo really helps convey this message to the marketplace.” said Limberakis.
Indeed, Determine’s lineage goes back nearly 20 years when Selectica was founded in 1996 as a configured price quote (CPQ) solution provider. Iasta was established in 2000 providing sourcing and auction services, while b-pack was also founded in 2000, in France, as a P2P provider. Since then, the solution providers have evolved and matured from pure-play providers to more robust vendors, and then became part of Selectica.
Unifying Under One Brand, One Platform, One Team
According to Limberakis, unifying under one brand allows Determine to leverage untapped synergies within source-to-pay, notably its cloud-based platform and suite of solutions, which resided under each brand. Determine is quickly integrating its legacy solutions onto the unified, cloud-based source-to-pay platform that is built upon Amazon Web Services. In doing so, it hopes to bring the advantages of the cloud to its customers: a user-friendly, mobile-friendly, highly accessible, and secure platform that fosters collaboration with business partners.
“Where it already exists and we don’t want to recreate, we’ll take the functionality from Iasta and Selectica and integrate that onto Determine’s platform, as well, for an integrative, best-of-breed approach,” noted Limberakis. This integration will include Iasta’s SmartSource features, and Selectica’s Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). According to Limberakis, Determine’s enterprise-led CLM is also unique within the market in that it reaches across the enterprise – rather than just within procurement or legal – to get an enterprise view of contracts and manage them cradle-to-grave.
As part of its business network strategy and open API concept, Determine is working with other third party solution providers, like Readsoft, WEX and Tradeshift, to bring in downstream processes and applications, like P2P and AP Automation, to Determine’s platform to make it a true source-to-pay solution that is open and agile. It is also providing customers with the flexibility to build custom business applications on top of Determine’s platform, like a travel and expense (T&E) management application, but continue to use a common workflow and master data.
According to Limberakis, Determine has already aligned the sales, marketing, and product development teams from Selectica, Iasta, and b-pack, while they finish coordinating corporate operations, integrating technology systems and infrastructures.
What’s Next for Determine
“Bolstered by a grant from the French government to study Big Data, Determine is looking to integrate Big Data and machine learning onto the platform”, said Limberakis. On a related note, they also have plans to improve the platform’s user interface. Determine expects the new Determine platform to be fully deployed in 2016. In the meantime, they will continue to support the legacy b-pack, Iasta, and Selectica platforms, features, and applications.
Final Thoughts
Led by new CEO, Patrick Stakenas, Determine has had a busy year – one focused on acquisition and transformation. So, its announcement to rebrand itself as a unified source-to-pay solution provider (and follow up by unifying legacy applications and solutions onto one common platform) is a logical and sensible step forward for Determine. By integrating proven applications and solutions across the strategic sourcing and procure-to-pay spectrum, and by putting them on a cloud-based platform that can leverage big data, machine learning, and common workflows, they hope to attract more customers who desire a “one stop shopping” experience for all of their needs. And by allowing outside vendors to integrate their applications atop of Determine’s platform, and by providing an open API for ground-up application development, Determine is focused on making its platform flexible for its customers.
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