CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up Series returns today with fresh supply management technology news and updates covering a few recent major announcements. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you are continually innovating the way that procurement and supply chain leaders and practitioners drive value, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a note at info at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!

Fairmarkit Introduces Integrated Quoting Partnership with Amazon Business

In 2023, major news of provider collaborations continues in the marketplace. Most recently, Fairmarkit announced its partnership with Amazon Business, enabling customers to request quotations automatically and directly from the Amazon Business selection of goods for all categories.

Ardent Partners recently sat down with Kevin Frechette, CEO of Fairmarkit, to discuss this collaborative initiative. Frechette says the company realized that many of its customers had Amazon Business in-house for their tail-to-tail spend categories. In response, Fairmarkit began working with the Amazon Business go-to-market team to establish an integration with its platform — becoming the first solution to integrate with Amazon Business from a sourcing perspective.

“With our customers that utilize Amazon Business, we can pull in their requisitions using our API from Coupa, Ariba, Oracle, etc., and our artificial intelligence will identify whether that item is a potential fit for Amazon Business,” says Frechette.

“The integration that we built will take that automated API call and send it to Amazon Business, which then sends back pricing in real time for that specific customer. This is exciting for Amazon Business because we can funnel more spend to them, driving more volume to their business without the usual change management required for the end users,” he adds.

Frechette says it’s an opportunity to support Amazon Business as a viable supplier with real-time pricing while reducing service level agreements — especially for tail-to-tail categories. Longer term, Fairmarkit envisions taking its up-market, more complex spend purchases and serving as a funnel for Amazon Business to up-market as well.

For enterprise buyers, the partnership unlocks unprecedented access to Amazon Business and its vast global supply base, creating an easy way to fill supply chain continuity gaps, discover suppliers aligned with ESG and diversity goals, and meet urgent needs that cannot be covered by the existing supplier base.

“Fairmarkit’s new partnership with Amazon Business is a win-win-win as both providers extend their value propositions deeper into enterprise spend. Fairmarkit’s customers also stand to gain from the faster and more direct access to one of the largest global suppliers of goods and services,” said Andrew Bartolini, Ardent Partners’ Chief Research Officer.

“Amazon Business supports ESG initiatives by making it easier to buy from small, diverse, or local businesses, and discover products with sustainability certifications through its socially responsible purchasing programs and advanced analytics,” says Frechette. “With Fairmarkit, it is now even easier to engage this enormous marketplace.”

Fairmarkit’s mission said Frechette, is to enable organizations to purchase the goods and services they need in the most efficient and fair way possible, and this collaboration does exactly that at scale.

“Amazon Business’ global footprint, along with providing access to hundreds of millions of products worldwide, makes this a powerful alliance. We’re appreciative of Amazon Business’ ongoing support, leadership, and knowledge, and look forward to what’s to come,” he said.

Read the full announcement here.

Medius Acquires Expense Management Firm Expensya

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Medius, a leading provider of accounts payable (AP) automation, announced that the acquisition of expense management software company Expensya is complete.

The company stated now that the acquisition of Expensya has been wrapped up, Medius can bank on the Tunisian startup’s powerful AI-enabled, mobile-first, employee spend management capabilities that complement Medius’s strengths in areas such as autonomous AP, payments, procurement, sourcing, contracts and supplier onboarding.

By taking Expensya under its fold, Medius forms a one-stop shop for CFOs as they look to gain a holistic viewpoint on their financial performance. The acquisition is also a further step-forward in Medius’s strategy to be the leading provider of AP automation with robust payment capabilities and industry-leading control and fraud detection.

According to Jim Lucier, CEO of Medius, “Expensysa’s growth has been astronomical over the last two years — and why wouldn’t it be — as the founders, Karim and Jihed, have built powerful AI innovation that will take us to new heights in spend management,” he said.

“This partnership already puts us in and amongst the biggest players within the spend management space and together we can offer CFOs solutions that can help them transform finance while empowering their teams. We are delighted to have the team on board and have already started working with them to amplify the Medius offering,” Lucier added.

Read the full announcement here.

