CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with an 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 are continually innovating the way that procurement and supply chain leaders and practitioners drive value, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!
Corcentric Completes Acquisition of Determine Inc. for $32 Million
This week, Corcentric, the New Jersey-based provider of financial process automation and procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions, announced that it has completed its purchase of Determine, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTRM), the Indiana-based provider of contract management and source-to-settle solutions for the cloud. The sale was approved by the Board of Directors at both companies as well as Determine’s stockholders, and completed as an all-cash transaction for $32 million. As we wrote about when we first heard the news (click here), this acquisition enables the combined organization to provide a holistic and broad set of capabilities encompassing strategic sourcing and procurement consulting, a unified cloud platform for source-to-pay and contract lifecycle management, and comprehensive payment and financing solutions to improve working capital. The deal was advised by MidMarket Capital Advisors and Needham & Company, LLC. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and O’Melveny & Myers LLP acted as legal advisors.
Coupa Acquires Exari, Pushes for True Contract Lifecycle Management
Yesterday morning, Coupa Software (NASDAQ: COUP), the San Francisco-based business spend management (BSM) solutions provider, continued its hot buying streak when it announced its intention to acquire Exari for an undisclosed sum. Exari is a Boston-based provider of a cloud-based, end-to-end, contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform that enables users to migrate data and documents from sourcing events and build new contractual documents using a library of standard clauses and language. Users can collaborate with stakeholders across the contract lifecycle — from new contract ordering to creation, editing, review, and execution. Exari can also enable users to digitize its paper-based contracts — specifically, by creating thousands of disparate pieces of contract data (like clauses, expiration dates, keywords, etc.) from each supplier contract and indexing them within a searchable repository. To do this, Exari requires a digital document storage solution to house all of this data. Enter Coupa and its cloud-based platform.
By mating a robust, end-to-end CLM platform with its in-house (cloud-based) contract repository, Coupa intends to provide its users with the ability to manage their contracts across the entire buyer-supplier lifecycle. Users will be able to pull sourcing documents and agreements and standard clauses and language into a contract authoring tool to create a working contract. They will be able to collaboratively edit and negotiate terms and conditions, execute the contract with digital signatures, and then store it in Coupa’s central contract repository. From there, Exari’s contract discovery tool will digitally “tag” (classify) each operate word or clause in the contract, and enable users to search a contract or the entire body of contracts for key words and clauses. This ought to create valuable visibility into existing contracts and quickly and easily give users a sense of their exposure to contract risks.
Coupa officials expect to close on the deal in the second quarter of its fiscal year.
Proxima Acquires Supplier Social Media Analytics Provider, Meronimi
Last month, Proxima, a London and Chicago-based procurement consulting and managed services provider (MSP), announced that it has acquired Meronimi for an undisclosed sum. Meronimi is an Oxford, UK-based provider of supplier social media monitoring, analytics, and reporting solutions that allow procurement teams to keep tabs on their suppliers online (in digital print, social media, and online reviews), as well as print media. Users can leverage Meronimi’s IntelligenceHub to monitor multi-media formats for supplier risks, supplier innovations, and supply market events in general. By acquiring Meronimi, Proxima will endow its users with a real-time supplier intelligence and innovation discovery tool that ought to enable them to get ahead of supplier risks but also gain exposure to more innovations occurring within the larger supply chain/supplier market. According to company officials, Proxima will continue to invest in the Meronimi platform to further build out its capabilities.
Sievo Incorporates D&B Data into Procurement Analytics Platform
Last week, Sievo, the Helsinki-based provider of procurement analytics, announced that it has partnered with Bisnode, a Chicago-based Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Worldwide Network member, to incorporate D&B data into Sievo’s procurement and spend analytics platforms. The goal of the partnership and integration is to create a more holistic analysis of a company’s supplier relationships, and ultimately their performance and risk profiles. Company officials state that D&B supplier data will be automatically loaded into Sievo’s platform and regularly updated to provide Sievo users with access to up-to-date supplier intelligence.
Oracle Blockchain Platform Now Part of Everledger’s Provenance Tracking Tool
Late last month, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), the California-based provider of business applications, databases, and infrastructure, announced that its cloud-based Blockchain platform is now accessible through Everledger‘s digital provenance tracking tool. Everledger is a London-based Fintech digital ledger company that tracks and protects diamonds and other valuable items as they are shipped, and in the past, has partnered with SAP Ariba to develop and integrate Blockchain distributed digital ledgers to assist in the process.
By incorporating Oracle’s cloud-based Blockchain Platform into its own provenance-tracking solution, Everledger hopes to bring to users an array of innovative features and benefits. These include: greater access to data, particularly enterprise data on Oracle systems; the ability for users to tap this data in Oracle systems but then analyze it within Everledger’s platform; the ability to monitor system health with the help of APIs; its faster time-to-deployment given that it is an “out of the box, plug-and-play” solution; and the ability for enterprises to leverage their developer skills to develop added feature functionality, applications, interfacing, etc.
Elemica and Centrifuge Partner to Boost Financial Visibility via Blockchain
Last week, Pennsylvania-based Elemica, a supply chain business network solution provider, announced that it has partnered with Centrifuge in an effort to boost enterprise visibility into and control over supply chain financing and supply chain management. Centrifuge provides open Blockchain distributed digital ledgers for the global financial supply chain. By combining forces, Elemica and Centrifuge intend to allow multiple stakeholders (buyers, suppliers/vendors, and third-parties) to build their own Blockchain-based networks and tools to connect, transact, and execute tasks upon the completion of contract milestones (i.e., “smart contracts”). This is part of a broader effort to digitize and link processes and systems and transform procurement from a reactive, “back office” function to a proactive business unit that sits at the head of the class. One way to do that is to have a look inside their suppliers’ financial status, history, and vulnerabilities and get ahead of them as best as they can. Elemica’s partnership with Centrifuge ought to further advance a procurement team’s ability to monitor and proactively manage supplier financial status, performance, and any associated risk issues.
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