Latest acquisition adds spend categorization technology to enterprise supply management solution
Burlington, MA June 7, 2005 Enterprise supply management specialist Emptoris has acquired Intigma, a provider of spend data management technology, in a deal that continues the consolidation trend in the spend management space.
Intigma's technology automatically cleanses, enriches and classifies unstructured procurement and supplier data locked up inside companies' enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, helping to transform these data into actionable information. Where critical data is missing, Intigma's technology supplements that data with information from third-party sources.
Emptoris' enterprise supply management solution, Emptoris 5, offers a suite of Web-based applications that integrates spend analysis, supplier negotiation, optimization-based bid analysis, contract compliance and supplier performance management capabilities.
More Efficient, Repeatable Spend Analysis
Emptoris said that the acquisition would expand its spend analysis offering and allow its customers to address a growing need for deeper visibility into direct materials and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) spending, providing for faster, deeper and wider usage of the solution.
"This acquisition further differentiates our best of breed spend analysis offering by making our spend data management capabilities more efficient, repeatable and applicable to a broader portion of a company's spending," said Avner Schneur, Emptoris' president and CEO. "With Intigma's sophisticated algorithms, rich knowledge base and experience in content analysis, our customers gain more value from their procurement savings initiatives and increase the return on investment in their ERP and supply chain management systems."
Schneur said that the combination of Emptoris' current capabilities with the functionality in the Intigma offering would give Emptoris customers "360-degree spend visibility," covering direct, indirect and MRO spending.
Jim Sanderson, executive director of procurement at Emptoris customer Dow Corning, said that the combination of Emptoris' Spend Analysis solution with Intigma's technology for data cleansing and classification would help his company in achieving its savings goals. "We expect the combined solution will help us reduce spending annually by automatically enhancing the quality of our spend data," Sanderson said.
MRO, Direct Materials Targeted
In an interview, Schneur said that Emptoris has historically been strong in the indirect materials space and "lighter" in the MRO and direct materials areas. Emptoris has worked with Intigma and other niche solution providers on these areas over the last two years, but Schneur said that Intigma stood out for the quality of its technology and looked like a good match for Emptoris' current offering.
In addition, Schneur said that Emptoris took a set of spend data from one of its customers, totaling about 15,000 line items, and gave the data to five providers. "Intigma gave us 75 percent of the data cleansed, classified and enriched to a very good quality in two weeks, while among the rest of the four providers, the next one was 12 weeks and the quality was about 55 percent," he said. "That showed us clearly that the software, the algorithms and the machine learning that Intigma has made them the leaders in this space."
Current Emptoris customers will not see any changes in the viewer or the online analytical processing (OLAP) tools currently provided with the solution, according to Schneur. Rather, Emptoris is adding the Intigma data cleansing engine and knowledge base to its current cleansing tools. "As a result, it's a relatively small change to what we have, and fairly quick integration," he said.
Intigma already had about 10 customers for its offering, and Emptoris will continue to support those customers, Schneur said, adding that his company will be looking to sell the Emptoris solution into those customers as well.
Compliance Driving Consolidation
Taking a broader look at the marketplace, Schneur said that he is hoping the trend toward consolidation in the sourcing, procurement and spend management space continues apace, allowing Emptoris, for one, to offer its customers all they need in the way of supply management solutions, rather than having the customers rely on "spot" solutions for niche capabilities.
Other companies looking to beef up their offerings in the past 12-18 months include Ariba, which acquired FreeMarkets and Softface; Procuri, which picked up Contract Management Solutions, Inc. (CMSI); and Perfect Commerce, which has merged with Pantellos.
Lora Cecere, research director of supply chain management at AMR Research, noted that with an annual growth rate above 8 percent, sourcing and procurement is one of the fastest growing areas in the enterprise applications market, and spend analysis is one of the hottest areas within sourcing and procurement.
"Compliance is driving the adoption and consideration of spend analysis technologies," Cecere said. "Companies working on compliance need solutions that can answer the needs of all types of spend: catalog, services and direct. As they analyze the problem, they are quickly finding that compliance requires unique data hierarchies and content enrichment that is not found in ERP systems; and often requires more than one sourcing and procurement system."
Financial details of the deal were not announced. Both Emptoris and Intigma are privately held. Emptoris' acquisition of Intigma brings the combined company to a level of about 225 employees. While Emptoris does not release financial results, it says that it has achieved greater than 100 percent year-over-year growth for the past five years.
Intigma CEO Kirit Pandit and chief technology officer Dr. Anand Soman have joined the Emptoris executive team as vice president of content services and vice president and general manager of Emptoris Technology India, respectively.
Additional Articles of Interest
Companies with advanced sourcing and procurement strategies are using spend analysis tools to drive bottom-line savings. Now it's time to take spend analytics to the next level. Read more in "Supercharging Spend Analytics," in the April/May 2005 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
For more information on best practices for spend analysis, see the following SDCExec.com articles:
Burlington, MA June 7, 2005 Enterprise supply management specialist Emptoris has acquired Intigma, a provider of spend data management technology, in a deal that continues the consolidation trend in the spend management space.
