CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up series continues this week 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!
Ivalua and Ardent Partners Unveil Their Partnered Report: “State of Source-to-Pay Digitization 2024”
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — The new report “State of Source-to-Pay Digitization 2024: Navigating Supply Challenges, Embracing Innovation,” partnered by Ivalua and Ardent Partners, explores the current Source-to-Pay (S2P) technology market landscape establishing a valuable benchmark for the industry.
As procurement’s impact on organizational success has grown, the department’s priorities and grown beyond a cost and efficiency focus to also include improving sustainability, mitigating risk, ensuring compliance, and improving cash flow.
This broader responsibility, coupled with an increasingly complex market, has greatly increased the importance of technology. S2P solutions can free capacity by increasing automation, improve decision-making through easy access to insights, and enable more efficient, effective collaboration with suppliers and internal stakeholders. However, while most large organizations have digitized a portion of their S2P process, the report shows scope and levels of success vary.
Some insights from the report include:
Benefits and Challenges
The most successful users of S2P solutions, referred to as “S2P Innovators,” demonstrate the value that technology can play in helping scale a procurement operation and maximize its performance. The findings show a wide range of benefits for procurement organizations, especially, greater efficiency (57%) and improved productivity (49%).
However, despite the broad range of advantages gained thanks to S2P technology, many organizations face sizable challenges when trying to capitalize on their investments. In particular, poor data quality and/or access within the technology was identified by nearly half (48%) of respondents as the main barrier. Lack of integration is another prevalent issue both between S2P technologies and third-party systems (34%) as well as across different S2P processes (33%).
According to Vishal Patel, VP of product marketing at Ivalua, “The disconnect between the need for high-quality data and the current reality of poor data management and process integration creates a significant hurdle for organizations aiming to extract the full value from their S2P technology,” he said.
“Without clean, standardized, and readily accessible data and the elimination of silos across S2P, automation is limited, as is the effectiveness of AI and analytics. The risk of missing the AI opportunity is too great for this problem to remain unaddressed.”
AI and Innovation
Despite the “data disconnect” and data management challenges plaguing the industry today, procurement leaders believe they are on the cusp of a data-driven revolution. A staggering 81% of them anticipate a dramatic transformation over the next decade where data’s impact will either be massive (38%) or significant (43%).
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, the majority of procurement professionals (61%) believe AI’s impact over the next few years will be transformational or significant. While S2P technologies are gradually gaining greater adoption, a tidal wave of AI implementation is sweeping across procurement, with record numbers embracing the new technology. 2024 results show that 74% of all procurement teams will be using AI by the end of 2024; only 28% of S2P teams are currently using AI but a significant 46% intend to.
Patel continued, “Procurement leaders envision a future where procurement is fundamentally different, driven by data-powered insights and advanced analytics, but it will be crucial for businesses to bridge this data disconnect,” he noted.
“By focusing on data as a strategic asset and building a clear roadmap towards a solid data foundation, businesses can position themselves to unlock the true potential of S2P solutions in the age of big data and AI for smarter procurement decisions, improved supplier relationships, and greater savings.”
To learn more about the State of S2P report, please visit here.
GEP Launches Powerful AI-Driven Total Orchestration Solution
CLARK, N.J. — GEP®, a leading provider of AI-driven procurement and supply chain software and services to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises, launched the industry’s first AI-driven total orchestration solution to transform users’ experience and efficiency for enterprises.
The company stated that the majority of procurement application users are increasingly non-procurement professionals — rank and file employees, warehouse material managers, and legal and finance professionals. Despite advances in software functional capabilities, these users continue to find procurement processes innately complex.
The Total Orchestration Solution has a built-in co-pilot that embeds intelligence across complex workflows while simplifying the end-user experience. GEP’s orchestration engine encompasses leading-edge AI, low-code, data harmonization, and workflow design that reimagines the end-user experience.
GEP orchestration streamlines the entire source-to-pay process for users, by:
- Supporting Guided Purchasing — Users initiate a request or ask for something they need using a simple search bar, eliminating dozens of steps and clicks. Non-technical users are guided to the optimal buying channel or result within one click.
- Providing Supplier Recommendations — Users receive relevant and preferred suppliers using extensive and inclusive factors, including category, sustainability, risk, diversity and prior participation, as well as price. Additionally, users can also create sourcing events or contracts directly using search.
- Automating Contract Management — Users view and manage their contractual obligations and sub-activities, and how they can be automatically marked as complete based on invoice payment or supplier upload.
- Increasing Adoption and Productivity — By synchronizing processes within the entire source-to-pay process, it increases efficiency, transparency, and enterprise collaboration.
