New SolutionMap benchmark ranks ‘platform’ capability of procurement software vendors — with the Q2 2019 release reshaping the market
Summary
This release marks the first major “revamp” since SolutionMap’s 2017 launch, emphasizing greater granularity spanning both functional depth and technology vendor “platform” capability. According to Mitchell, “SolutionMap enables ‘apples-to-apples’ comparisons between solutions that may look like varying fruits and vegetables to even advanced procurement, finance and supply chain organizations. We have done the hard work of abstracting demonstrated functional and platform capability for organizations that are non-technical in orientation.” The Great Equalizer Between Technology Buyers and Sellers “The latest SolutionMap release and methodology is the great equalizer between buyers and sellers of procurement technology solutions,” says Spend Matters Founder Jason Busch. “It is the only ratings methodology that is fully transparent, considers equal parts technology analyst and customer scoring (individually and separately), and allows business users to create a one-to-one map based on their requirements to what technology vendors can provide based on demonstrated, generally available capability.” “But this time around, SolutionMap is significantly deeper,” Busch notes, “not requiring even IT support for regular business users to pick the very best solution for their needs.” To illustrate the objective scoring format, here is a sample common configurability, globalization platform requirement for Source-to-Pay (S2P): “We can do scenario modeling of vendor capabilities and play out different scenarios such as off-the-shelf technology options versus different levels of customization, bundled vendors versus a traditional suite offering, running relative newcomers against established vendors,” Mitchell says. “And we can provide counsel on creating a more flexible architecture and roadmap based on the current and future needs of a procurement organization.” The SolutionMap procurement technology benchmark rankings are based on equal parts objective technology capability ranking (done by analysts) and customer feedback scores with set weightings.