The procurement technology market is evolving rapidly and deploying the latest power that innovation can bring to support the changing and challenging needs of its customers. In an ever-crowded space it’s hard for those who rely on these platforms and systems to keep ahead of the latest developments.
For that reason, Spend Matters analysts make it their mission to scour the market to find those new solution providers that can fulfil a very specialist role to fulfill the procurement needs of today. Following months of debate based on extensive knowledge of the many procurement technologies they have reviewed, analysed and benchmarked, they arrive at a list of five young providers that they believe are innovative and exciting, have a rapidly rising presence in the market, can grow sustainably and which every CPO should have on their radar. Strategic Sourcing Int
These start-ups are taking technology further to address problems not previously solved, or are introducing a new category of automation that tackles new challenges in interesting ways. We believe these companies deserve greater visibility, especially in a market which is increasingly consolidating and diluting buyer choices.
Get to know all the procurement tech providers that made our lists this year and the methodology behind the selection criteria:
So we are delighted to introduce you to our Future 5 as we capture their voices. Today please get to know Calculum.
Calculum specializes in negotiating payment terms with a focus on the very specific niche of payment terms analysis. It has developed this capability in a unique way by gathering relevant supplier information from credible sources and analyzing the data with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to achieve higher impact results. You can read a in-depth description of Calculum here as part of Spend Matters Insider.
Read why we chose Calculum here.
Oliver Belin, founder of Calculum.ai, describes the rationale behind the solution’s founding:
“When negotiating between a buyer and a supplier, certain questions have to be answered: what is the price, how much do I buy, what is the quality of the purchase and what are the payment terms? Most of these questions get sorted out, but nobody is looking at payment terms. That is very surprising because whether you pay earlier or later has a huge impact on your cash flow. If you ask people how they determine these things, they just say ‘I just apply what I’m used to’ or ‘I’m just fulfilling the invoice my supplier sent me.’ In this area, everyone, including consultancy companies, have peaked their technology game at Excel. There is no database. Nobody knows what the payment terms are. So, we created the ADA Platform because every company buying from another company needs this. Additionally, it does help by bringing more much-needed transparency to the market.”
“Calculum’s strengths lie in how we leverage our data and the variety of sources we use. Obviously, we’re not just looking at the supplier and telling you what your payment terms should be based on what we collected. There’s much more to it. With a supplier’s financial data we can see how much leverage you have. If, for example, you intend to buy one million stock of a certain good, how much does that represent of the total sales of the supplier? Or we analyze the credit risk because that gives an indication about the supplier’s financing cost. We’re basically prepping your purchasing team. And our biggest strength in doing this is combining a lot of different data sources that provide consistent insight for procurement.”
“Our first goal, which was and is always our goal, is to continue growing data, specifically analyzing suppliers and their payment terms. We have reached almost 1.5 million suppliers. Data, obviously, is key as we grow the database making our algorithms more accurate.
“Additionally, we are increasing our focus on big data. Usually, when a company is evaluating suppliers, they analyze the top hundred suppliers correctly. When we worked with a global pharmaceutical company, for example, we analyzed over 55,000 suppliers. Obviously, you cannot simultaneously negotiate with over 55,000 suppliers. For the 80% of the smaller companies we want to provide an automatic negotiation. We want not only to provide all the tools to procurement, but enable smaller suppliers to negotiate directly on our ADA Platform.
“Lastly, we are also looking into offering the same intelligence on payment terms for the receivables, because everyone is both a buyer and seller at the same time. There is a need, then, for intelligence, to provide the seller with all the right arguments that can be used to optimize payment terms with customers. So, we aim to flip the model and use the data we have gathered to provide insights on the sales side too.”
“It is a great honor to be recognized by an independent organization like Spend Matters and, by extension, the market. I am also grateful for the opportunity to present a tool that many of your audience may not have heard of before.”
Many thanks to Calculum for sharing its story with us. We hope the Future 5 broadens our readers’ perception of the art of the possible to help you position your organization for the challenges ahead.
Product Development To learn more about the methodology behind our analysts’ decisions, listen to our recorded webinar from the Spend Matters analyst team.