Market Overview 2008: Automated Spend Analysis

Automated spend analysis software is an essential tool for chief purchasing officers (CPOs) at large, global, diversified enterprises, and it's a useful tool for many others. Automated spend analysis helps CPOs (and CFOs) gain insight into what their company buys and from whom, and it helps them realize savings promised by past sourcing efforts. Sales of these products remain relatively small, but the market is growing fast and provides a range of offerings based on complexity and price. Approximately a dozen vendors offer these solutions, with a series of acquisitions concentrating them in the leading eSourcing vendors like Ariba, Emptoris, and BravoSolution or in specialists like Ketera Technologies or Zycus, which added eSourcing to their spend analysis products.