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!
Medius Appoints Karim Jouini and Ahmed Fessi to the C-Suite
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Medius, a leading provider of AP automation and spend management solutions, announced the appointment of Karim Jouini to Chief Product & Technology Officer and Ahmed Fessi to Chief Transformation & Information Officer.
Following the acquisition of the expense management firm Expensya earlier this year, Karim Jouini, former CEO of Expensya, and Ahmed Fessi, former CIO of Expensya, joined Medius leadership.
The company stated that in his role as chief product and technology officer, Jouini will be responsible for the innovation strategy for the combined product and engineering teams, including the acceleration and integration of AI within Medius’ existing solutions in areas such as autonomous AP, payments, procurement, sourcing, contracts, and supplier onboarding.
Fessi, as the chief transformation and information officer, will be focusing on delivering enhanced value to customers by providing an integrated and optimized data driven culture, with cybersecurity at the core.
According to Jouini, “Medius is in an exciting position to continue to integrate artificial intelligence to help optimize processes for our customers. I am excited to be leading the product, design, and technology behind Medius solutions, while helping to grow talent across the business in my new role and managing the integration of the Expensya teams into Medius,” he said. “Maintaining a streamlined digital internal system and building value for our customers is integral to our ambitions as a business,”
Fessi added that, “Using data, artificial intelligence, and automation to build a strong, stable digital culture at Medius will help us enhance collaboration, improve our operational efficiencies, and optimize our processes. As chief transformation and information officer, I am eager to continue to provide value and trust for our customers by embracing technology.”
Read the full announcement here.
Fairmarkit Leverages Generative AI to Simplify Strategic Sourcing
Boston — Fairmarkit, an autonomous sourcing solution provider, announced the launch of a new generative AI-powered tool that automates the process from intake to sourcing, saving significant time for enterprise procurement teams and unlocking a seamless end-user experience for buyers, suppliers, and business requesters alike.
The company states that leveraging Fairmarkit’s existing AI and automation capabilities, the new strategic sourcing solution replaces manual, form-based processes and legacy sourcing solutions that often take weeks and several cycles to go from intake to sourced event. Now, business requesters can expect a seamless self-serve process for requesting goods and services within minutes. Procurement teams can create and manage RFPs in just a few clicks, while easily inviting collaborators to engage with suppliers, evaluate and score responses, and maintain a transparent sourcing process.
According to Karim Wahba, head of data science for Fairmarkit, “Business users go around procurement when they think it’ll take too long to get their needs met. Our new solution solves that issue, reining in spend and putting business leaders and their procurement teams on the same page, with significant savings in both time and money,” he said.
“The solution is a result of close collaboration with executive champions, beta users, and our data science teams, leading to an approachable yet powerful use case for GenAI that procurement teams will love — almost as much as the newfound time they’ll unlock,” Wahba adds.
Read the full announcement here.
Coupa Modernizes Supply Chain Collaboration with New Solution
ATLANTA — Coupa Software, a leader in business spend management (BSM), announced a new solution to improve supply assurance and business continuity.
The company states that its Supply Chain Collaboration Suite empowers companies to avoid risk while driving profitability, increasing agility, and improving communication between buyers and suppliers. The company’s unified platform drives agility, transparency, and resiliency across supply chains, so products and materials are available where and when they’re needed.
According to Raja Hammoud, executive vice president of products at Coupa, “Ensuring supply chain continuity is a top priority for businesses everywhere. We heard from companies around the globe that existing market solutions for supply chain collaboration were falling down, forcing companies to resort to spreadsheets and emails to track critical supply that would keep factories running and retail stores operating,” he said.
“Those days are over. Coupa Supply Chain Collaboration was co-innovated with the world’s leading supply chain companies to deliver modern, consumerized experiences and effortless collaboration between businesses and all their trading partners,” Hammoud adds.
Coupa’s new Supply Chain Collaboration Suite will help businesses with purchasing, forecasting, inventory, and quality control as the suite expands. Key benefits available include:
- Streamlined Communication: Through real-time communication supply chain planners and suppliers can easily share instant updates to quality, price, delivery dates, and more to avoid unwanted surprises or delays.
- Intuitive, Unified Approach: Integrates with ERP, MRP, and supply chain planning solutions to provide a connected, unified view to all suppliers/trading partners and buyers.
- Improved Working Capital: With more predictable operations, businesses can reduce inventory carrying costs and minimize carrying excess capacity due to unplanned downtime to better optimize working capital through a single platform for direct and indirect spend.
- Increased Agility: With real-time notifications and alerts, businesses can act smarter and faster to resolve issues for direct materials without time-consuming, error-prone manual reviews.
Read the full announcement here.
Zip Launches Global Partner Program
SAN FRANCISCO — Zip, an intake management platform provider, announced the launch of the Zip Partner Program, a global ecosystem that comprises leading systems integrators, complementary independent software vendors (ISVs), and consulting firms.
The company stated that the program enables a broad range of partners to formally engage with Zip on joint customer opportunities and develop tailored procurement tech stacks.
According to John Bolen, VP of channel and alliances at Zip, businesses are seeking solutions to manage their vendor relationships and control spend, but most of these solutions are costly legacy approaches that lack an easily adoptable user experience.
“We’re seeing strong growth in our customer base as the demand for modern finance and procurement experiences accelerates. Our investment in the Zip Partner Program is the next step forward in our market expansion,” says Bolen.
“Working with third-party trusted advisors and best-in-class ISVs extends the reach of our technology and delivers even more impact to our customers. The launch of our formal program makes collaborating with Zip easy and enables partners to leverage their unique expertise and capabilities to deliver customized procurement technology stacks to our joint customers,” he adds.
Partner program benefits include:
- Referral fees for net-new business
- Integration of Zip into their existing go-to-market solutions
- Opportunities to drive follow-on, value-add, consulting engagements for prior P2P implementations
- Ability to equip their consulting teams with a platform that will drive accelerated spend management time-to-value for their clients.
The Zip Partner Program includes multiple tiers including Registered, Certified, Silver and Gold.
Read the full announcement here.
Scoutbee Partners with SAP, Helping Companies Source from New Strategic Suppliers
BERLIN & ATLANTA — Scoutbee, a leading AI-powered supplier intelligence and discovery platform, announced an expanded partnership with SAP to help customers find and invite new suppliers to sourcing events that meet their strategic needs faster and easier. Scoutbee plans to integrate Scoutbee Discovery with the SAP Ariba Sourcing solution with availability planned for the first quarter 2024.
The company stated that Scoutbee’s AI-driven supplier discovery capabilities help companies find new suppliers that advance strategic business imperatives, such as risk management, nearshoring strategies, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives, and more. With the integration, companies running a sourcing event in SAP Ariba Sourcing will be able to instantly pull in new suppliers from Scoutbee that meet key sustainability, diversity, cost, and risk criteria and add those suppliers directly into the sourcing event, all without having to leave the event screen.
According to Gregor Stühler, Scoutbee’s CEO and co-founder, “Companies are increasingly leaning on eSourcing tools as they actively look for ways to redistribute their supply base to reduce risk, save money, and advance multiple strategic priorities. The integration of Scoutbee’s supplier discovery capabilities with SAP Ariba Sourcing will make finding the best new suppliers to invite to bid effortless for customers,” he said.
“SAP is an industry leader, and we’re thrilled to partner with them to help more companies increase their competitiveness and resilience through supply base innovation,” Stühler added.
Read the full announcement here.
