Spend analysis softwares are advanced analytical tools that help companies to identify, gather, cleanse, categorize, and analyze expenditure data with the aim of reducing procurement cost, improving efficiency and continuously updating an organization’s data to ensure that all contract terms and compliance requirements are being adhered to. Spend analysis softwares can also be leveraged in other business areas such as inventory management, budgeting and planning, and product and process development.

The vendors have been placed in four categories, based on their performance in each criterion under spend analysis softwares quadrant: “vaisionary,” “innovators,” “emerging,” and “dynamic.” The top 25 players have been evaluated in this section of the report. The analysis has been carried out based on specific parameters related to spend analysis softwares, and the scores have been assigned accordingly.

Vendors who fall into this MicroQuadrant receive high scores for most of the evaluation criterion. The vendors in this section have a strong and established product portfolio, and a very strong market presence. They provide mature and reputable spend analysis softwares that cater to a wide range of verticals, globally. They also have strong business strategies.

These are established vendors with very strong business strategies. However, they score low in their product portfolios. They generally focus on a specific type of technology related to the spend analysis softwares. The vendors included in this section of the MicroQuadrant have a good customer base and are providers of software and services catering to other technologies as well.

Innovators grouped in this category have demonstrated substantial product innovations as compared to their competitors. They have very focused product portfolios. However, they do not have very strong growth strategies for their overall businesses.

These are vendors with niche product offerings and are just beginning to gain recognition in the market. They do not have very strong business strategies as compared to other established vendors. They might be new entrants in the market and could require some more time before gaining significant traction. There have been significant transformations in the functioning of businesses with the expansive penetration of IT infrastructure among organizations. The extensive IT environment of an organization not only enhances flexibility in business functionalities, but also adds to its overall productivity. This results in an increased amount of data, thus forcing industry players to analyze its aspects and gather insights into driving their business growth. In the areas of strategic sourcing and procurement, spend analysis softwares help to improve processes and operational efficiency. Moreover, these solutions help to perform financial analysis, contract management, and risk and compliance management. Based on vertical, the spend analysis softwares market is segmented into BFSI, telecommunications and IT, retail and eCommerce, healthcare and life sciences, government and defense, manufacturing, energy and utilities, and others.

MANUFACTURING
The manufacturing sector includes facilities required for manufacturing heavy construction equipment, farm equipment, rail cars and engines, airplanes and airplane parts, shipbuilding, turbines and generators, lawn and garden equipment, compressors, pumps, conveyors, military equipment, household and commercial appliances, mining equipment, oil and gas field equipment, and transformers among others. Spend analysis softwares play a crucial role in improving operational efficiency and financial performance as sourcing accounts for almost up to 75% of the overall cost in a typical manufacturing organization. Spend analysis softwares also provide inputs for planning, budgeting, and product strategies with global spend visibility across enterprises and assists in making informed business decisions. Additionally, spend analysis softwares are proving beneficial for organizations in supplier performance management, working capital performance, parts standardization, and sourcing strategy development, among others. Industry players are striving to offer sophisticated spend analysis softwares to meet customer demand.

RETAIL AND ECOMMERCE
The retail industry is undergoing significant transformation with the rapid economic and income growth in the emerging nations. Big data has emerged as a pivotal element in building business development strategies. The industry is facing various challenges, such as long-term uptrend in commodity and raw material prices, changing supply chain architecture, and cost-trend dynamics. In such a scenario, the role of retail sourcing and procurement departments becomes crucial for boosting brand equity and operating margin, driving differentiation, and harvesting insights from big data as much as possible. Spend analysis softwares help to design and develop cost-competitive global business strategies for enhancing business productivity, lowering costs, and optimizing transportation and logistics networks.
The telecommunications and IT sector has witnessed rapid growth in the past decade and is undergoing significant transformation. With its large size, the industry exhibits complex contracts, inter-dependency of services, disparate spends, and minimal resources and time. This has resulted in the slower adoption of sophisticated spend management solutions and supplier contract renewables. Strategic sourcing and spend analysis softwares empower organizations to analyze telecom spends and prepare comprehensive reports detailing the current state of a supplier, carrier service, equipment, contract terms, and utilization rates. These reports allow organizations to perform gap analysis between technology adoption and market objectives, which in turn, helps to understand spending trends and make informed decisions. Apart from industry vendors who offer spend analysis softwares to telecommunications and IT organizations, various managed services providers such as Source One also offer spend and procurement analytics solutions.

