Today marks the release of the Spring 2022 SolutionMap procurement technology benchmarking rankings, which include 69 vendors.
Known as the most rigorous, data-centric functionality assessment of procurement technologies in the industry, SolutionMap contains 500+ RFI requirements across 10 source-to-pay (S2P) module and suite technology categories to pinpoint the actual capabilities of each participating vendor. Customer feedback also factors into where vendors rank on the maps.
Three vendors were added to SolutionMap for the Spring 2022 cycle:
- Airbase: AP Automation/Invoice-to-Pay
- RFP360: Sourcing
- RheinBrücke Technology: Sourcing, Direct, & Supplier Relationship Management & Risk (SXM)
Additionally, three existing vendors added new modules to their SolutionMap participation:
SolutionMap is updated and published every six months to accurately reflect solution updates. Since its launch five years ago, SolutionMap rankings have been consulted more than 270,000 times by procurement professionals. Many have subscribed to SolutionMap Insider content, PRO analyst research and Spend Matters TechMatch℠ to gain access to deeper data cuts and vendor intelligence to drive procurement-technology-selection decisions.
When discussing the usefulness of SolutionMap, Nick Heinzmann, VP of Research at Spend Matters, recently noted that “technology does not always work as well in reality as it does in white papers (or, more often, in sales slides). To wit, the most common shortcomings that organizations note to us in SolutionMap customer references for S2P suite deployments is that they wish they had done the following before they had actually selected the product:
- Known more about how the product worked
- Not made assumptions about how the product worked
- Taken more demos
- Understood functionality gaps
- Carried out better due diligence
This is not to say those shortcomings created project failures; in fact, many of the same references include highly positive comments, as well. But the point remains: before you invest, ask yourself if you really know how it works.”
Market Persona weightings
With the release of the last SolutionMap cycle in Fall 2021, Spend Matters unveiled its new “market personas” methodology, which replaced “buying personas” to better improve the accessibility and clarity of the maps. For the sake of transparency and clarity, we have released further details on how the market personas differ from a weighting standpoint to represent unique buying scenarios. An article on each market persona’s weighting details can be accessed below:
SolutionMap Vendor Participation Grid
Here is an overview of ranked vendors by SolutionMap technology category for your reference:
RFI Scoring Portal
To improve the data-gathering process, Spend Matters has developed a secure, user-friendly portal to facilitate the vendor functionality scoring process. It will ease the burden of the thorough RFI process for both vendors and the SolutionMap team and automatically write scores to the master database. Thoroughly tested by a subset of vendors and the analyst team, the new portal will be rolled out to all participating SolutionMap vendors for the Fall 2022 cycle.
You can visit spendmatters.com/solutionmap to view the free ranking charts by procurement technology category and market persona for a more tailored benchmark view or to learn more about the methodology.
Also available are subscription research (Spend Matters PRO and SolutionMap Insider) and Spend Matters TechMatch℠, the rapid procurement technology scouting & selection app.
Thank you all for your ongoing readership. We’re thrilled to get another successful release out into the world.
— The Spend Matters team
About Spend Matters — Solution Intelligence for Procurement
Spend Matters started as the first blog and social media site in the procurement and supply chain sector and has since grown into the leading source for data-backed technology and solutions intelligence. Serving private and public sector organizations, consultants, private equity and services and solution providers, Spend Matters drives strategic technology purchasing decisions and superior marketing, product, sales and investment outcomes for clients. Spend Matters is the only tech-enabled, proprietary data platform with exclusive IP that serves the global procurement, finance, and supply chain technology ecosystem.
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