vendor summary report - ivalua...invoice-to-pay solutions may leverage a supplier network model for...

© 2017 Spend Matters. All rights reserved. This material originally appeared on Spend Matters PRO and has been reprinted with permission.

Vendor Summary Report Procure-to-Pay SolutionMapSM Q2 2017

By: the Spend Matters Analyst Team

Prepared for:


This SolutionMap analyzes a select group of procure-to-pay solution providers. It is part of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap report series, also featuring e-procurement and invoice-to-pay solution providers individually (including an expanded set of providers in each area).

Spend Matters tracks more than 50 procure-to-pay solution providers. This analysis features many of the largest procure-to-pay providers, specifically Coupa, Determine, GEP, Ivalua, Pool4Tool, SAP Ariba, Vroozi and Zycus. We will be adding additional providers for the Q3 and Q4 2017 updates (as well as in 2018 and beyond).

SolutionMap ratings provide comparative rankings and insight into how each provider scored from a solution and customer value perspective. It provides a breakdown of solution scoring for each vendor on the category level (e.g., catalog management, shopping/requisitioning, ordering/order management, receiving, supplier network, configurability, technology/architecture and services, invoice structure/capture, invoice collaboration and compliance, additional invoicing technology components, financing/payment, supplier network, configurability, technology/architecture and services). It also provides insight into how customers scored procure-to-pay vendors (e.g., likelihood of recommending the provider, level of value perceived, business value, ability to meet expectations, deployment speed, ROI, TCO and innovation).

Solution scoring is based on analysis of individual vendor capability, including in-depth tech reviews, a highly detailed Spend Matters RFI, and live demonstrations and Q&A by the Spend Matters team. The Customer Value score stems from aggregated direct customer input (survey based).

While Spend Matters does not recommend that existing and potential customers of providers use technology and customer scoring alone to shortlist or evaluate technology providers, the insight, along with SolutionMap’s persona-based ratings, provides a point-in-time perspective that may be useful as either a starting point in an evaluation or a contributing factor to a formal software selection process.

More detailed information on comparative technology subcategory-level scoring can be found in individual Spend Matters PRO SolutionMap Vendor Analyses (publishing in April 2017). Spend Matters reserves its most granular level of scoring and analysis for its practitioner advisory clients, and we invite procurement organizations to contact us for more information.

SolutionMap InsightSpend Matters Procure-to-Pay SolutionMap charts depict vendor rankings based on common procurement organization “personas.” This approach reflects the unique value proposition, solution strategy and customer segments served by a vendor, and the commonly prioritized requirements by persona. No two procurement or finance organizations are alike. Each has its own “persona” — or collection of personas — and this reflects not only its own value proposition and engagement approach but also the stakeholders it serves.

The same principle holds true of procure-to-pay (P2P) application providers. Each has a persona (or more than one persona) that reflects its value proposition, solution strategy and targeted customer segments. Procurement and finance organizations should seek providers whose personas best align to theirs.

SolutionMap: A Point-in-Time AnalysisSolutionMap is updated quarterly post-launch in order to reflect market developments:

• Quarterly updates will add new vendors to each SolutionMap release, as well as feature up-to-date ratings of current providers based on new solution capabilities and customer references.

• Over time, the number of reviewed vendors will increase beyond the 10 current procure-to-pay participants (some invited vendors were unable to support the rigorous review process at present) and 16 overall e-procurement, procure-to-pay and procure-to-pay suite participants.


Defining the Procure-to-Pay FootprintProcure-to-pay (P2P) solutions represent the combination e-procurement and invoice-to-pay capabilities. P2P Solutions may also include supplier network components that enable capabilities for buyers and vendors to manage informational and transactional data exchange in a more efficient manner through common standards, portal frameworks and integration capabilities.

E-Procurement E-procurement is the automation of transactional procurement that focuses on the following:

• Shopping for corporate end users looking for goods and services• Requisitions and PO processing (including approvals and budget checking) and communication

of POs to suppliers• For direct materials, PO acknowledgements (if needed), advanced ship notice (ASN) processing

and related inbound execution• Receiving and integration to inventory/AP• Supplier setup and onboarding, which are shared processes with AP and supplier management.

There may be some inventory management included, as well, even though such functionality is usually part of ERP, supply chain or asset management applications.