- And more
According to Santosh Nair, chief product officer for GEP, “In a few years, more than 80% of procurement transactions will be executed by non-procurement business users,” he said. “GEP’s orchestration solution provides users with a simple guided intake process and visibility into the next steps with conversational collaboration and auto-fulfilment of their needs.
“GEP Total Orchestration Solution is an advanced intelligent engine that orchestrates the whole procurement flow and integrates seamlessly with other applications in the ecosystem,” Nair added.
Read the full announcement here.
Icertis and Evisort Announce Partnership to Accelerate Contract Intelligence
BELLEVUE, Wash. — Icertis, a global leader in AI-powered contract intelligence, announced a new partnership with Evisort to accelerate customers’ journey to contract intelligence.
The company stated that this strategic partnership enhances value from the Icertis platform, enabling new and existing Icertis customers to leverage Evisort’s contract-specific AI engine to accelerate the ingestion and analysis of contract data to deliver actionable insights and optimized workflows.
By extracting the critical information contained in contracts, structuring it into a common data model, and connecting it seamlessly with operational systems like ERP, SCM, CRM, and HCM, Icertis can ensure the intent documented in every contract is fully realized in practice.
According to Samir Bodas, CEO of Icertis, “Contracts are foundational to every business relationship, documenting the critical obligations and entitlements between an enterprise and its customers, suppliers, and partners,” he said.
“With the pace of innovation in AI and across CLM, to deliver the best value to customers, we are embracing an open platform approach that leverages best-of-breed LLMs and partner capabilities across industry verticals, functions, languages, and hyperscalers to extend the proven, secure, and scalable Icertis platform wherever doing business intersects with contracts.”
As part of this new partnership, Evisort’s contract-specific AI engine works in concert with Icertis Discover Copilot to ingest and analyze contract data from new and legacy contracts with the correct semantic meaning to increase the speed, scale, and accuracy of the insights provided by the Icertis platform. This enhanced capability, which is currently used by leading enterprises including Microsoft, allows businesses to leverage their contract data to drive strategic business decisions and operational excellence.
Jerry Ting, CEO of Evisort, commented, “By integrating our contract-specific AI engine with the Icertis Contract Intelligence platform, we can enable joint customers to rapidly ingest and analyze both legacy and new agreements, accelerating insights that drive business performance. Our collaboration with Icertis will set new standards for how contracts are managed and executed, and deliver exceptional outcomes to our joint customers,” Ting said.
Read the full announcement here.
HICX and DitchCarbon Partner to Give Brands the Best Data for Carbon Choices
LONDON — HICX, a leading supplier experience platform, and DitchCarbon, a leading global source for carbon emission insights, have partnered to help businesses better meet Scope 3 challenges, by letting them supplement their supplier data with specialist data relating to carbon emissions. This will arm procurement and sustainability teams, with the necessary intelligence to make carbon-conscious decisions.
HICX customers who choose to have their master data supplemented will receive a carbon score on each supplier. It will be generated by having DitchCarbon pull a list of all their suppliers before using AI to find information on each supplier — such as public disclosures, CDP and SBTi statuses. Based on around 40 factors, the information will be organised to generate a carbon score, which together with the required emissions data will be sent back into the supplier “golden record.”
According to Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO for HICX, “We are excited to build this trusted data source into our platform because it will help our customers to gain an even clearer view of their supply chains.
“This is absolutely key to them remaining resilient. In today’s environmentally-conscious world, those leaders who can manage sustainability risks and seize opportunities will thrive — and success in this area, comes down to data quality,” Xyloyiannis added.
The partnership will save procurement teams from gathering carbon data themselves by having to survey suppliers or search directories. Further, they will find the carbon score updated quarterly within their master data.
Read the full announcement here.
Vertex Acquires Artificial Intelligence Tax Capabilities from Ryan, LLC
KING of PRUSSIA, PA — Vertex, Inc., a global provider of tax technology solutions, announced the acquisition of tax-specific AI capabilities from Ryan, LLC, an award-winning tax services and software firm, designed to more effectively manage the complexity of tax mapping.
The company stated that the categorization of products for taxability is a manual and time-consuming process that is critical for achieving enhanced tax accuracy, especially for high-volume businesses that must manage indirect tax compliance globally, at scale. The acquisition will accelerate Vertex’s AI innovation strategy to help global companies manage tax complexity with greater speed and scale.
According to Chirag Patel, chief strategy officer for Vertex, “We have had a strong partnership with Ryan for years. Now we have an opportunity to advance the value of AI for tax teams by combining Ryan’s extensive tax expertise with the strength of the Vertex technology platform,” he said. “This acquisition demonstrates the power of our partner relationship and our commitment to providing comprehensive cloud solutions to support the entire tax process.”
Read the full announcement here.
