Bertrand Maltaverne

Having established the use cases for technology in the Category Management (CatMan) discipline, we now turn to laying out what capabilities these use cases require.

This Spend Matters Vendor Analysis provides an overview of Keelvar and its sourcing (including sourcing optimization) solution.    Sourcing decisions are growing more complex due to constant supply chain disruptions, more geopolitical uncertainties, inflationary pressures and sustainability mandates. This means that procurement teams must balance cost efficiency with resilience, agility and compliance. Traditional e-sourcing approaches often fall short in addressing these evolving challenges, making automation and optimization critical for organizations seeking to manage risk while capitalizing on supplier competition.   Keelvar has positioned itself as an answer to these challenges by being a key player in sourcing optimization and autonomous sourcing. Founded in 2012 out of academic research at University College Cork, Ireland, the company has steadily evolved from an early innovator in sourcing optimization to an AI-driven platform that combines automation with powerful analytical capabilities. It aim

Having looked at how technology can assist in developing a category management (CatMan) discipline, we turn to the vendors that play in this area. This piece begins with best-of-breed and suite providers.

Having outside-in intelligence and capabilities is a key enabler and value driver of any CatMan process. To support this, organizations can leverage their own teams, service providers and technology vendors.  This is where external intelligence providers play a critical role. By providing procurement teams with structured insights on pricing, risks and supplier landscapes, they enable organizations to design stronger category strategies, anticipate change and negotiate from a position of knowledge.  These specialists fall into two buckets: generalists and category-specific providers. Read the differentiators here.

This Spend Matters Vendor Analysis provides an overview of Zumen and its solution for direct materials sourcing.  Zumen is for discrete manufacturers who want to manage their products to market faster, by bringing all the NPI/D (new product introduction/development) activities in a single, transparent system of record that integrates easily with their ERP and product and engineering tools. It also supports transactional activities in the context of direct materials management.  Direct material procurement is critical for industrial companies, and it is under growing pressure (competition, supply chain disruptions impacting top and bottom lines, evolving customer demands, etc.). Therefore, and as we highlighted in a recent series on design for supply (DFS), teams need to ramp up capabilities, which involves findingthe right tools for the right job.  This vendor analysis also details Zumen’s platform, application and supporting services and gives a competitive market analy

Part 2 of this two-part Spend Matters Vendor Analysis focuses on Zumen’s strengths and opportunities for growth. It also looks at the elements to consider when looking at Zumen as a potential solution provider.  Part 1 of the series provided an overview of Zumen’s solution and its roadmap. 

This Spend Matters Vendor Analysis provides an overview of PartSpace AI, a costing and cost analytics solution. Industrial manufacturers are under growing pressure to manage costs (tariff volatility is one of the drivers), increase transparency and accelerate sourcing decisions. Traditional cost engineering and procurement processes remain fragmented and data-poor. Most enterprises still rely on spreadsheets and manual analysis to understand cost drivers hidden in CAD drawings, technical PDFs and ERP records. The result is opaque supplier pricing, duplicated designs and untapped savings potential across thousands of components. PartSpace AI tackles this long-overlooked pain point with a data-driven, AI-native platform that turns design data into purchasing intelligence. Its cloud solution analyzes millions of 2D/3D technical drawings and purchasing records to reveal real manufacturing costs, predict suppliers and highlight negotiation levers. By bridging engineering and procurement, PartSpace AI introduces a

This Spend Matters Vendor Analysis gives an overview of Aera Technology, a solution built to improve procurement and supply chain decision-making processes.  Decision-making has quietly become one of procurement’s most persistent bottlenecks. The challenge is not a lack of data, systems or analytics. Instead, decisions now sit at the intersection of fragmented information, competing objectives and compressed timelines. Procurement teams are asked to weigh cost, risk, service, resilience and compliance — often across volatile supply environments — yet they still operate within transactional systems that were never designed to reason, prioritize or act autonomously.  Over the past several years, this tension has driven a renewed interest in ‘decision intelligence.’ Much of the market response, though, has remained incremental: better dashboards, more predictive models or embedded analytics layered onto existing workflows. These tools improve visibility, but they rarely ch

This Spend Matters Vendor Analysis provides an overview of Kloopify, a costing and cost management solution that delivers deep, granular insights with minimal data input.  In a volatile business environment where suppliers often hold more information than buyers, procurement’s ability to understand why prices move has become a defining capability. Many organizations can track what they spend, but few can explain what drives those costs. And when buyers cannot challenge supplier narratives with data, they risk sliding into ‘silent slopes’ or leaving money on the table.  Tools like Kloopify help procurement reverse that dynamic. The platform transforms standard spend and item data into SKU-level cost visibility, enabling sourcing teams to see beyond unit prices and engage suppliers with factual, data-backed insights. Rather than depending on engineering teams or static benchmarks, Kloopify applies probabilistic cost modeling, supplier financial data and market indices to quant

Supplier.io has acquired TealBook. Along with the announcement, Supplier.io introduced Atlas, its new vendor master data management solution for