Financial management applications help companies of all sizes to automate and transform planning, reporting, and analysis processes. Financial management applications also allow companies to anticipate performance differences, analyze root causes, assess alternatives, and enable effective decision making and execution. They allow companies to monitor the differences between the anticipated and achieved performance. An organization’s analytical capabilities are incomplete without financial analytics, which needs to be implemented as per its goals and objectives. By implementing spend analysis softwares along with financial management applications, companies can bridge the gap between their financial and operational performances. Spend analysis softwares help companies to perform the most accurate cash flow analysis, receive real-time view of their financial situation, enhance operational alignment, identify variances with corrective actions, and track differences between actual and planned financial performances. When all these processes are linked with operations, an overall increase in enterprise sales and profitability can be witnessed.

RISK MANAGEMENT

Risk management applications mainly cover enterprise risks associated with financial and operations processes. Organizations use risk management applications to enhance risk intelligence capabilities and fight and tackle every risk they are exposed to, including network, financial, and operational risks. By using advanced analytical frameworks, companies can avoid, address, or quickly recover from major risk events. Risk management has become a necessity for seamless business functioning. Taking timely inputs from incidents and registered risks; analyzing, identifying, monitoring, and controlling the risks; implementing risk impact analysis; and prioritizing the risks are some of the major functionalities of a risk management application. Enterprises that do not implement risk management programs properly are prone to risks such as paying large penalties for failing to conform to regulatory requirements, and reeling under financial crises due to mismanagement of financial controls or from natural calamities, such as earthquakes, fire, and floods. Implementing financial management in line with organizational goals can also help enterprises to meet the regulatory requirements of different regions and sectors. Highly interactive and graphically rich tools help enterprise users to make risk calculations in advance along with providing a better understanding of business and financial data. The market players offer a range of visualization analytics, data management, and deployment options for their clients.

GOVERNANCE AND COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT

Governance and compliance management applications assist companies in developing a framework to ensure that all GRC issues increasingly pervading the IT space are covered and adhered to. Governance and compliance management has become an integral part of successful and large organizations as it has been observed that many companies fall prey to heavy penalties due to non-compliance or exploitation of confidential information by an internal or external threat source. The implementation of governance and compliance management applications may cost a substantial amount of time and money in the initial phase, but provides a great value proposition for organizations and their clients in the long run. It is necessary for governance and compliance to work together and remain aligned toward a common set of goals and objectives which an organization plans to achieve. Governance policies provide strategic oversight for organizations to help align their business processes and compliance in line with a common goal; risk management performs the task of safeguarding enterprises from internal and external threats, and creates a value proposition for stakeholders. The compliance part provides a certain set of rules and regulations that need to be followed in order to protect public and organization interests.

SUPPLIER SOURCING AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Supplier sourcing and performance management applications assist companies in effective spend analysis and savings opportunity identification, category and supplier intelligence, e-auctions and competitive bids, negotiations, contract management, invoice management, sole-source buying, spot buys, and tail spend management. Supplier sourcing and performance management applications help companies to gain deeper insights into their supply base, find sourcing opportunities within existing relationships, lend more purchasing clout during negotiations, and identify risks in their supply base. Enterprises across the globe are under increasing pressure to improve efficiencies across their sourcing analysis and procurement value chain for supplier performance optimization, supplier performance management, operations cost management, savings maximization, productivity increase, end-to-end visibility, and compliance adherence. Supplier sourcing and performance management applications help organizations to achieve these objectives and facilitate total cost of ownership approach for supply chain functions.

DEMAND AND SUPPLY FORECASTING

Demand and supply forecasting applications allow companies to access reliable forecasts for their enterprise operational and supply chain management. They enable users to improve business productivity. Demand and supply forecasting refers to the process of predicting future demand and equally matching supply to meet the demand for enterprise products. The process helps in managing inventory levels during the peaks and troughs in customer demand, and enhances product/channel profitability by ensuring the required balance between the resources needed. Demand and supply forecasting applications help boost service levels, shorten cycle times, reduce inventory investment, and minimize obsolescence. Advanced forecasting provides benefits such as optimum resource utilization, increased product availability, and improved profitability by managing supply and demand variabilities. Demand and supply applications analyze demand signals from forecasts, consumption data, and syndicated industry information. The cloud solution addresses the commonly-faced problems such as relationship management, real-time access to inventory levels, and visibility and control by accurate demand planning and forecasting. Relationship management can be achieved by providing linkages among all network participants to share enterprise data. Visibility and control allow enterprises to monitor short and long-term performance goals, and share information across enterprises to ensure that the goals are achieved.