Candex funding echoes Amazon Business procurement report
Vendor-payments solutions specialist Candex has secured $45mn in a Series B investment led by Goldman Sachs, the company has announced.
Candex – whose goal is to simplify vendor management and payment processes for businesses – has now secured a total of $85 million in funding. The move is designed to expand the company’s presence in Asian markets.
Candex has been doubling its year-on-year revenues since 2019, and is on track to do so again in 2023. It has enjoyed such strong growth largely as a result of the pandemic, as organisations moved to automate and digitise more areas of their business, including purchasing. The company has also been insulated from the tech slowdown and a spluttering global economy for the same reasons.
The Candex platform enables businesses to pay vendors “in minutes rather than weeks”, by cutting down on the administrative and operational challenges inherent in dealing with a large ecosystem of vendors.
It also streamlines data management, generates insights on spend and speeds up workflows though AI models that verify invoices are correct.
Business leaders looking to invest in procurement
The finding announcement reinforces findings from a recent Amazon Business report that shows business leaders are set to invest more heavily in procurement, as they target strategic sourcing as a key operational and sustainability tool.
Amazon’s 2024 State of Procurement Report says more than half (53%) of procurement chiefs expect their budgets to rise in 2024 as C-suiters look to invest in tools and technologies to deliver optimisation.
The report focuses on procurement insights worldwide from government, financial services, hospitality, healthcare services, manufacturing, pharma, retail, technology, and telecom industries.
Following a year of businesses focusing on reducing costs, it appears that procurement leaders are now set to sink the funds they saved into honing procurement processes, to help employers operate more strategically.