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!
Workday to Acquire Scout RFP for $540 Million
On Monday, news broke that Workday, which provides cloud-based ERP tools for finance, HR, and enterprise planning, reached a definitive agreement to acquire Scout RFP, a cloud-based procurement and strategic sourcing solutions provider, for $540 million in cash. Workday’s Chief Product Officer, Petros Dermetzis, announced the agreement in a company blog post. The two Bay-area solution providers have been integration partners for more than a year. Petros framed the acquisition as the logical next step for Workday, which already offers cloud-based procurement and finance solutions.
As part of the deal, Workday will acquire Scout RFP’s suite of strategic sourcing solutions, including RFX, reverse auction, contract management, and supplier management tools, to become a source-to-pay solutions provider. Workday will also incorporate Scout’s customer base and more than 160 employees across North America and Europe. It is unclear how much of Scout’s original leadership team will continue to lead the company post acquisition. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday’s 2020 Fiscal Year (January 31, 2020), subject to all standard conditions and approvals.
Jaggaer Names Jim Bureau as New CEO
Last month, JAGGAER, the North Carolina-based provider of source-to-settle solutions, informed us that it has named Jim Bureau as its newest CEO, replacing Robert Bonavito at the helm. Jim joined Jaggaer in August of 2017 as Executive Vice President in charge of driving customer success, sales, marketing, and operations. Jim will bring his nearly 20 years of executive experience to the task of leading the company towards continued growth and success. Congrats, Jim, and good luck!
BuyerQuest Joins the Amazon Business Partner Network
Last month, our friends at BuyerQuest, an Ohio-based provider of eProcurement and procure-to-pay (P2P) business solutions, informed us that they have joined the Amazon Business Network as a featured partner. As a result, BuyerQuest is now able to tap into the Amazon Business Network to provide its P2P capabilities to buyers and suppliers that use the Amazon Business Network as a way to find, connect, and transact with each other.
Tradeshift Partners with Genpact, Abreon on Dual Tracks
Also last month, Tradeshift, the San Francisco-based provider of B2B marketplaces and supply chain payment solutions, announced a couple of interesting partnerships with procurement professional services firms. First and most recently, Tradeshift announced a partnership with Genpact, a business process outsourcing firm based in India, in an effort to drive digital transformation through procurement and accounts payable (AP) operations. The collaboration will see Genpact combine the power of its Cora digital platform with Tradeshift’s B2B network to help customers digitize, automate, and leverage the power of their data, particularly “downstream” with procurement and payables. This will not only allow users to access Tradeshift’s platform via an array of applications, but also analyze their data in a strategic and insightful manner to drive more value from downstream to the bottom line.
Tradeshift also announced a partnership with Abreon, a Pittsburgh-based consultancy focused on change management, to work with clients on to help them drive large-scale digital transformation projects. Abreon provides a talent-on-demand service that enables clients to access skilled talent quickly as they begin to adopt digital tools as part of a larger digital transformation initiative. Abreon will provide its expertise to Tradeshift customers on their digital transformation journey as they not only “go live” with new digital tools, but also as they develop, test, and implement new processes to facilitate workflows.
Bottomline Technologies “Drifts” toward Artificial Intelligence
Lastly, Bottomline Technologies, the cloud-based business payment, invoice, and digital banking solution provider, with headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, informed us that it has incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities (a chat bot, essentially) into its payment solutions — Paymode-X and PTX. The bot, powered by Drift, a conversational marketing platform, is intended to make it easier for users to access live support for users attempting to enroll their businesses in these payment modules, both in North America and in Europe. Bottomline adopted Drift in July 2018 for its website, and has just recently integrated it with its Paymode-X and PTX payment modules.
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