Earlier this morning, Aravo announced a $27 million funding round led by Cisco. While you can read the details of the funding round in the above-linked Spend Matters column — along with some thoughts from the transaction’s lead engineer, Aravo’s CEO Tim Albinson — I thought I’d take a few minutes in this post to share my analysis of what the funding round means for this sector. Perhaps most interesting on a superficial level is how with this round, Aravo appears to be migrating away from their supplier information management (SIM) positioning to what they describe as a broader approach to supplier collaboration that encompasses basic vendor management and vendor information management. Of course they summarize this in a three letter acronym — it must always be three letters, mustn’t it — as enterprise supplier collaboration. Or ECM for short. While this may have a certain branding ring to it, I’m not so sure that moving away from the concept of managing supplier information and leading with the notion of collaboration is the right approach in selling what Aravo does for procurement organizations.