• Supporting adjacent procurement processes in catalog management, contract utilization, p-card integration, budgeting integration, and industry and category functionality

Each of these elements can be highly complicated, and many are interdependent. For example, in order to be comprehensive and effective, “shopping” requires significant enabling capability that spans catalog management (internal and externally hosted catalogs, punch-out integration, web storefront integration, etc.), search, comparison capability, decision guidance, internal systems integration (e.g., budgeting/inventory) and more.

These different e-procurement requirements should be supported by a range of underlying stack-level and functional components, including the following:

• Overall configurability and business rules governing entity (company) or sub-entity management (e.g., business unit, P&L, team, individual)

• Supplier data management (vendor, catalog, etc.)• Broad-based systems integration (e.g., ERP)• A configurable user interface (home page, dashboards, section organization, menus, etc.)


• Process control and definition (and automation, wherever applicable): “touchless” approvals within tolerances, other workflow automations and guided steps/buying

• A search/shopping experience inclusive of multiple supplier channels: catalog, non-catalog, punch-out, etc.

• Flexible catalog management capability• Support for different basic requisition guidance and scenarios: templates by category, simple

kits, inventory search, etc.• Support for more advanced requisitioning use cases: bundles, lists, services (within certain

limitations), e-forms, smart forms, etc.• Configurable workflow, rules and approvals• Order fulfillment process steps and visibility• Purchasing processing considerations (order management, change orders, exception

management, dispute settlement, etc.)• Purchasing receipting/receiving (including automation, if applicable)• Budgeting creation and integration (e.g., look-ups, presentation of budget data to shoppers)• Basic inventory management and inventory processing capabilities (transfer requests,

replenishment, returns, etc.)• Support for mobile usage and scenarios (apps, email, browser, etc.)• Reporting/analytics

One way to “package” the elements listed above is to segment the various functional components of e-procurement into the following categories:

• Catalog management• Shopping/requisitioning• Ordering/order management• Receiving• Supplier network

Besides these functional capabilities, e-procurement solutions should also be evaluated based on their configurability, integration capability, overall technology/architecture and associated services.

Invoice-to-Pay Invoice-to-pay is also sometimes referred to as electronic invoicing and payment processing (EIPP). But we use invoice-to-pay as a process-focused approach consistent within the broader procure-to-pay (P2P) and even broader source-to-pay (S2P) areas. Invoice-to-pay solutions can complement e-procurement solutions, or they can stand on their own as a distinct solution area.

Invoice-to-pay solutions may leverage a supplier network model for connectivity and value-added capabilities. While invoice-to-pay technology can bring benefits to both procurement and suppliers, perhaps the main beneficiary is accounts payable, as these solutions not only reduce paper-based processes and improve efficiency (e.g., reduce cash disbursement costs per FTE) but also serve as a foundation for transforming AP by introducing new levels of operating effectiveness (e.g., reduced late payments, optimized working capital, minimized risk and non-compliance, and support of broader P2P and S2P objectives).

Invoice-to-pay is the automation of transactional invoicing and accounts payable activity that focuses on the following areas:

Supplier enablement, automation and collaboration via portal capabilities that enable more effective vendor on-boarding initially, and then serve as an electronic interface to the buying organization. Portals help keep supplier information current and even manage specialized information requests (e.g., “KYC” for financing) by prompting and enabling suppliers via a combination of an alerting and self-service capability to update information as required or when a particular incident or set of workflows triggers a new request for information or additional validation. Portal integration with email, along with branching workflow and other capability to survey and manage updated supplier information, can help expand the value proposition of procure-to-pay to broader aspects of supplier information management.


Integration and interoperability models to facilitate on-boarding, capture information and provide a means of supplier self-service to check on the status of an invoice. Also should include similar integration into e-procurement systems, T&E, ERP/MRP, services procurement/VMS solutions and different payment mechanisms/systems (e.g., p-card, PO/p-card invoice, ACH, check). It is important to ensure that an invoice-to-pay architecture enables broad interoperability, real-time linkages and workflow integration with other transactional and workflow systems, including those that serve as “systems of record” for master data — not to mention other potential invoicing partners for specific geographies where vendors may already be connected into a network operator environment.

Invoice/data submission and capture to manage transactions supporting large, medium-sized and small suppliers. With invoice-to-pay, it is important to focus on enabling a broader supply base, including those suppliers submitting both large numbers of invoices annually and smaller suppliers (e.g., fewer than 100 invoices per year) — and all supplier categories in between. For smaller suppliers, it is essential to offer non-portal-based solutions for invoicing submission, including the ability for the buyer to accept supplier PDF/email invoices.

