Twice a year, Spend Matters analysts work hard to further deepen their understanding of procurement tech (and services) solutions at a granular level by analyzing vendor-based RFI requirements across 11 source-to-pay tech categories and reviewing anonymized customer references. The 73 providers that participate in Spend Matters SolutionMap are benchmarked and ranked in this way to give users an accurate update of procurement tech functionality that is data-driven to help them make informed choices about their software partners.
From cycle to cycle (Spring and Fall) and from year to year our analysts observe market conditions, trends and movements among the solution provider community. This might include new entrants to SolutionMap or vendors that started in one solution map category and expanded into another because they grew their offering. All of this gives a more complete picture of the market at every cycle. But it’s not just about changes at scoring level for vendors in a particular field. The observations are also about the scope covered by a vendor and the market.
Our dedicated contract lifecycle management (CLM) analyst, Nikhil Gaur, notes some particular market shifts this cycle:
Main market shifts this cycle
SolutionMap CLM welcomed three new entrants this cycle:
- Procurement consultancy Efficio entered in Sourcing, S2C, SxM, Analytics and, of course, CLM categories.
- Strategic direct sourcing RheinBrück entered with its MeRLIN offering into the CLM space, alongside its Sourcing and SxM capabilities.
- SimpliContract, a dedicated CLM player, newly entered SolutionMap and performed notably well, displaying in all three personas (see descriptions of SME, Mid and Large).
CLM is often a complementary offering to supplier management and a logical next step for sourcing providers. Sourcing providers will find it useful to have at the least a basic CM tool especially when migrating from legacy systems. After all, the ability to digitize contracts is one of the first steps to digitalization.
The complementary role of CLM no doubt influenced the trend of vendors expanding their offerings this year. Outside of new entrants, the most notable market movement has been the partnership between SAP and Icertis, which took place at the beginning of the year. (Read our PRO analysis SAP-Icertis partnership: Solution comparisons and how the deal reshapes the market for enterprise CLM). This was a pivotal moment for the market because it allowed enterprise-level SAP customers to get much more advanced CLM functionality from one of the most consistent CLM leaders in SolutionMap. The partnership with SAP opens up a whole new customer base and a broader market for Icertis. It is still rather early to speculate on the longer-term implications, but in the shorter term this move appears to be a win-win for both parties.
Other notable market shifts include Jaggaer acquiring DocSkiff and SirionLabs acquiring Zendoc.
We have also witnessed the following during the dozen-plus solution demos conducted for this cycle:
- There is a growing emphasis on contract authoring — outside of the big players with authoring built-in — and this appears to be an ongoing theme, with many upgrading their plug-in functionality to make it more robust.
- We’ve seen greater focus on the capability for counter-party collaboration, like real-time commentating and negotiating on the platform. While traditionally reserved for the higher-end systems, this addition is transforming the smaller player solutions.
Other market observations year-on-year
Looking back at historical cycles of SolutionMap data and scoring, we observe some general market trends:
- In terms of SolutionMap scoring changes, we have witnessed a small, yet noticeable decrease in customer scores across the board. To be clear, this is not solution- or subset-specific, rather the result of the rapid growth that some CLM vendors have experienced over the past couple of years leading them, for example, to seek third-party implementation support which has not always scored as well with customers.
- The smaller or newer CLM vendors in particular are placing greater emphasis on making their user interface more simple, easy to use and intuitive. We believe this to be born from the fact that CLM as part of a larger and more complicated suite can deter usage from the less needy, less complex clients owing to the complexity of the interface, preventing them from getting the functionality they otherwise could. So we have seen greater emphasis on the likes of simple dashboards and more streamlined processes with clearer navigation.
- The subject of ESG is, of course, as important in the CLM space as any other, and while we observe no clear trends in ESG-specific functionality, many CLM vendors are integrating with the larger ESG solutions for easy access to company ESG scores or third-party reports.
And of course the evolution in ESG regulatory compliance and risk also ties tightly with SxM and sourcing – look out for the trends we’ve seen in that field from our analyst Bertrand Maltaverne here.
Following are the vendors Spend Matters covers in SolutionMap and Spend Matters PRO in CLM including new entrants this cycle.
More information about our full Fall SolutionMap update 2022 can be found here: Spend Matters Fall 2022 SolutionMap and TechMatch rankings for 73 procurement technology solutions
Spend Matters is also responding to this increased need for, and awareness of, ESG capabilities in procurement tech on the market by introducing a carbon management component to our buyer decision-making tool, TechMatch, which quickly prioritizes and translates business needs into technical requirements to gain a shortlist of best-fit providers for your organization.
