Catching up with Ketera
During my recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I had a chance to catch up with Ketera, who have been working hard on improving not only their next generation spend analysis solution and on integrating their solution with Hyperion, as discussed in my March post, but on improving their catalog management, contract management, and invoice management integration, their reporting capabilities, and their supplier enablement solution.
Although they have one of the larger supplier networks, with over 115,000 users, it was a breath of fresh air to find out that Ketera understands that a supplier network in itself has no inherent value and that the real value is in supplier enablement. After all, if you're a fortune 3000 company that's been in business for tens or hundreds of years, you know who your suppliers are and who their competitors are and the supplier discovery mechanisms touted by supplier network providers really aren't all that valuable to you. The value of a supplier network is the ability to electronically communicate with your suppliers, automatically send and receive purchase orders, goods receipts, invoices, and payments, and enable your suppliers to new levels of integration and productivity. Thus, the maximum value is obtained when all of your key and large-volume suppliers are connected to the network, and this requires a solution that is standards based, open standards browser compliant, easy to use and adopt, and capable of supporting the information that both you and your suppliers need.
To this end, Ketera is working on improving its supplier on-loading processes and solutions, adding interfaces to common back-end systems used by its customers (to complement its newly acquired SAP Netweaver Certification), and streamlining it's document exchange protocols, mechanisms, and management tools. Ketera is also working on extending it's catalog capabilities and punch out support and integrating price cross-checking with its contract management solution to improve compliance across-the-board.
Although I don't expect any new releases or major announcements from Ketera until the fall, they're certainly a company to keep an eye on. Not only are they one of the few companies in the space to offer integrated sourcing and procurement solutions on-demand, but one of the few companies that understand the benefits of helping their customers with whatever solutions they need and playing nice. For example, although they offer best-of-breed spend analysis, RFX*, and contract management solutions, their event management solution is weak and they don't offer modern reverse auctions or decision optimization and they recognize that some customers will need these solutions. To this end, they partner (and re-sell) Iasta's solution to insure that customers that need the full range of eSourcing tools have them at their disposal. Combined with their fairly extensive e-Procurement offerings (which, from a basic cycle perspective, is only missing direct integration with leading payment providers and tax reclamation software integration), this provides users with one of the most extensive solutions in the marketplace from an integrated end-to-end e-Sourcing and e-Procurement cycle perspective.
Furthermore, I expect that before the end of the year, they'll reach a point where they could start working on some very advanced and very interesting predictive cost baselining and modeling solutions that can only be built once integration is achieved to the point where holistic analytics become a possibility. This would allow companies that don't have the extensive data required by Akoya or the physical process planning knowledge required by Apriori to tackle cost modeling and cost estimation in a way that they are unable to today. In other words, there's still room for lots of innovation in the space, and Ketera is one of the few companies that I've talked to that might really break it open in the next few years by introducing new capabilities that can be used by the masses.
* Please read the comments! This was a typo. When their RFX capabilities are augmented with Iasta's through their partnership reselling agreement, they compete with best-of-breed RFX solutions but, as Jason Busch points out, they do not on their own. My apologies.
Michael,
I like the current management team at Ketera (even though anything would be an improvement over the old days, I’ll tell you that). But I disagree with your statement that they have best of breed capabilities in spend analysis, RFX and contract management. Their spend analysis capability has come along way from when their service levels were lagging 2 years ago -- a LONG, LONG way -- but it's not in the same class nor do they have the references of an Ariba, Emptoris, BIQ, etc. From an RFX perspective, they have Iasta, correct? But that's not their own, even though I agree it's a great tool. And from a contract management perspective, their solution is fine, but again, not best of breed in the class of an Emptoris, Upside, etc.
And regarding your comment on analytics and costing, where's their manufacturing knowledge to make this happen?
I'd suggest being careful with you words when describing vendor solutions relative to others. People respect you, Michael. I respect you. The market does. With that comes a responsibility to be fair, not flowery. Don't mislead us.
- Jason Busch
Jason:
( a) I guess I wasn't clear enough in this post, but if you reference previous posts, you'll note that I believe their Spend Analysis is best-of-breed from a UI perspective and competitive with the offerings of Emptoris, Procuri, etc. since they have extended existing tools with custom development to complement what used to be a significant weakness. I will agree they do not have the same customer references, but, as you point out, having a good spend analysis tool is a very recent phenomen for them. As for BIQ, not even Procuri or Emptoris has their capabilities from a reporting perspective, but I was comparing to other suite vendors.
(As for Emptoris, until I see it, I don't believe they have everything they're claiming. Procuri TrueSource does lead in terms of off-the-shelf feed integration and canned reports, but last time I saw the UI, it was clunky.)
( b) I clearly point out that they use Iasta for eSourcing, which complements their existing capabilities to give them best-of-breed in RFX; but you're right, I screwed up the paragraph wording here - they're not best of breed on their own! THANKS!! (Just like their event management is weak, so is their RFX without Iasta's sourcing solution to complement their procurement stengths).
( c) As for contract management, I think they compete fine with the other suite players - putting them best-of-breed in that regard. The've come a long way here as well. Upside, Nextance, and probably iMany will likely always kick their ass (just like at least one of these solutions kicks Emptoris' ass), but I was trying to make this point with respect to other suite players, not stand-alone vendors. (I guess I wrote this one too fast and didn't quite get down all my assumptions and comparison baselines.)