It should also support scan/capture approaches for fax and mail (inclusive of paper conversion services for those organizations wanting to outsource this component) that may have been previously established. Capabilities such as the ability to “flip” a PO to an invoice can also be useful. A “virtual printer” capability can also let suppliers submit and manage invoices electronically without requiring the direct integration into a buyer’s system or the need to submit an invoice via a portal.

Matching and workflow comprise an essential component of invoice-to-pay capabilities. The ability to support the full spectrum between off-the-shelf and highly configured validation processes is critical. Depending on spend type and other systems, organizations may wish to match contract terms, POs, receipts, terms/schedules and other sources. The ability to configure rules (e.g., by invoice amount, dates, quantities, geography, business unit, supplier type/code, material item/code) is one of the key attributes of these systems.

These solutions support the routing of invoices to specific approvers based on a rules-driven approach that supports exception-handling, but can also enable a straight-through processing approach over time. Driving compliance to contracts starts with matching, but in more advanced scenarios, this functionality includes the support of category-specific processes and requirements (e.g., tying approvals in a statement of work to milestones, thresholds and deliverables).

Analytics and reporting capabilities of invoice-to-pay solutions should, at minimum, include baseline reports and metrics to measure against performance. Ideally, an organization should understand its performance in terms of cost (e.g., cost per invoice or other transaction type), labor productivity (e.g., invoices per FTE), supplier quality (e.g., submission accuracy), process quality (e.g., first pass match rate), working capital performance and so on. These measurements should include trend analysis, performance versus target and even comparison against external benchmarks (e.g., comparison to other user organizations that are part of the vendor’s installed base).

Analytics should support root cause analysis and extend out to suppliers to find areas to continuously improve the end-to-end process based on best practices. From a reporting standpoint, analytics should be flexible and companies should be able to create their own custom set of reporting requirements. Reporting tools should also allow organizations to export information for further comparative analysis in an advanced OLAP environment via formats such as Excel, CSV and flat file, and also export to increasingly mainstream reporting/dashboard solutions (e.g., Qlik, Tableau, Birst, etc.).

Supplier networks (an optional element of invoice-to-pay solutions) can provide economies of scale and shorten the time required to onboard suppliers, among other benefits. Networks can help improve the integration of suppliers of varying size, capability and readiness for electronic invoicing. They can also be helpful in enabling suppliers by helping standardize data formats and also converting between formats and varying integration protocols. Networks’ interoperability and localization can be especially helpful in certain markets with stringent VAT and other reporting requirements triggered by an invoice submission (Brazil, Nordics, etc.). Perhaps most important, outside of specific geographical requirements, networks can help companies electronically enable


vendors (especially smaller suppliers) that might otherwise still push invoices in a less than fully electronic manner (e.g., email/PDF).

Beyond the basic components of invoice-to-pay solutions, more advanced use cases and analytics can help bring together finance, procurement and operations to better drive financial forecasting, risk analytics, working capital management and supply chain finance strategies. The value-added capability of technology providers today can enable the ability to configure and deploy complex invoice workflow, matching, approvals, cash disbursements, trade financing options and better process management overall. Properly implemented procure-to-pay solutions optimize the linkage between procurement, payables and treasury activities across the end-to-end buy-side process.

Modern invoice-to-pay solutions are designed to provide a means of capturing invoices from suppliers of all sizes and integrating with other invoicing and network providers, ideally in an electronic manner — even for the smallest suppliers. Ideally, they also provide a means to ensure that all invoices submitted to buying organizations are valid, as well as in compliance with all relevant regulations and a buyer’s commercial requirements. In 90% of cases, under ideal circumstances, this may not require any “touch points” on the part of procurement or accounts payable.

These different invoice-to-pay requirements should be supported by a range of underlying stack-level and functional components, including:

• Core invoice-to-pay information management, including an overall taxonomy, mapping rules, workflow metadata, reporting and term and compliance governance

• Overall configurability and business rules governing entity (company) or sub-entity management (e.g., business unit, P&L, team, supplier, individual, etc.)

• Broad-based systems integration (e.g., ERP, eProcurement, T&E, VMS/services procurement, payment/cards/banks, audit systems, GRC, fraud detection, etc.)

• Supplier data management• Invoice-to-pay lifecycle enablement: supplier onboarding, invoice capture/creation, data

matching/validation, compliance checks, dispute management, invoice approval, invoice status, early payment acceleration (inclusive or not inclusive of financing), etc.

