As part of the Magnus Mondays series featuring the latest procurement technology trends and insights, we will also spotlight interesting briefings and updates that we receive from different solution providers in the space. Today, we look at Graphite Connect, the supplier management solution provider.
Company Background
Graphite Connect was founded in 2018 by Conrad Smith and Aaron Oyler. The two founders are procurement veterans and worked together at Adobe, where they identified the absence of a good tool for supplier onboarding, in particular, and supplier management, in general. So, they decided to build one. Currently, Graphite Connect has about 50-100 customers and roughly 80 employees.
Solution Offering
Graphite Connect aims for a holistic offering of supplier management solutions, including those focused on supplier information management (SIM), supplier risk management, and supplier relationship management. Based on its solid workflow management capabilities, Graphite Connect has also released intake management functionalities. With its lineup of solutions, the company’s primary positioning is as a supplier onboarding specialist. This is ingenious since supplier onboarding is a very tangible (and real) problem for many organizations. Supplier management, on the other hand, is very important but also much more vague. If you ask 10 different organizations what they mean by supplier management, there is a risk of getting 10 different answers.
Now, there are plenty of SIM software solutions out there, and supplier onboarding is a key use case for a SIM solution. The problem is that almost all of the solutions in the market today approach the buyer-supplier relationship on a one-to-one basis (i.e., each buying organization collects its information about each supplier). This means that many suppliers must complete the same basic information for every single one of their customers/buyers, even when multiple customers are using the same solution. This is where Graphite Connect is different.
Graphite Connect uses a network architecture to enable many-to-many information sharing. Graphite’s supplier profiles feature three types of data — supplier-managed, buyer-managed, and third party-managed. The data can be defined as: 1) public for anyone using Graphite Connect, 2) public for any buyer whom the supplier has a relationship with, 3) private between the supplier and a specific buyer, or 4) private for either the supplier or buyer. This means greater efficiency for the supplier as they work within Graphite’s supplier-optimized experience.
The many-to-many design allows them to update their information once in a single location rather than repeatedly for many customers. This re-sharing of information benefit is trivial during the first connection, but the value expands when suppliers have multiple customers that use Graphite Connect. It also creates efficiency for the buyers as Graphite validates and verifies key supplier data points, such as legal name and registration, physical address, VAT/tax/registration number, and bank routing. They also conduct checks against US and international sanctions and watch lists. For relationship and risk management efforts, Graphite Connect allows users to create so-called data rooms where buyers and suppliers can collaborate on the same documents and data.
To support data gathering, Graphite Connect features a solid workflow engine that allows for a smooth intake/request process. The end user requesting the new supplier fills out information that triggers the right questionnaires based on the type of service or product, amount of spend, category of spend, geography, or whatever classification is required, and routes them to the correct approvers. From a risk management perspective, this enables risk managers to ensure the right information is collected but also to easily amend or launch new questionnaires if necessary.
Based on this workflow engine, Graphite Connect has also released an intake management (“IM”) solution that allows buying organizations to use Graphite as a single entry point for any procurement request. The procurement process orchestration (“PPO”) enables redirects (i.e., punchouts) to other processes and full integration to enterprise and S2P solutions.
Challenges and Opportunities
The key challenge for Graphite Connect is to grow their customer base and supplier network to a critical mass. Portal fatigue is a real problem for suppliers, and while Graphite’s approach is efficient for users, it only makes a difference if the supplier has multiple buyers using Graphite. Currently, Graphite Connect is a fairly small solution provider and new customers cannot assume that their suppliers are already enabled on the network. If they are, a reference customer that we interviewed stated that “up to 80% of the information needed” for supplier onboarding is already available in the system, making the process fast and efficient.
Graphite Connect also has an opportunity to make the onboarding process for a new supplier even smoother by using web scraping and AI to pre-populate public data to the supplier profile.
Summary
All in all, Graphite Connect offers a modern network-based approach to supplier management that is designed to scale efficiently. If the company can maintain its growth and fully realize the network effects, it has the potential to become a key player in the procurement technology space.
Based on the company’s solutions today, its roadmap, and ongoing advances, readers looking for a modern supplier management solution with a focus on information management and onboarding should investigate Graphite Connect.
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