Intigma's technology automatically cleanses, enriches and classifies unstructured procurement and supplier data locked up inside companies' enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, helping to transform these data into actionable information. Where critical data is missing, Intigma's technology supplements that data with information from third-party sources.
Emptoris' enterprise supply management solution, Emptoris 5, offers a suite of Web-based applications that integrates spend analysis, supplier negotiation, optimization-based bid analysis, contract compliance and supplier performance management capabilities.
More Efficient, Repeatable Spend Analysis
Emptoris said that the acquisition would expand its spend analysis offering and allow its customers to address a growing need for deeper visibility into direct materials and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) spending, providing for faster, deeper and wider usage of the solution.
"This acquisition further differentiates our best of breed spend analysis offering by making our spend data management capabilities more efficient, repeatable and applicable to a broader portion of a company's spending," said Avner Schneur, Emptoris' president and CEO. "With Intigma's sophisticated algorithms, rich knowledge base and experience in content analysis, our customers gain more value from their procurement savings initiatives and increase the return on investment in their ERP and supply chain management systems."
Schneur said that the combination of Emptoris' current capabilities with the functionality in the Intigma offering would give Emptoris customers "360-degree spend visibility," covering direct, indirect and MRO spending.
Jim Sanderson, executive director of procurement at Emptoris customer Dow Corning, said that the combination of Emptoris' Spend Analysis solution with Intigma's technology for data cleansing and classification would help his company in achieving its savings goals. "We expect the combined solution will help us reduce spending annually by automatically enhancing the quality of our spend data," Sanderson said.
MRO, Direct Materials Targeted
In an interview, Schneur said that Emptoris has historically been strong in the indirect materials space and "lighter" in the MRO and direct materials areas. Emptoris has worked with Intigma and other niche solution providers on these areas over the last two years, but Schneur said that Intigma stood out for the quality of its technology and looked like a good match for Emptoris' current offering.
In addition, Schneur said that Emptoris took a set of spend data from one of its customers, totaling about 15,000 line items, and gave the data to five providers. "Intigma gave us 75 percent of the data cleansed, classified and enriched to a very good quality in two weeks, while among the rest of the four providers, the next one was 12 weeks and the quality was about 55 percent," he said. "That showed us clearly that the software, the algorithms and the machine learning that Intigma has made them the leaders in this space."
Current Emptoris customers will not see any changes in the viewer or the online analytical processing (OLAP) tools currently provided with the solution, according to Schneur. Rather, Emptoris is adding the Intigma data cleansing engine and knowledge base to its current cleansing tools. "As a result, it's a relatively small change to what we have, and fairly quick integration," he said.
Intigma already had about 10 customers for its offering, and Emptoris will continue to support those customers, Schneur said, adding that his company will be looking to sell the Emptoris solution into those customers as well.
Compliance Driving Consolidation
Taking a broader look at the marketplace, Schneur said that he is hoping the trend toward consolidation in the sourcing, procurement and spend management space continues apace, allowing Emptoris, for one, to offer its customers all they need in the way of supply management solutions, rather than having the customers rely on "spot" solutions for niche capabilities.
Other companies looking to beef up their offerings in the past 12-18 months include Ariba, which acquired FreeMarkets and Softface; Procuri, which picked up Contract Management Solutions, Inc. (CMSI); and Perfect Commerce, which has merged with Pantellos.
Lora Cecere, research director of supply chain management at AMR Research, noted that with an annual growth rate above 8 percent, sourcing and procurement is one of the fastest growing areas in the enterprise applications market, and spend analysis is one of the hottest areas within sourcing and procurement.
"Compliance is driving the adoption and consideration of spend analysis technologies," Cecere said. "Companies working on compliance need solutions that can answer the needs of all types of spend: catalog, services and direct. As they analyze the problem, they are quickly finding that compliance requires unique data hierarchies and content enrichment that is not found in ERP systems; and often requires more than one sourcing and procurement system."
Financial details of the deal were not announced. Both Emptoris and Intigma are privately held. Emptoris' acquisition of Intigma brings the combined company to a level of about 225 employees. While Emptoris does not release financial results, it says that it has achieved greater than 100 percent year-over-year growth for the past five years.
Intigma CEO Kirit Pandit and chief technology officer Dr. Anand Soman have joined the Emptoris executive team as vice president of content services and vice president and general manager of Emptoris Technology India, respectively.
Additional Articles of Interest
Companies with advanced sourcing and procurement strategies are using spend analysis tools to drive bottom-line savings. Now it's time to take spend analytics to the next level. Read more in "Supercharging Spend Analytics," in the April/May 2005 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
For more information on best practices for spend analysis, see the following SDCExec.com articles:
- The Secrets of Successful Spend Analysis
- Spend Analysis a Top Priority, But Not Widely Adopted...Yet
- Manufacturers: Achieve True Strategic Sourcing Through Spend Analysis
- More articles about Emptoris.
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