CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with assortment of supply management technology news and updates from the past month to share with our community. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you have news to share with us, please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!

Tradeshift Releases Third-Quarter Financials, Partners with Coface

Last month,  Tradeshift, the cloud-based business network headquartered in San Francisco, released financial performance results for the third quarter of 2018. Company officials claimed that this was the tenth consecutive quarter that Tradeshift has reported growth and over-performed its targets. Third-quarter highlights include:

• 400% year-over-year revenue growth
• 284% year-over-year bookings growth
• 262% year-over-year gross merchandise volume growth
• $47m new total contract value growth in Q3, up 33% from Q2
• 27 new customers across six different industries

Tradeshift also announced a new strategic partnership with Coface, a Paris-based global credit insurer, that will see the two companies share information with each other in an effort to drive greater transparency into supplier financial health and reduce risks for buyers. The two companies are working on integrating their systems and solutions to offer customers a holistic supplier risk management capability. But the first tangible product of this partnership will be an app that Coface is integrating on the Tradeshift platform that will enable Tradeshift users to access Coface’s services and assess their suppliers’ financial health.

Beeline Partners with Pinnacle Group

Global Vendor Management System (VMS), Beeline, announced that is has partnered with fellow workforce management solutions provider, Pinnacle Group, in an effort to enhance the contingent workforce management (CWM) programs of each other’s customers. Beeline, which is based in Jacksonville, FL, was particularly interested in partnering with a woman- and minority-owned business as part of its approach to helping to manage the contingent labor of its customers, which spans from temporary labor to outsourced labor. For its part, Pinnacle Group will leverage Beeline’s self-sourcing and process automation tools to help its customers enhance their CWM programs across different geographic and regulatory markets.

Jaggaer Adds Data Warehousing Capabilities to Advanced Sourcing Optimizer

Last month, JAGGAER, the North Carolina-based provider of source-to-settle solutions, informed us that it has added data warehousing and visualization capabilities to its Advanced Sourcing Optimizer (ASO) tool in an effort to enhance visibility and control for customers that conduct what they call complex sourcing events. The new Data Warehouse and Visualization module was designed with customer input to serve as a “one stop dashboard” for sourcing teams to access all of the relevant data in a given sourcing event. With this visibility and control in hand, sourcing teams will be better enabled to compare suppliers, identify bottlenecks, and avoid or manage risks in their supplier base.

Jaggaer’s Data Warehouse and Visualization module features two subsets of capabilities — In-Event Reporting and Cross Event Data Exploration. In-Event Reporting comes standard with the ASO tool and provides users with an interactive, customizable dashboard that fuses header-level spend and sourcing data and allows for a more granular look at sourcing events and suppliers, including side-by-side comparisons of multiple sourcing scenarios involving different suppliers and across regions. Cross Event Data Exploration appears to be a premium feature that can be added. It enables users to track and visualize usage, pricing, suppliers, and performance on a year-to-year and month-to-month basis using customizable, interactive dashboards that also incorporate real-time data.

Amazon Business Adds Prime Benefits to U.S., German, Japanese Markets

In other news, Amazon Business announced last month that it has added Business Prime Benefits for businesses of all sizes in the U.S., German, and Japanese markets. Customers of the B2C marketplace may be confused by the name and its implications: this is more than same-day delivery. In actuality, Business Prime is said to give B2B users greater visibility into enterprise spend and the ability to visualize that spend to identify new savings opportunities. It also provides managers with the ability to set policies on purchasing and integrate them with a Guided Buying feature. There are also payment/financial features available in Business Prime, and it gives users in the U.S. the option of receiving 5% back or 90-day terms on eligible purchases with the use of the Amazon Business American Express Card. It also provides options for extending terms and invoicing, and free same-day or one-day shipping on purchases above a certain dollar amount.

Bamboo Rose Introduces a Tariff Impact Tool for the Retail Industry

Earlier this month, Bamboo Rose, a Boston-area digital marketplace connecting retailers, suppliers, and third parties to quickly develop and deliver innovative products to consumer markets, announced that it has introduced a tariff impact tool for retail businesses. As the name implies, the tool is meant to help retailers understand in real time the impact that tariffs placed on certain goods and products by the Trump Administration will have on their operations. The tool is being offered as a plug in to its retailer-supplier innovation platform, and will provide users with instant cost analyses and the impact that a certain product, component, material, or supplier will have on its operations; and it will provide alternatives to help retailers minimize or avoid the impact.

Specifically, the Tariff Impact Tool will analyze a variety of variables at the country, supplier, order, program, and item level, “from design stage through manufacturing,” to produce a predicted cost impact assessment. It will help engineering teams consider alternative sourcing and materials for a given design, and suggest ways to swap out high-impact materials or components for lower-impact ones; or to suggest “insignificant product resigns” to decrease costs. It will also leverage Bamboo Rose’s existing what-if costing solution to enable buyers and suppliers to run hypothetical or comparative analyses, develop contingency plans, or simply better understand the uncertainty in the retail market vis-a-vis tariffs and a de facto trade war between the U.S. and one or more global trading partners.

AtWork Group Spins off MSP, Pipeline Talent Solutions

And finally, Knoxville, TN-based AtWork Group, a national staffing franchise, announced that it has spun off a sister firm, Pipeline Talent Solutions, as the company’s own Managed Service Provider (MSP). Pipeline will provide comprehensive contingent workforce management solutions, including VMS, to mid-market customers across the U.S. to help them holistically manage an increasingly diversifying workforce that blends traditional and non-employee talent. It will work with staffing firms and clients, and serve as a neutral party between them even as it endeavors to serve the interests of both stakeholders. Bryan Long will serve as Vice President of Operations and Jennifer Andrews will serve as Vice President of Sales.

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