Does the IBM Emptoris and Coupa Announcement Raise More Partnership Questions Than Answers?
Earlier this week at Empower, the annual IBM procurement event, IBM Emptoris and Coupa announced a broader sales and distribution partner agreement, one built on top of a previous partnership between the 2 vendors. The IBM team told Spend Matters that the 2 providers have approximately 6 clients in common right now, including a large […]
Social Networking, Supplier Engagement, Contract Management: Do We Need a Big Step Forward? (Part 1)
Kudos to IACCM’s Tim Cummins for surfacing a great topic in a recent post considering the role of Contracts & Social Networking within companies and amongst their suppliers, customers and partners. Here at Spend Matters, we’ve periodic…
Capgemini Procurement BPO: Realizing Platform/Category Returns From the IBX Acquisition (Part 3)
Please click here to see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series covering the latest from Capgemini.
In this post, we’ll dig into Capgemini’s current and planned technology offerings and strategy. To begin, IBX places its “cloud procurement”…
Supplierforce Enters Voluntary Liquidation — Background and Implications
Supplierforce, a Dublin-based supplier information management provider, has entered voluntary liquidation. You can read past coverage of Supplierforce on Spend Matters here, here, here and here (it should also be noted in full dis…
In Recession and Recovery, Putting Supplier Relationships First (Part 1)
In the second post in this series later today, I will share some findings from recent IACCM research and analysis suggesting that many procurement organizations believe that it is their charter to focus on supplier relationships, management and overall development, but that they rarely prioritize these sorts of investments over those in core purchasing automation […]
An Emptoris Summer Update: Customer Intimacy, Growth and Partnering Driving Strategy (Part 1)
I recently caught up with Emptoris for a spring/summer briefing and update. From the discussion, I’m impressed by the level of transformation in the organization since Patrick Quirk, Emptoris’ CEO, took the helm last fall. Emptoris has done a 180-degree turn from its past engineering/innovation-focused. Currently, it’s strategy now places the customer — and their […]
M&A Watch: Ariba and an Updated Shopping List for SAP in Procurement (Part 2)
In the first installment of this post, I suggested a number of areas where Ariba or others could fill-in material functional and/or competitive holes for SAP in the broader Spend Management sector. I previously suggested that “Ariba would help SAP plug a number of gaps, leaving only a handful unfilled in the broader procurement and […]
Coupa Heads for the Clouds — eProcurement, T&E and Beyond (Part 2)
The most important functional announcement in Coupa’s latest release (you can read the first post in this series here) is a new expense reporting capability designed to provide organizations with an integrated system to help capture, in Coupa’s words…
Supplierforce: Supplier Information Management and Beyond (Part 2)
A couple of weeks ago, I re-introduced Spend Matters readers to Supplierforce, a Dublin-based Spend Management software/SaaS suite provider and consultancy with particular strengths in the area of supplier information management. Today I’ll conclude …
Friday Rant: Treat Contracting as a Business and Sourcing Process, Not Just a Legal One
In last Friday’s first rant, I shared some thoughts and anecdotes about the role contracting can play in helping companies more quickly realize identified savings. In this rant, I?ll focus on some of the roles contracting can play in identifying addi…
