Procurement software

2023. Procurement platform Zip raises $100M at a $1.5 billion valuation



The procurement industry, focused on platforms for purchasing goods and services, continues to thrive. Zip, a startup specializing in procurement software, has recently announced the successful completion of its Series C funding round, raising $100 million. Zip's solution, known as an "intake-to-procure" system, enables employees to initiate purchases that are then routed for approval across various teams including finance, legal, IT, security, and more, before being integrated into enterprise resource management software. A newly introduced feature called "intake-to-pay" expands the capabilities of Zip's solution, facilitating tasks such as issuing purchase orders, processing invoices, and managing payments. Moving forward, Zip has plans to incorporate new AI-based functionalities into its platform, aiming to further streamline the entire intake-to-pay process. By leveraging artificial intelligence, the goal is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of procurement operations.


2022. Egypt’s Suplyd raises $1.6M to digitize restaurants supply chain



Suplyd, a procurement platform for hotels, restaurants and catering (HoReCa) businesses in Egypt, has raised $1.6M pre-seed funding. Suplyd’s B2B platform brings efficiency in the supply chain operations for businesses in the food service industry by allowing digital order procurement, payment, and fulfillment. Through its platform, restaurants get access to a wide range of products on demand , saving them man hours wasted in sourcing for goods offline. It also ensures that the businesses acquire the goods at competitive prices.

2022. Supplier management startup Stimulus closes $2.5M seed round



SaaS startup Stimulus announced today the closing of an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round. Tiffanie Stanard launched the company in 2017 with a focus on the supply chain, creating a product that provided establishments with the tools and data to choose, compare and form relationships with product suppliers and vendors. The result is a product that helps businesses cut costs by avoiding mismatched suppliers while introducing diverse vendors to companies that might have overlooked them. Stimulus allows to discover suppliers using multiple search criteria including industry, company size, location, product, and certification, evaluate current or prospective suppliers who meet the required criteria for your organization, manage your supplier relationships, including project status, budget, and supplier status - all in one platform.


2022. Focal Point focuses on modernizing procurement with $3M



Focal Point, the service that brings a level of automation to a highly manual process of procurement, has raised $3M seed funding. The system can help find suppliers that meet a specific set of requirements, whether technical, environmental, diversity or whatever. The customer can create a workflow and Focal Point can then present the user with a set of suppliers and then help send out RFPs, process them and eventually award the business. Procurement officers can track all of this activity across their organization with analytics that help them understand where different items are in the buying process and what is being spent.


2022. Keelvar raises $24M to automate procurement in the supply chain



Supply chain technology companies have risen to prominence during the shortages, promising a solution to a problem that looks unlikely to abate anytime soon. One of these vendors is Keelvar, a Cork, Ireland-based supply chain analytics platform that weighs different sourcing scenarios to guide customers to decisions for their supply chains. Keelvar allows customers to canvass an array of direct and indirect procurement bid information from suppliers and then analyze multiple awarding scenarios based on those criteria and other constraints. (Direct procurement is spending on goods and services that drive tangible profit, whereas indirect procurement is spending on goods and services needed for day-to-day operations.) Using the platform, they can also launch and run new bidding events. Algorithms sort through data on supply chain disruptions and vendors, cleansing it and extracting information before offering recommendations.


2021. Accounts payable automation startup Tipalti raises $270M



Tipalti, which automates accounts payables for mid-market companies, has raised $270 million in a Series F funding round. In a nutshell, Tipalti uses artificial intelligence to help businesses manage suppliers, invoices, purchase orders, tax compliance, payments and billing and other accounting services from a single cloud platform. It claims to reduce companies’ operational workload by 80% by giving them the ability to pay partners and vendors “within minutes.”


2020. Fairmarkit lands $30M Series B to modernize procurement



Fairmarkit, a startup, working to bring a modern digital procurement system to the enterprise, has raised $30 million Series B. Fairmarkit wants to replace large procurement software systems from companies like Oracle and SAP. These systems have been designed to track only the biggest purchases over $500,000 or $1 million. Anything under that is what’s known as tail spend. The system acts as a marketplace for vendors and a central buying system for customers where they can find goods and services at this price point below $1 million. It imports a customer’s vendor data, and then combines this with other data to build a huge database of buying information. From that, they can determine what a customer needs and using AI, find the best prices for a particular order. Today the company has more than 50 customers across a variety of industries.


2019. Workday to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540M



Workday has entered into an agreement to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540 million. The acquisition builds on top of Workday’s existing procurement solutions, Workday Procurement and Workday Inventory. The company is trying to be the end-to-end cloud back office player and one of their big gaps has been in procurement. A lot of the Workday investments are in portfolio companies that are complimentary to Workday’s larger vision of the future of Cloud ERP. Today’s definition of ERP includes finance, HCM (human capital management), projects, procurement, supply chain and asset management