"Adding the spend-analytics component is a clear extension of our system," Emptoris CEO Avner Schneur says. "Spend analysis is the first step companies take when they launch a strategic sourcing initiative."
Analyzing spending is a manual process in many companies, and a difficult one at that. Data about spending is stored in many different enterprise resource planning or other operational systems, and millions of dollars in cost savings can slip by unnoticed. "If you have a contract that says you have to deliver x amount of a product for a specific price and date, and they deliver late, less than the quantity, and at a different price, it's almost impossible to know that without spend-analysis software," Schneur says.
Emptoris and Zeborg have less than a 5% overlap of customers, because buyers typically tend to either focus first on creating a sourcing platform or on doing comprehensive spending analysis, he says. It depends on where "the significant pain" is, but it's only when you bring the two together that real value is realized. "One of the best ways to understand bottom line behaving is to use spend analysis to drive sourcing to new levels of contracts to reduce TCO," Schneur says.
The company says there will be a first release of the joint products, which promise more customized spending views, before year's end, with modular pricing. Modules generally run between $200,000 up to $500,000.