PayStream recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Ed Mathews, the SVP of Operations at 
Scanmarket, North America. Scanmarket is a provider of eSourcing and eProcurement software; while Mathews works out of his office in Connecticut, the company has roots in Europe.
Mathews has spent time at both Coupa and Ariba, and therefore has a lot of experience in the sourcing and procurement arena. During our conversation, we focused on eSourcing, and we saw that Mathews has a lot of enthusiasm for Scanmarket’s product. This seems to be inspired by the platform’s ability to make organizations stand out among their competitors.
According to Mathews, small organizations are doing 50-100 sourcing events per year, while larger enterprises are doing more than 200. He says the average rate for RFx creation on most sourcing platforms is 3 or more days, which is a huge amount of annual time for companies of all sizes. In contrast, Mathews says that Scanmarket’s sourcing platform only takes between 1 and 4 hours to create an RFx. This is 300% more efficient than most other sourcing platforms.
Scanmarket ultimately achieves these times with their strong focus on usability. Their cloud-based solution is implemented overnight and is extremely simple to adopt—50-60% of customers never even use the training. In addition, Scanmarket has a strong focus on enabling direct spend sourcing (they report 39% direct spend in their system), creating a more holistic approach to obtaining organizations’ needs.
Scanmarket believes that focus on usability should also be in the minds of organizations as they select a sourcing platform. Mathews says it is important to have a plan from the beginning, one that is fine-tuned to the long-term use of the platform. Organizations should look at usability factors like time to value, customer service, and business results.
Our conversation with Scanmarket and Ed Mathews was enlightening, and we are grateful for Mathews’ insight into the Sourcing market—especially as we prepare for our upcoming 2015 Sourcing Report.
