A few of life’s great mysteries: (1) Are we alone in the universe? (2) What is the meaning of life? (3) How in the world is Howie Mandel still on television? and (4) Why has the adoption of eSourcing tools by enterprise procurement/sourcing teams been so slow?… There are of course, many, many more.
While I occasionally think about the longer list of mysteries, I have actually spent a fair amount of my professional career over the last two decades focused very specifically on how to overcome the challenges of adopting and using eSourcing tools. Because of this, I have great affinity for the founders of Scout, because they are one of the few companies also focused on solving the eSourcing adoption issue.
Spark 2018: Scout’s Inaugural User Conference
Scout, the upstart company making waves in the strategic sourcing software market, hosted its inaugural user conference this week in San Francisco and it was an impressive first showing for such a relatively young company. The Scout founders said that approximately 300 attendees had registered for the event representing 160 different companies. The morning of the all-day conference was a great blend of Scout executives, customer presentations, and Q&A interviews.
Two of the four company founders, Stan Garber and Alex Yakubich kicked off the show with a review of the Scout story, a current state view of the company, and of the overall Scout vision. From its humble beginnings just a few years ago, these leaders reported several impressive numbers including 70 employees, 129 customers, 21,526 events run to date, and almost 82,000 users (including suppliers). Stan shared with the audience that when they were starting Scout, he and his partners weren’t sourcing experts, but rather, software experts. Stan, Alex, and the other two founders (Chris Crane and Andrew Durlak) conducted more than 200 interviews of sourcing professionals in order to fully understand the current marketplace and what was needed most to push eSourcing usage forward. After the exercise, the foursome resolved in their initial corporate vision to “make an impact” and offer a solution that enables (A) High Adoption (B) Fast Speed-to-Value and (C) An Enjoyable Experience. Today the team defines its mission as simply “making sourcing teams more effective.”
Like its mission, Scout’s solution footprint also continues to evolve beyond its eSourcing roots. Today, Scout also offers what it refers to as a “CRM tool for sourcing” (called Intake and Pipeline) that focuses on tracking and reporting sourcing projects as well as a contract management repository. The founders also announced from the stage, the formal release of its new supplier performance module with plans for a supplier on-boarding and a “Sourcing Impact Report” (a dashboard focused on analytics and reporting) among other solutions that are on the 2018 roadmap.
Customer Stories
The rest of the morning included a more detailed discussion of Scout’s product roadmap as well as a series of customer stories shared by presentation and customer Q&A. Here are some customer highlights:
Neil Aronson, Head of Global Strategic Sourcing at Uber discussed the growth of his team in 2017 from 6 FTEs to 20 and how they introduced a new engagement model to help scale operations and ensure that their new sourcing guidelines and policies took hold. I was pleased to hear that Neil and his team also met the CFO to clearly define metrics and that his team is not focused on pulling savings out of stakeholder budgets and returning them to the corporate coffers. Neil said that Uber plans to expand on their current use of the Scout eSourcing platform and roll-out Intake and Pipeline and the new Supplier Performance management module.
Mark Zafra, Head of Global Sourcing at Twitter spoke more broadly about the value of supplier performance management and what he expects Twitter could do with the new solution.
The Easyjet team from London noted that their team had achieved sourcing success by keeping it simple and taking out anything that didn’t add value.
And, Silicon Valley Procurement Legend, Greg Tennyson gave a great broad overview of his company’s big successes in using Scout.
Final Thoughts
From its earliest days, Scout has been very effective at getting its name out into the market. This is evidenced by the many conversations my team and I have had with sourcing teams over the past three years. It is also evidenced by the customer, event, user counts, and the audience at the inaugural Spark conference. With a round of funding raised in 2017 and a clear product strategy for 2018 and beyond, the company should continue to get its name into more strategic sourcing RFPs and disrupt this part of the market.
RELATED RESEARCH
CPO Rising 2017 Report: Extreme Technology Adoption
eSourcing 2.0: Making the Case – Reprise
Beyond Price: Finding the Right Suppliers Using Sophisticated Sourcing Strategies
How Source-to-Settle Solutions Manage (and Leverage) Big Data – eSourcing
How New or Improved Technologies Can Transform Procurement – Spend Analysis and eSourcing
The Four Pillars of the Modern Strategic Sourcing Program
eSourcing Myths (and How to Deconstruct Them)
