We have just completed our Forrester Wave™ evaluation of source-to-contract (S2C) suites (“The Forrester Wave™: Source-To-Contract Suites, Q4 2019 — The 11 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up“). These S2C suites combine four related buy-side software products: eSourcing, contract lifecycle management (CLM), spend analytics, and supplier risk and performance management (SRPM). We found the Leaders to be (in alphabetical order) Coupa, GEP, Ivalua, SAP Ariba, and Zycus. Strong Performers are Determine, JAGGAER, and Synertrade. Contenders are Cobblestone, Oracle, and Wax Digital.

The key differentiators among the S2C vendors are the strength of each module, vertical expertise, coverage of different categories of spending, go-to-market and pricing strategies, and AI features and plans. Overall, though, these S2C suite offerings tend to be better at handling goods than handling services. Contract management tends to be similar between goods suppliers and services providers. But we found differences between vendors in their ability to analyze services spending, manage the performance and risks of services providers versus good suppliers, and especially in their sourcing of professional and business services. In all cases, the sourcing of services often gets taken offline or handled through alternative modes (such as email). This pattern can be attributed to the high-touch nature of services, which contrasts with the more standardized nature of goods. Nevertheless, we expect to see more development and sophistication arise around services sourcing in the S2C suite space in the future.

These integrated software suites provide value not only to chief procurement officers but increasingly to other executives such as chief financial officers (CFOs). For example, the more sophisticated leaders in the S2C space offer solutions with CLM and spend analytics capabilities for producing reports that help CFOs understand the supply-side drivers of financial performance. Chief risk officers and heads of supply chain also have vested interests in well-honed S2C suite supplier risk management capabilities.

(Audrey Hecht helped draft this blog.)