• A configurable user interface (home page, portals, dashboards, section organization, menus, etc.)

• Process control and definition (and automation, wherever applicable): “touchless” validations within tolerances, other workflow automations

• Support for mobile usage and scenarios (apps, email, browser, etc.)• Reporting/analytics

One way to “package” the elements listed above is to segment the various functional components of procure-to-pay into the following categories:

• Invoicing structure• Invoicing collaboration and compliance• Additional invoicing technology components• Payment• Financing• Supplier network

Besides these functional capabilities, invoice-to-pay solutions should also be evaluated based on their overall usability, configurability, supplier/third-party integration capability, overall technology/architecture and associated services.

For a detailed Excel-based RFI for information gathering spanning the above areas for e-procurement and invoice-to-pay — the same ones that Spend Matters uses in its analysis of procure-to-pay vendors — please contact your Spend Matters client service manager. We have also included (in the appendix) an abbreviated listing of all the subcategory elements we consider in our SolutionMap solution scoring component.


Q2 2017 Persona Introduction and RatingsThe summary below provides insight into the personas by which we have comparatively analyzed vendors in our Q2 2017 SolutionMap.

For a more detailed high-resolution view of each graphic, including persona descriptions and more information about Spend Matters’ upcoming SolutionMaps, download this free All-in-1 PDF.

https://dwfoh96rza0z7.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/24165409/Spend-Matters_ePro-I2P-P2P-SolutionMap-All-in-1_042417.pdf


For a more detailed high-resolution view of each graphic, including persona descriptions and more information about Spend Matters’ upcoming SolutionMaps, download this free All-in-1 PDF.

For detailed information on personas, see: What is Your Procure-to-Pay Persona? Understand Your Requirements and Mass Customize Your Vendor Shortlist

https://dwfoh96rza0z7.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/24165409/Spend-Matters_ePro-I2P-P2P-SolutionMap-All-in-1_042417.pdf

https://spendmatters.com/2017/04/24/procure-pay-persona-understand-requirements-mass-customize-vendor-shortlist/

https://spendmatters.com/2017/04/24/procure-pay-persona-understand-requirements-mass-customize-vendor-shortlist/


Bottom 3rd

Middle 3rd

Top 3rd

Customer Solution Scoring

Recommended Fit Considerations

Founded: 2000

HQ: Redwood City, Calif., and Orsay, France, with offices in New York, Montreal, U.K., Germany, Italy and Brazil

No. of employees: 180

Total annual revenue: Not disclosed

Customers: More than 250; 750,000 buy; more than 1 million supply.

Customers served in Canada, U.S., South America, U.K., Europe and Asia; they include Altisource, Banco do Brazil, City of New York, Consus, Fannie Mae, Honeywell, Lefrak, Meritor, Whirlpool, ISS, Lamy Optimiz, Lisi, Logica, MNH, Sephora, SPIE, UNEO, Vilogia and Vinci Energies

Available Modules: Supplier Information Management, Third-Party Risk, Issues Management, Improvement Plans, Vendor MDM, Sourcing Projects & RFX, Auctions, Category Action Plans, Bills of Material, Contract Management, Pricelist & Catalogs, Contract Authoring, Assets & Tooling, Item & Service MDM, Purchase Requisitions, Purchase Orders, Goods Receipts, Budget Tracking, Complex Services, Invoices & Payments, Invoice Data Capture, Accruals, Expenses, Early Payments, Spend Analysis, Savings Tracking, Performance Evaluation, Program Management, Advanced Analytics

Recommend this provider

Level of value perceived

Business value

Ability to meet expectations

Deployment speed

ROI

TCO

Innovation

Key

Background

• Based on its Solution and Customer Value scoring, Ivalua is a recommended fit for all Procure-to-Pay SolutionMap personas except Industry, although it is higher-ranked in certain personas than others

• As of our Q2 2017 SolutionMap, we have not evaluated Ivalua for the Industry persona (and therefore our exclusion from this persona is not a statement of capability to support specific industries)

• The functional strengths of Ivalua’s other suite-based modules materially extend its Procure-to-Pay capability; Ivalua also delivers significant flexibility in deployment model / approach and highly granular flexibility for customers upgrading to new releases with adjacent product capabilities/modules (e.g., project management)