(d) "And regarding your comment on analytics and costing, where's their manufacturing knowledge to make this happen?" If you'll notice, here I was very careful with my words. I said: I expect that ... they COULD start working on some very advanced ... cost baselining and modeling solutions ..."
To be honest, I don't think they have all of the manufacturing knowledge, modelling knowledge, or even the algorithm development knowledge in-house to complete this task, but when you look at the data they have flowing through the platform from the quoting, spend analysis, and procurement perspectives, enabled by their supplier network (it might not be ASN-size, but its growing) - it's considerably richer and more extensive than most providers have since it includes sourcing and actual procurement cost data and resides in their data store since they offer an on-demand solution. IF they had vision and hired the right people, this could allow them to take an Akoya-like approach and build some high level predictive algorithms to approximately should-cost commodities on a category basis.
I don't know if it'll ever happen, and I wrote this in hopes that they'd see it in type and seriously think about it, since we did discuss their vision, parts of which I did not share, and I think they have a unique opportunity, with the right vision and the right hires down the road, to do something really cool. Will it happen? Not a clue! But they are one of the handful of vendors that has the data collection infrastructure and the beginnings of the data analysis infrastructure needed as a foundation. (Besides, it would help validate what the Akoya's and Apriori's of the space are doing if a vendor tries to do something similar. Would it be as good? Probably not. Would it be good enough for the simpler categories and commodities? Could be. Would it be enough of an introductory solution to get more people thinking about the power of cost modeling and analytics? If done right, yes!)
I think we're going to disagree on Ketera for the next year or so. I think that they have come a long way in the past year, especially compared to the Ketera of old (which, to be honest, I'd put in the same bucket with the Procuri of olden days - the one I never thought I'd look at again), and that, from the needs of your average mid-size company, some of their procurement solutions are great, and a few of their sourcing solutions (but, as you rightly point out, definitely not all - and they'll likely never match Iasta, Procuri, Emptoris, etc.) are competitive with the other best-of-breed suite providers.
They are a bit of a quirk though. Most providers focus on sourcing or procurement. They do both, but they only do a third of sourcing well, and somewhere between half and two thirds of procurement well, based on the minimal definitions I have for a competitive sourcing or procurement suite in today's market. And, for everything they do, there is someone better in at least one way. But there are a few solutions where I think they are more than competitive enough to be lumped into "best-of-breed" from the perspective of a customer looking at a suite provider solution. The weakest entrant in the group for sure, but still clawing their way in there.
But their approach to the space does make for some very interesting possibilities if they continue to maintain the right partnerships and look at ways to use their unique solution intersection creatively and innovatively - although they could definitely have a hard time capitalizing on it if a rumored Ariba-Procuri deal happens and Ariba overnight matches their procurement capabilities with Procuri's sourcing capabilities, some of which are best in class.
My post may seem flowery, but, if read carefully, except for that one obvious wording typo (Sorry!), I believe it is fair. It could be called excessively positive, but I believe that the current management team, and development team, have finally started to turn Ketera around into a company that should at least be considered if you're a mid-size enterprise looking for a small sourcing or procurement solution and that if they keep the momentum they've built up over the next year or so, they will soon be one of the forces in the space to be reckoned with.
However, given that just about any mention seems to be a good mention when it comes to the blogsphere, we better not debate the issue too much or it might go to Ketera's head - and that's the last thing we need.
Michael,
Thanks for the detailed response. The world will be better off if we can both agree to be true objective sources of vendor analysis and evaluation out there, calling it as we see it. That's all I ask. You've carved out a great area for yourself here. Just don’t be afraid to go negative if you think it's justified.
Yours in objectivity,
Jason
You're welcome. If I'm not clear, or I'm wrong, then I need to clarify, or correct. As you pointed out, we're it - so we have to try to get it right.
As for negative, it's there. Every vendor has negative. I could go from A-Z down the vendor list and find negatives. In fact, I may just do so in a future post if I get bored enough. As for Ketera, if one wanted to look, one would, of course, find lots of negatives. They are missing most of the executable sourcing cycle (RFx, auctions, decision optimization, good event management) and you have to go with a best of class sourcing provider to get the solution (the resold Iasta solution is a great complement, as is the Procuri solution), their procurement and invoice management solutions are good (even though Coupa, barely a year old, has them beat on usability), but I fear they need more integration as well as (better) receipt management to truly hit all of the basics I would insist on (but then again, I am quite demanding), they have a lot of users in their supplier network, but doubt they have anywhere close to the number of Ariba suppliers, or (now that they have acquired SourcingParts) MFG.com suppliers, they're new to the catalog hosting game, and although it appears that they do it well, I'm sure there are still improvements to be made, etc.
But the point I'm trying to make is that we are not dealing with the Ketera of old. We're looking at a revolutionized Ketera that is on the same track Procuri was somewhere between a year and a half and two years ago. In another year or two, if they keep pushing forward, they could be a really serious player. That's a far cry from the Ketera of old who, just like the early Procuri, never looked like they would ever become a major player to be noticed in the still growing spend and supply management space.
Basically, the point of this post was to address the fact that if you're in the market or a sourcing or procurement solution, then, if you need a solution they have, then you should consider inviting them to the table. They may not be the right one for you, but there's enough there that they should at least be considered. And without comparison points, you never know how well the solution you ultimately select is!