Earlier this morning, Basware announced a new global partnership with BravoSolution. Our team was briefed yesterday on the details of the partnership by the Basware team. As many of our loyal Payables Place readers may know, Basware is a provider of eInvoicing and procure-to-pay solutions as well as the Basware Commerce Network which supports electronic PO and invoice transactions; on the other hand, it will be the readers of our sister site CPO Rising who will be most familiar with BravoSolution, a provider of a suite of strategic sourcing solutions and services. (Readers looking for some info on Bravo could read this recent article and those looking for more info about strategic sourcing can read Ardent Partners’ State of Strategic Sourcing 2013 benchmark report or this recent article by Andrew Bartolini that discusses strategic sourcing in 2013.)
Our Quick Take:
Ardent’s research has shown that there are significant benefits to having a well connected and linked source-to-pay process such as the ability to potentially reduce savings leakage, ensure compliance to negotiated contracts and gaining access to more accurate invoice data for spend analysis. This partnership aims to bring benefits such as these to its current customers and other enterprises in the market. And, the distinct capabilities and specialties of each provider make them a good match and ultimately create a new global source-to-pay solution in the market. The set of solutions that the two companies provide independently are quite complimentary as shown below:
BravoSolution
- Spend analysis
- Sourcing
- Contract management
- Supplier performance management
- Collaborative sourcing, including category specific sourcing solutions
- Sourcing and strategic services
Basware
- eInvoicing
- Basware Commerce Network
- eProcurement
- Travel and Expense Management
- Transaction, enablement, and other associated services
- Procure-to-Pay analytics
Read more about Basware here and here
Beyond their solution/service synergies, there are many similarities between the two companies and their cultures which make this partnership a nice fit including the following:
- Each company is the largest independent provider in its respective space
- Each company competes aggressively with the ERP and other suite providers in their arena
- Each company is headquartered in Europe and has a global presence with offices in many different countries
- Each company offers a blend of solutions and services to its customers
According to the FAQ sent out in support of the announcement, the “joint proposition [of the partnership] focused on bringing together the Art of supply management with the Science of Purchase-to-Pay to deliver a Strategic source-to-pay platform;” which is to say that the strategic value that can be generated from the sourcing process (while working with Bravo) now has a fluid mechanism to capture and retain that value on the operational P2P side (while working with Basware).
The initial partnership will involve the joint pursuit of source-to-pay deals and the ability to cross-sell/up-sell into each others’ customer base. The partnership will also involve multiple integration points between the two solutions, to enable the sourcing and contract negotiations conducted via BravoSolution solutions to be carried over into Basware’s Contract and Catalog Management solution. The procure-to-pay process will then continue within the Basware solutions.
The combination of solutions and services that the two providers will now offer provides broad and comprehensive coverage of the source-to-pay process (with the exclusion of the payment/settlement piece) and aligns with the increasingly popular desire to manage a seamless process that cuts across the sourcing, procurement, and accounts payable processes. That was not always the popular view when it came to procurement and AP. Historically, when we think about the above solutions and the constituents they serve (procurement and AP), these two organizations were disconnected and generally unaware or unfamiliar with the others’ activities and responsibilities. This has changed over the last several years with many procurement and AP organizations undergoing parallel or joint transformations that have been driven, in large part, by the availability of technology suites that can improve the performance of each group while simultaneously modernizing the functions through the use of technology.
To excel in the market, the partners will need to develop cohesive relationships between the leaders within each region – landing a few significant deals will help accelerate that process and justify continued and additional investment in the partnership. Beyond joint “wins” and the cross-sell/up-sell success within the distinct customer bases, we will also be interested to see (1) if there are any quick competitor responses or reactions to this news and (2) how Basware’s network will ultimately play into this.
Make sure to check CPO Rising later this week for continued coverage of this announcement.
NOTES:
Andrew Bartolini contributed to this article
At the time of this writing Basware and BravoSolution were clients of Ardent Partners, the publisher of this site
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