Ivalua’s New Platform Release Accelerates AI-Powered Contract Digitization and More

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Ivalua, a global leader in cloud spend management solutions, announced the general availability of its new platform release 178. This release reflects Ivalua’s growing investment in R&D, including a broad set of new innovations that improve contract digitization and analytics, enhance visibility to optimize disparate purchasing activities, extend global e-invoicing compliance, enable new virtual card payment scenarios, and provide a built-in digital adoption layer.

The company stated that the seamlessly connected source-to-contract process within Ivalua has become simpler and more automated with:

• Automated updates to risk scorecards of suppliers based on changes in risk criteria or external data sources.
• Validation of supplier banking information and ownership to reduce fraud.
• The ability to import, view, and update the Approved Manufacturer List (AML) and Approved Vendor List (AVL) at the item level.
• Automatic mapping of suppliers to items based on category strategies and qualifications.

According to Pascal Bensoussan, Ivalua’s chief product officer, “Our latest release is designed to unlock the new levels of automation and efficiency across source-to-pay for our customers,” he said. “Our AI expertise and technology has come to fruition with contract lifecycle management (CLM), invoicing, and more advancements to come soon.

“Combined with customer-driven enhancements in purchasing optimization, virtual cards, and guided user enablement further demonstrate our focus on delivering innovations that unlock tangible value for our customers,” Bensoussan added.

Read the full announcement here.

OMNIA Partners Releases Next Generation Procurement Technology

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — OMNIA Partners announced the launch of OMNIA Partners OPUS, a revolutionary procurement platform providing a simple and seamless user experience for procurement professionals to access hundreds of cooperative contracts within the OMNIA Partners portfolio.

The company stated that partnering with the largest GPO for both the public and private sectors, along with Virto Commerce, a leader in e-commerce and procurement technology, will deliver industry-leading innovation to the cooperative purchasing market.

By focusing on the needs of procurement professionals and simplifying traditional processes, OMNIA Partners OPUS can provide an effortless solution that serves to improve productivity in an intuitive user experience.

According to M. Todd Abner, founder, president, and CEO of OMNIA Partners, “OMNIA Partners leads the industry in providing value to procurement professionals through innovative and creative ideas. After several years of development, we are introducing OMNIA Partners OPUS, a pioneering procurement platform to dramatically enhance the user experience for our members” he said.

“We have created a solution that is not the traditional marketplace. The unique approach of OPUS provides a single location for connecting to awarded supplier contracts in OMNIA Partners’ portfolio without a punch-out process. Until now, this type of platform has not existed in public procurement,” Abner added.

Read the full announcement here.

Mercanis Raises $10M Series Seed Investment to Boost Savings for Procurement Teams

BERLIN, SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Mercanis, a Berlin-based start-up announces the completion of its latest seed funding of $10M. The round was led by institutional funds such as Singals.VC, DI Technology, and Speedinvest.

Successful entrepreneurs and well-known angels such as Dr. Ulrich Piepel, Dr. Marcell Vollmer, Mirko Novakovic (Instana), and Victor Jacobsson (Klarna) also played a significant role. Mercanis sets itself apart from competitors with its easy-to-use sourcing and supplier management tools. These tools leverage networking benefits and automated processes to save more than 40% of the costs.

Founded in 2020 by Fabian Heinrich and Moritz Weiermann, the company stated that by using data insights and artificial intelligence, it strives to reshape how businesses make purchasing decisions and interact with service providers.

Following the successful seed funding round, Mercanis plans to catalyze growth and innovation by using the investment for the core areas. The primary focus will be on product development, including further exploiting the potential of artificial intelligence within the Mercanis procurement suite. The software already uses large language models (LLMs) in contract analysis and autonomous sourcing. Beyond product innovation, a portion of the funding will be channeled towards expanding go-to-market strategies, with an aim to share more success stories and broaden the customer base.

According to Fabian Heinrich, CEO and co-founder of Mercanis, “We’re immensely grateful for the trust shown in this funding round. It underscores the vital role of forward-thinking procurement software in today’s economic landscape,” he said.

“In these challenging times marked by inflation and recession, Mercanis doesn’t just facilitate growth. Our solution delivers cost and time efficiencies, while also offering a robust defense against risks for our clients,” Heinrich added.

Read the full announcement here.

Tagged in: Accounts Payable, AP Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Chief Procurement Officer, CPO, Procurement, Spend Analysis, Tech Round-Up, Technology