Leading supply management suite provider, Ivalua‘s annual user conference Ivalua Now returned as an in-person (but also virtual) conference in Washington, D.C. last week and it was another stellar showing of this always well-organized and high-class affair. Ardent analysts participated virtually this year and hope to return in person in 2023.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Stronger Together,” a clear and pleasant approach to the dangers that arise from going it alone, be it trading partners like buyers and suppliers who gain greatly from collaboration, functional partners like procurement and finance who gain greatly by combining efforts and resources, or colleagues like the hundreds of procurement professionals in attendance who benefit from networking and sharing new ideas and strategies.
As he does every year, Ivalua’s CEO & Founder, David Khuat-Duy kicked off the event with a “State of Ivalua” CEO Keynote presentation. David began with a discussion of Ivalua’s mission which includes: Customer-Centric (“listen to them, focus on their success”), Collaboration (work as one team), Results Oriented, which is self-explanatory, Care and Grow People (“respect differences and develop employees”), Integrity (“open, fair, honest). [Sidebar: As we’ve noted on our Future of Work Exchange, “It is no longer enough for a business to simply lead with a prominent brand as it had done in the past. An employer’s brand is important to most talent, but businesses must continually and comprehensively assess their processes, culture, and workplace to define the characteristics of the candidates who will be the best-fit from both a cultural and skills perspective.”] David said that the world’s problems are only solved by working together and that digital transformation will be an important component in solving them.
This is part of Ivalua’s mission to empower customers with a unified platform to better manage their spend and suppliers. By delivering automation, collaboration capabilities, and insights across their full Source-to-Settle suite, David believes that 3 million users and suppliers that are connected by Ivalua will be central to solving many of the world’s major problems including supply chain and climate.
Ivalua’s product strategy focuses on both buyers and suppliers with major themes focused on flexibility, collaboration, and visibility. That said, customer (aka buyer) input will remain an important piece in Ivalua’s product development strategy as the company continues to focus on enabling agility via highly-configurable solutions (done from the UI) and the continued delivery of industry-focused solutions including, manufacturing, public sector, healthcare, financial services, construction/engineering, a focus that makes Ivalua unique in the marketplace today.
As part of the presentation, David noted that it was another year of milestones for Ivalua including:
- Launching a new B2B Payments solution
- 750 employees (targeting 1,000 in 2023)
- Strong analyst rankings
- 1,100 “Ivalua-certified” employees
- Record number of new customers
- $130 million in annual revenue
David painted a path for Ivalua to reach $1 billion in revenue, an ambitious target, but one that he believes can be accomplished by essentially continue to do more of the same – (a) increase customer count, (b) continue to grow globally, (c) augment partnerships and integrations (d) expand industry solution offerings, and (e) continue to lead with innovation.
Finally, David teased out the planned Q2 launch of The Ivalua Community Platform to help all members of the Ivalua community interact with each other on any topic of choice. An offering that is designed to prove that we are truly stronger together.
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