• Ivalua scored in the “upper third” of vendors for the majority of the technology / solution components of the summary Procure-to-Pay SolutionMap analysis; it scored in the “middle third” in select areas

• The provider scored in the “top third” for customer value in the e-procurement SolutionMap analysis

• The vendor has established use cases across industry including both private and public sector organizations

• Ivalua has a growing systems implementation and consulting partner ecosystem; the adaptability of the solution lends itself to high degrees of customization and/or configuration by partners if required

NIMBLE DEEP DIY

MEGA ERP WRAPPER

Procure-to-Pay Persona ScoringIVALUA

Customer Summary Score

Solution Leader

Value Leader

EmergentContender

CustomerLeader

- S

olut

ion

Sco

re +

- Customer Score +

Key

Summary Solution ScoringCatalogs

Shopping / Requisitioning

Ordering

Receiving

Invoicing (Overall Score)

Invoice Creation / Capture / Management

Services Invoicing & Contract Invoicing

Invoice Validation / Approvals

Invoice Compliance

Payment/Financing

Supplier Network (Overall Score)

Configurability (Overall Score)

Technology (Overall Score)

General Services (Overall Score)


Appendix – RFI Summary Inputs (Solution and Customer Value Scoring Fields)

Catalog Management

Catalog Creation / Onboarding

Catalog Data Quality Control

Catalog Maintenance

Catalog Approvals

Catalog Objects

Catalog Mobility

Catalog Analytics

Catalog Roadmap

Catalog Contracts

On-Premise Software Option

Internet Shopping / Catalog Visibility

Catalog “Secret Sauce”

Shopping / Requisitioning

Requisitioning Set Up

Marketplace User Interface

Marketplace Dashboard

Profiles

Search Engine

Third-Party Content

Requisitioning Process

Systems Integration

Non-Catalog / Services Requisitions

Preferred Supplier Management

Repetitive Requisitions

Help & Support

Shopping Cart / Checkout Process

Approval Process / Approval Engine

Guided Buying

Sourcing Integration

Requisitioning Budget Checking Process

Requisitioning Inventory Checking Process

Mobility

Analytics

Multi-Currency / Languages

Requisition Roadmap


Receiving

Receiving Setup

Fulfillment

Receiving Process

Receiving Integration

Receiving Mobility

Receiving Analytics

Receiving Roadmap

International Trade and Logistics

Supplier Network

Supplier Onboarding

Supplier Information Management

Supplier Performance and Risk Man-agement

Catalog Management

Order Management

Invoicing

Other Supplier Network Value-Added Services

Ability to Connect to Multiple Supplier / Business Networks

Other Capabilities

Configurability

P2P Configuration Set-Up

Business Rules / Workflow

Multi-Currency

Business-User Configuration

Technical Configuration

Vendor/Consultant Configuration

Customizations

Technology

Cloud


Robotics / AI / Machine Learning

Big Data

Block chain

Mobile

Internet of Things (IoT)

OCR / Scanners

Intelligent Apps

Conversational Systems

Personalization

Open Standards

Integrations

General Services

Data Management Services

Managed Services / Co-Sourcing / Outsourcing

Consulting / Change Management

Invoicing Structure

Set-up

Creation / Capture / Submission

Services Invoicing & Contract Invoicing

Invoicing Collaboration and Compliance

Core Collaboration

Invoice Validation / Approvals

Invoice Integrations

Invoice Compliance

Ordering

Order Setup

Order Creation

Contract Compliance

Extensibility

Order Processing (buy-side)

Order Delivery / Communication

Order Collaboration (buyer/supplier)

Order Processing (supply-side)

Services Procurement Integration

International Trade and Logistics

PO Mobility

PO Analytics

Multi-languages & currencies

PO Roadmap

Additional Invoice Technology Components

Mobility

Analytics

Roadmap

Payment

Methods

Processing

Cards

Financing

Financing On-Boarding

Trade Financing (Receivables and Payables Financing)

Collaboration

Financing Analytics

Customer Value

Recommend this Provider

Level of Value Perceived

As a Technology / Solution Provider

Meet the Expectations

Pricing / Affordability

Quick Deployment

ROI

TCO

Business Value

Supplier Network

Maximize Spend Under Management

End User Experience / Ease of Use

Supplier Enablement

Process Expertise

Category Depth / Support

Industry Expertise

Capability / Feature / Functionality (P2P)

Broader Suite Capability (outside of P2P)

Innovation

Ability to Handle our Unique Needs

Configurability

Systems Integration

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