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!
BuyerQuest Feels the “Need for Speed” with New Payment Program
Last week, we learned that BuyerQuest, an Ohio-based provider of eProcurement and procure-to-pay (P2P) business solutions, has gone to market with an intelligent invoice matching program, “Speed to Payment.” The capability, its newest release, provides suppliers with new ways to submit invoices — by creating them directly from the Purchase Order email, in addition to eInvoicing, attaching them as PDFs, or submitting them via paper. The Speed to Payment program then intelligently matches and validates the invoice to the Purchase Order on file. The program also includes a new dashboard for Accounts Payable teams to access and quickly view status reports on suppliers, and enable them to manage supplier financial risks.
LevaData NPI Goes Live
Last month, LevaData, a California-based provider of cognitive or “smart” analytics technologies for procurement and sourcing, announced that it has launched LevaData NPI (New Product Introduction), an extension of LevaData’s Cognitive Sourcing Platform. LevaData NPI is intended to provide manufacturers’ product planning, development, and launch teams with a wealth of information prior to manufacturing and releasing a new product, starting with the development of a Bill of Material (BOM).
LevaData NPI intelligently analyzes procurement data and incorporates buyer and seller data stored on the LevaData network to provide product teams with deep insight into cost reduction/avoidance opportunities and risks associated with developing and producing a new product. It examines the costs and risks associated with, for example, sole sourcing from a single supplier, sourcing a part that is nearing its end of life, and potential future supply risks (e.g., financial health, geographic location, quality, etc.).
LevaData NPI also helps product teams manage internal, program risk by alerting team members of upcoming milestones and deadlines, and the status of program/product KPIs. It also integrates with other tools across the product development team, like product design and product lifecycle management, and in so doing, can promote collaboration between these stakeholders, as well as finance, operations, procurement, and supply chain management.
Contract Managers Need a Hero — ContractZen Found One
Late last month, ContractZen, a SaaS-based contract management and digital collaboration solutions provider co-located in Helsinki, Finland and Palo Alto, California, announced that it has partnered with SignHero to incorporate its free eSignature capability for end users. Users can access SignHero’s eSignature solution by signing up for a free trial of ContractZen. The latter company states that its solutions are optimized for small and mid-sized businesses operating around the world, whose users can access applications on the go.
SyncFab Releases Updates to Blockchain-based Platform
Last week, SyncFab, a San Francisco-based supply chain management and procurement solution provider specializing in smart manufacturing, informed us that is has updated its Hyperledger-based Blockchain platform for manufacturing with a slew of features. Updates to the Platform include a new account team management feature that enables buyers to onboard multiple users from one supplier and also validate suppliers’ capabilities and quality. Another update includes a parts library built on the Blockchain platform that includes every part that an organization has ever ordered for easy re-ordering. The Platform now also captures user data across the enterprise to provide users with visibility into the status of various projects and requests — like purchase orders — which can be time-sensitive in a manufacturing organization.
DNV GL, Authentic Vision Partner to Explore Supply Chain Traceability
Also last week, Norway-based supply chain risk management, certification, and assurance firm, DNV GL, informed us that it has partnered with Authentic Vision, an Austria-based product digital tagging and tracking solutions provider, in an effort to drive supply chain traceability. The two companies will pair Authentic Vision’s holographic fingerprint tag with DNV GL’s digital assurance solutions, and link them to a Blockchain-based distributed digital ledger. This configuration will enable the two companies to link the physical supply chain with a digital and immutable system of record that is secure, auditable, permanent, and transparent. Initial use cases will be anti-counterfeiting, authentication, product traceability and digital assurance; and initial industries targeted will be the food & beverage, fashion & garments and automotive industries.
ArrowStream Launches Strategic Sourcing Solution, Supplier Portal for Food Service Industry
And finally, Chicago-based ArrowStream, a supply chain management solutions provider that serves the food/service industry, informed us that it has launched a new strategic sourcing solution that connects roughly 200 chain restaurants with up to 6,000 of their suppliers. ArrowStream’s platform now includes spend analytics, Supplier Discovery, eSourcing tools (Sourcing Planner and Sourcing Event Manager), contract management, Commodity Market Intelligence, and a Scenario Analysis Tool. ArrowStream also unveiled Operator Collaboration, which enables suppliers to the food services industry to access the ArrowStream Platform to respond to RFPs from ArrowStream customers, offer contract pricing information, and even access the Supplier Discovery tool to customize it and build out a detailed profile of itself.
RELATED ARTICLES
BuyerQuest: Going Beyond Punch-Out
LevaData Launches Cognitive Sourcing Maturity Model Assessment Tool for Sourcing Teams
SyncFab Joins the Blockchain Community, Looks to Level the Playing Field for SMBs
DNV GL, VeChain Partner to Drive End-to-End Supply Chain Transparency
ArrowStream Launches Spend Visibility Capabilities for Supply Chain Platform
