CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up Series returns today with fresh supply management technology news and updates covering a few recent major announcements. 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 info at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!
NEWS EXCLUSIVE —> Beeline to Acquire Utmost
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Beeline, a leading technology solution provider for managing the global extended workforce, announced it has agreed to acquire Utmost, a next-generation extended workforce solutions company.
With Utmost, Beeline will enable companies to access total talent insights across their entire workforce of employees and non-employees and will rapidly advance its vision of bringing solutions that tailor to the needs of every participant in the extended workforce process under one platform.
According to Doug Leeby, Beeline CEO, “The future of work is powered by technology that unlocks the potential of every worker, regardless of classification. We have a disciplined history of only acquiring companies that are rightful technology leaders that will deliver further value to our customers,” Leeby said.
“The Utmost acquisition is particularly exciting in that it complements and accelerates our strategic roadmap and delivers clever and unique solutions to our customers on day one,” he adds.
Beeline states that the acquisition of Utmost will also allow smaller and mid-size companies to better customize the management of their extended workforces as well as allow enterprises and partners to tailor contingent workforce management for internal divisions and new markets.
This latest acquisition aligns with Beeline’s mission to deliver total workforce optimization to organizations around the world.
To read Ardent Partners’ analysis of this deal, visit our site The Future of Work Exchange for Chris Dwyer’s take and insights on this major deal.
Sovos Acquires Escontech, Expanding E-Invoicing and Electronic Compliance Verification Capabilities
BOSTON — Sovos, a global tax software provider, announced it has acquired Lima, Peru-based Escontech, a leader in SaaS electronic invoicing and validation services for the issuance of electronic receipts.
According to Alvaro Gonzalez, managing director, Latin America for Soros, “Escontech will play an important role in our ability to provide customers in these regions, as well as globally, with the technology needed to process high volumes of documents securely for billing and electronic validation, while ensuring compliance with local regulations,” he says. “These solutions will be a great complement to Sovos’ existing portfolio, simplify the integration process, and be supported by the best professional services group in the industry.”
The company states that Escontech’s technology and positioning in the Peruvian market strengthen Sovos’ current capabilities and scope in this type of services, by efficiently covering and supporting major companies in areas such as banking, financial services, insurance, mass market, tolls, and other high transaction industries.
Read the full announcement here.
ORO Introduces Smart Workflows to Simplify and Automate Procurement
LOS ANGELES — ORO announced the launch of its new Smart Procurement Workflows to make procurement easy and efficient for all employees.
The company states that the solution delivers value to both large enterprise customers with existing procurement solutions as well as fast-growing mid-size companies. ORO’s smart workflows will help scale procurement and finance operations to meet business compliance and demand for speed.
According to Sudhir Bhojwani, ORO co-founder and CEO, “My big realization while leading the product team at SAP Ariba was how much of business-critical purchasing is still manual before requisition. For mature procurement organizations, this could still be 30-40% of the spend, and for mid-sized companies, it could be as high as 60-70% of the spend,” he said.
“We started ORO to make it easier and faster for business users to engage with procurement and other stakeholders to deliver business results fast.”
Lalitha Rajagopalan, ORO co-founder and head of strategy and GTM, added that today, employees pick the supplier, after which it still takes weeks to complete the supplier onboarding.
“The process may be stuck waiting for legal or IT or security to approve but the procurement team gets blamed by all,” said Rajagopalan. “The result is awful NPS scores for procurement and very frustrated employees who cannot get what they need to do their jobs. Simply put, in modern organizations, procurement is a more collaborative process with the supplier and many stakeholders. Legacy procure-to-pay systems are not designed to do this.”
Read the full announcement here.
NetSuite Announces AP Automation Solution
Oracle NetSuite announced the unveiling of NetSuite AP Automation to help organizations address the time consuming and labor-intensive accounts payable (AP) processes.
The company states that NetSuite AP Automation is the only solution that embeds banking services into a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, helping organizations improve profitability by making it easier and faster to process bills and pay vendors all from within NetSuite. As a result, organizations can better control outgoing cash flows and easily scale end-to-end accounts payable processes.
According to Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP, Oracle NetSuite, “Accounts payable plays an important role in helping organizations manage cash flow, control costs, and maintain strong relationships with vendors, but all too often the process is slow, tedious, and error-prone,” he said.
“By simplifying and automating the entire bill payment process — from data capture to payment and reconciliation — NetSuite AP Automation eliminates these challenges. This helps businesses streamline and improve a key operation, empowering AP teams to operate more efficiently and ultimately reduce costs,” Goldberg adds.
Read the full announcement here.
RELATED RESEARCH
Technology Round-Up — October 5, 2022
Technology Round-Up — September 14, 2022
P2P Technology Round-Up — August 31, 2022
