Top 10: Strategic Sourcing Platforms
Procurement is vital to the success of any business. Within this, strategic sourcing is a critical component for finding cost-saving opportunities and enhancing efficiency by optimising the supplier base.
The platforms listed in our top 10 are tools that can help businesses leverage their purchasing power to achieve the best-possible value when it comes to cost, quality and delivery.
This involves a comprehensive analysis of an organisation’s spending patterns, supplier market conditions and procurement needs to develop and implement long-term strategies for acquiring goods and services.
10. Proactis
Revenue: US$19.37m
Employees: 594
CEO: Stephen Line
Founded: 1996
Proactis offers sourcing software to help customers obtain the best value for their needs, improving the effectiveness and transparency of both strategic and tactical sourcing processes – while dramatically reducing administrative time and efforts.
Its programme offers a more flexible, collaborative and efficient method for performing sourcing processes, enabling a structured and easily-tracked process from initial interest to the final contract award.
Tools include the ability to create documents with specific requirements, streamline the publishing process for RFI, RFP and RFQs, and automate the scoring of responses, allowing businesses to confidently select the best option.
9. Jaggaer
Revenue: US$105.4m
Employees: 1,000
CEO: Andy Hovancik
Founded: 1995
Jaggaer’s strategic sourcing solutions help organisations optimise expenses and make better purchasing choices.
Its software matches ideal suppliers to requests and formalises information gathering and usage.
Jaggaer helps build and maintain supplier relationships while meeting ESG targets. Tools include an advanced sourcing optimiser, source-to-pay to mitigate ERP, AI advancements for supplier selection, automated contract management and predictive analytics.
8. Workday
Revenue: US$7.26bn
Employees: 18,800
CEO: Carl M. Eschenbach
Founded: 200
Workday’s strategic sourcing prides itself on delivering quick ROI, with 99% of surveyed customers achieving ROI within the first year.
Its platform is easy to implement, often deployable within four weeks.
It offers qualitative and quantitative measurements for evaluating requests with stakeholders, side-by-side comparisons of supplier bids and data harnessing based on current market trends to provide real-time feedback to suppliers, enabling bid improvements.
7. Basware
Revenue: US$750m
Employees: 1,400
CEO: Jason Kurtz
Founded: 1979
With a focus on invoice automation and procurement analytics, Basware provides strategic sourcing and supplier collaboration tools to enhance visibility and control over spending.
It ensures compliance and efficiency in the Source to Pay (S2P) process, helping organisations select the best vendors and negotiate deals. This improves supply chain efficiency, optimises internal controls and simplifies vendor relationship management.
6. Zycus
Revenue: US$350.4m
Employees: 1,726
CEO: Aatish Dedhia
Founded: 1998
Zycus offers an e-sourcing platform called iSource that automates sourcing, enhances savings and ensures a quick return on investment.
Known for scalability, iSource supports extensive item and supplier lists, handling up to 50,000+ line items in complex sourcing events.
Unique negotiation features enable negotiations to be conducted within the platform, capturing valuable business intelligence. Multi-round events seamlessly transition from RFI to RFP/RFQ to auction.
Moreover, conditional workflows support internal reviews and award recommendations, while surrogate bidding allows buyers to place bids on behalf of suppliers.
5. SynerTrade
Revenue: US$25m
Employees: 200
CEO: Olivier Berrouiguet
Founded: 1999
SynerTrade empowers businesses to streamline digital procurement processes from strategic sourcing to vendor contracts for direct and indirect material.
Tools support collaborative demand management, supplier risk automation and procurement planning applications, making it an ideal solution for strategic sourcing.
Accelerate Source to Contract Apps help businesses streamline the digital procurement process from the initial phases of the strategic sourcing to the management of vendor contracts lifecycle. Synertrade’s e-procurement software is designed to maximise savings and compliance, providing flexible solutions for procurement planning and contract management.
4. GEP SMART
Revenue: US$1.3bn
Employees: 6,000
CEO: Subhash Makhija
Founded: 1999
Used as part of GEP's procurement platform or standalone, GEP SMART Sourcing helps businesses find the right suppliers through intuitive sourcing tools.
It enables collaboration, evaluates suppliers and authorises new contract awards to maximise spend value.
GEP SMART's in-platform analytics automatically activate sourcing waves and pre-populated contract tools and templates speed up the procurement cycle.
3. Ivalua
Revenue: US$180m
Employees: 1,000
CEO: David Khuat-Duy
Founded: 2000
Ivalua’s Source-to-Pay software enhances sourcing efforts through automation and streamlining key activities.
Advanced analytics and data management tools help procurement teams identify spending patterns, find cost-saving opportunities and make informed decisions.
The platform leverages advanced analytics and market intelligence to identify opportunities, evaluate supplier performance and manage risks effectively, ensuring consistency and efficiency from sourcing to procurement.
2. SAP Ariba
Revenue: US$33.3bn
Employees: 103,000
CEO: Christian Klein
Founded: 1996
SAP Ariba offers robust solutions for sourcing, procurement and supplier management.
Known for driving efficiency and transparency with AI and advanced analytics, SAP Ariba's Strategic Sourcing Suite integrates sourcing, contracting and supplier management in a single, unified platform.
This improves cycle time, drives contract compliance and offers immediate savings. Further capabilities include cloud deployment, workflow management and easy supplier onboarding.
1. Coupa
Revenue: US$1bn
Employees: 3,076
CEO: Leagh Turner
Founded: 2006
A market-leading platform in spend management, Coupa offers a comprehensive suite encompassing strategic sourcing, procurement and supplier risk assessment.
Coupa's AI-driven strategic sourcing tailors sourcing events to business needs, analyses supplier bids and creates enhanced bidding with Source-to-Pay.
It helps maximise scarce sourcing resources with intelligent opportunity identification, supplier insights, scenario analysis and collaborative decision-making.
The platform provides complete visibility into all spend, with access to Coupa's database of pre-rated, pre-enabled suppliers, filtered by diversity status, ratings, geography and more.
It connects sourcing with contracting and purchasing to ensure that award pricing and terms are captured and utilised, validating supplier invoices against contracted bid terms to increase value capture.
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