Last week, SpendHQ, a procurement spend analytics platform leader, announced a merger with France-based Per Angusta, a platform leader in procurement performance management, establishing an exciting new company. Partnering in the acquisition is Charlotte-based Pamlico Capital with its infusion of $65 million in funding to complete the transaction and provide support for SpendHQ’s future growth initiatives.
Ardent Partners sat down with SpendHQ CEO Scott Macfee and Per Angusta CEO Pierre Laprée (who will join SpendHQ’s board and become the new company’s Chief Product Officer) to discuss this new deal and what it means for the procurement industry.
Deal Overview and CEO Perspectives
The impetus for combining forces began with a conversation six months ago between Laprée and SpendHQ founder and board chair Tom Beaty (click here and here to read our “Procurement Influencer” series articles with Tom). Both men are former practitioners and have procurement in their veins. “Even though we’re starting from different points of view, Tom from a spend vantage point and us from performance management, we had the same overall vision of having an overarching layer that would connect a few of the dots and possibly rearrange some of the existing procure-to-pay and source-to-pay models,” Laprée told us. “At the same time, create new aspects that will help us fulfill this closed-loop vision — which is the holy grail.”
He adds that for the last ten years, procurement executives have focused on transactional-level activities. He believes that that needs to change. Through this partnership, Laprée says, the goal is to elevate the role of procurement and move beyond purchase orders and invoicing. “While the administrative work must be done, it’s about allocating more time toward procurement strategy, execution, and measurement of performance.”
Despite the layers of complexity involved in making the partnership a reality, Macfee says it was clear from the beginning that it was a good match on multiple levels — people, product, and technology.
“The validation came from sharing our plans with SpendHQ customers prior to any formal announcements,” he says. “We spoke about procurement performance management and the data possibilities with Per Angusta, as well as the concept of a closed-loop procurement platform, which resonated beautifully.”
What do the integration plan and the first 90 days look like? Macfee anticipates a seamless integration as SpendHQ ramps up resellers on the Per Angusta platform. The company will also work with Per Angusta’s U.S. team on spend visibility.
“The immediate go-to-market opportunity in the U.S. is to capture the excitement that we’ve created in the market, particularly with our existing customers but also net new business,” says Macfee. “Phase two will be getting SpendHQ and spend visibility stood up in the European market, with a handful of proposals and net new opportunities already in flight.”
In fact, Laprée is working with customers on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, bringing spend visibility and tracking projects around diversity and carbon footprint to ensure those goals are met at year-end. More customers are looking for insight into spend data to execute ESG objectives and align those with other areas of the business.
The combined organization includes team members in 11 countries across three continents, serving 430+ customers globally.
Ardent Deal Analysis
As a refresher, SpendHQ is an outgrowth from Insight Sourcing Group (“ISG”), a strategic sourcing service provider founded in 200. ISG spun off SpendHQ in 2013 to offer clients their proprietary, in-house spend analysis solution that they had developed to conduct spend analysis for ISG’s sourcing projects. Since then, SpendHQ has grown to become a highly competitive spend analysis solution worthy of consideration by companies seeking a spend analysis solution
Ardent Partners has been very impressed with the SpendHQ solution more recently and in fact, SpendHQ was recognized as one of Ardent Partners’ “Key Providers in 2020” – this designation is one that you can think of as (borrowing from Supply and Demand Chain Executive and countless others), being one of the 20 “Solution Providers to Know” this decade.
Since at least 2020, SpendHQ has been one of the leading spend analysis solutions in the market. Its roots in strategic sourcing consulting paved the ground in the early years for success and more recently, a series of innovations focused on its spend analysis engine, dashboard, filtering capabilities, and spend compliance have turned this company into a thriving SaaS-based solution provider. the company has benefited from a strong partnership with Workday Strategic Sourcing (fka Scout RFP) which will be included in Ardent’s upcoming Strategic Sourcing Technology Advisor, publishing this fall.
SpendHQ’s merger with Per Angusta bolsters its already strong position in the market by adding in several new features from the Per Angusta platform including a sourcing pipeline tool, a procurement performance (savings) management offering, project execution, and supplier information management capabilities. Per’s other solutions appear redundant to the SpendHQ solution set, however, there will certainly be opportunities to take key Per features in these areas and build them into future releases.
Overall, the merger and injection of new capital is very promising for the new company. As with any acquisition, success requires a strong plan and stronger execution but SpendHQ and Per Angusta are poised to help enterprise procurement teams and those in the mid-market drive procurement operations excellence on a global scale.
RELATED RESEARCH
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Procurement Influencer Series: Tom Beaty, CEO of Insight Sourcing Group & SpendHQ – Part I
Procurement Influencer Series: Tom Beaty, CEO of Insight Sourcing Group & SpendHQ – Part II
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