In the contingent workforce world, there are two parallel seams of growth: 1) within the non-employee workforce itself, which comprises 41.5% of the average company’s overall talent, and, 2) within the contingent workforce technology arena. It’s no secret that these two facets are incredibly interconnected.
Cincinnati-based VNDLY, a cloud-based Vendor Management System (VMS) solution provider that has (very) quickly experienced rampant growth over the past two years, announced yesterday that it closed a round of Series B funding, which, on top of its recent Series A run, brings its 2019 funding to $46 million (and $49 million in funding overall).
The $35 million Series B funding round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Battery Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, EPIC Ventures, Bowery Capital, and the Cintrifuse Syndicate Fund (ServiceNow also participated in this round).
“When we started VNDLY and raised a seed round, there was a lot of uncertainty around the need for a cloud-native, modern VMS system and how the market would respond. Fortunately, we got some good traction after launch with the mid-market,” said co-founder and CEO, Shashank Saxena. “Post-Series A, we’ve added twelve new Fortune 500 large enterprise customers and have validated the need for VNDLY in the modern enterprise technology stack. Companies undergoing a digital transformation are actively looking to modernize their applications. Post-Series A, we have proven that VNDLY is a strong choice for these customers and are excited about the growth opportunity that lies ahead. The Series B round of funding will help fuel this growth.”
Some notes from the news:
- VNDLY makes the move from VMS to “WMS.” There’s another interesting item that is unearthed with the funding news: VNDLY wants to be known as a Work Management System (WMS). “VNDLY has a couple of new product offerings in the pipeline that help us evolve our offerings beyond the legacy VMS offerings,” said Saxena. “We envision the world of work changing and evolving and we want to be the platform of choice driving that change. We are working to evolve beyond a Vendor Management System to a Work Management System.”
- ServiceNow’s participation in this funding round means bigger things for VNDLY’s customers. ServiceNow’s Future of Work value proposition is the digitization of workflows across all realms of business operations, a surefire connection to the Future of Work. Their participation in VNDLY’s latest round of funding is also a precursor to an integration in 2020. “We are really excited to have ServiceNow as an investor and partner in our journey,” Saxena said. “ServiceNow is one of our most commonly-requested integrations by mutual customers so we are excited about further deepening the partnership with this equity investment.”
- If there was any question about VNDLY’s presence in the enterprise VMS market…then this latest round of funding should answer it boldly. VNDLY counts over a dozen of the Fortune 500 as clients (closed in the last year) across a wide variety of industries. The platform’s “agile workflow for SOW management” offering is certainly a differentiator, and, in addition, the solution offers an interesting technological perspective on total talent acquisition. This facet of the VNDLY tool leverages machine learning-led algorithms and data science to determine the best-fit type of worker for a specific project, role, or requisition.
“We live in exciting times and are at a pivotal juncture in the evolution of the world of work,” said Saxena. “We see the Future of Work changing from an “inputs-based model” like a timesheet, which is recorded after the work has been completed, to an “outcomes-based model” where people are paid based on completion of a gig, a task, or just “work” in general. We are excited about building out the infrastructure to support this change.”
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