What’s New on the CPO’s Agenda? Ardent Partners Report

According to Ardent Partners' 17th annual State of Procurement report, while some trends continue on the same trajectory as in previous years, many CPO priorities are now notably different in the report's latest iteration. 

Our Journey Continues: $24 Million Series B investment led by 83North

We're excited to announce that we've completed our Series B, a $24M round led by 83North. Our Series A investors also doubled down on their previous investments.

There's A Bot For That: Getting Ahead in Ocean Sourcing

AI-powered Sourcing Bots can offer procurement teams an extra edge to get ahead in ocean freight sourcing when agility matters, explains Keelvar's Alan Holland.

How To Tackle Logistics Sourcing Challenges With Tech

Against the backdrop of a disrupted freight procurement market, innovative sourcing teams are increasingly looking to understand how people and sourcing software might best interact to achieve the business results they’re striving for. 

A Shift in Air Freight Procurement Strategy

Global supply chains have been affected in countless ways -- read why air freight procurement has been particularly impacted.

Striking A Balance With eSourcing solutions

eSourcing solutions can help your organization optimize its sourcing strategies and improve supplier performance. This article looks at the difference between basic eSourcing and optimization

Procurement Automation: Parallels With Wall St

How the evolution of procurement automation is following a similar path to that of Wall Street trading

Attracting Gen Z Talent Through Procurement Technology

There are numerous pathways that can lead to a fulfilling job within the supply chain industry. But how often do you really stop and think about what drew you to procurement in the first place? Was it a generational influence that saw you following in the footsteps of a family member, encouragement from a high-school career advisor, or – like so many others – did you ‘fall into it’ during young adulthood while exploring your career options? 

A Guide to Strategic Sourcing

Learn how the software used for strategic sourcing has come of age and why a growing number of companies are turning to it to run complex sourcing events more efficiently.

Sustainable Sourcing, Optimized

In order to thrive, businesses today must adapt to meet new regulations, emerging challenges and satisfy changing consumer preferences. Due to the devastating impacts of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions – a by-product of how we’ve been making, shipping, and/or providing energy-intensive products and services – sustainability is higher on the agenda of procurement leaders than ever before. 

Broadening The Reach of Modern Sourcing Software

‍Sourcing optimization solutions may have been around for over two decades, but they haven’t truly gone mainstream...yet. Many procurement teams still view these esourcing software tools as limited to niche or large-scale sourcing cases and only to be wrangled by staff members who possess specialized training and advanced skill sets.

A Guide to eSourcing Software

eSourcing software is a subset of the broader Procurement software market designed to streamline the process of evaluating, selecting and collaborating with current and potential suppliers, thus enabling buyers to select the optimal providers of goods and/or services needed to reach their business goals. The technology is a collection of digital workflow tools that can help speed up and simplify a company's strategic sourcing activities, enhance collaboration, and save valuable time for sourcing teams by removing some tedious manual steps in favor of automating elements of the supplier evaluation process.

Big Trends & Predictions for Procurement: New Ardent Partners report

Procurement departments have learned a variety of lessons while navigating disrupted supply chains in recent years, with agility emerging as a critically important attribute for business survival. Many large enterprises sought technical solutions to supply their customers with the goods and services they required and alleviate pressure on overburdened sourcing teams.

Sourcing Optimization: The Most Under-Utilized e-Sourcing Tool in Procurement

This short article outlines the most underutilized e-sourcing tool in procurement, namely sourcing optimization.

Webinar Highlights: What Keeps Sourcing Up at Night? Predictions and Trends for 2022

Procurement professionals have had a lot on their plates these past few years, with new supply chain challenges emerging regularly to play havoc with even the most strategically laid plans of sourcing functions worldwide. For many teams, 2021 saw the annual RFP take a backseat in favor of increasingly more routine sourcing and spot-buying needs. And, as the mitigation of environmental damage via the supply chain gains fresh momentum, time-poor executives are now struggling to balance resourcing alongside C-suite targets around sustainability and cost reduction. 

Four Webinars to Inspire Sourcing Success in 2022

Sourcing leaders and practitioners from Keelvar customers including McKesson, Samsung, Grupo Nutresa, and formerly from ABB had a lot to say in 2021 as they simultaneously navigated disruptions and modernization projects. As the calendar turns to a new year, many companies with supply chains will be acting in 2022 on the fresh opportunity to make better business decisions and implement new processes following 12 months of uncertainty and upheaval – including getting serious about sustainability, as Keelvar’s Voices of Sourcing survey findings reveal. Many sourcing teams also saw the annual RFP take a backseat in favor of increasingly more routine sourcing, with logistics, in particular, seeing ever-more-frequent spot-buying needs. 

Sustainability Reveals Big Opportunities for Procurement

The supply chain and procurement community have no time to lose in the battle to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions, cautions John Muncey in Keelvar’s Buyer's Book, 'How To Enact Sustainable Sourcing Today To Reduce Scope 3 Emissions'. It’s a warning from the sustainable logistics expert that also echoed throughout our December 2021 webinar, which featured Mr. Muncey and Keelvar CEO, Alan Holland engaging in a discussion about Scope 3 – those indirect, value chain emissions coming from your suppliers – and the implications for procurement and sourcing should sustainability not become front and center in the supply chain agenda.

Top Evaluation Criteria for Sourcing Optimization Solutions (Part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this blog series, we discussed how now – more than ever – priority must be placed on making sure sourcing teams are appropriately equipped with the right technology to meet supply chain challenges. This is best achieved with the implementation of a powerful sourcing optimization tool that delivers savings not possible with Excel spreadsheets, and one that is also easy enough to deploy broadly throughout the entire organization.

Why Rudolph May Really Be an AI Bot

A strong team is the foundation of a successful business. And few teams are more reliable than Santa Claus and his mighty team of reindeer led by Rudolph. But with the power to travel the entire globe in one single night at lightning speed, recalibrating and re-optimizing decisions along the way, it got us thinking: could Santa's most famous reindeer be an AI-powered Bot?

Top Evaluation Criteria for Sourcing Optimization Solutions (Part 1 of 2)

It’s that time of year when making a list (and checking it twice) is all the rage. But while there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes with checking items off a list, evaluating a new sourcing software solution for your team isn’t going to be as easy as shopping around for seasonal bargains, and it’s easy to experience choice overload due to the abundance of e-sourcing options available in today’s market. 

Boosting Supplier Relationships Through Total-Value Sourcing

Today's sourcing leaders must operate within an intricate web of buyers and suppliers from around the world. Companies must factor in much more than price when deciding which parts of the business should be awarded. Prospective suppliers should be considered from multiple angles. Although cost savings can seem like a clear win for your bottom line, this can lead to missed opportunities to capitalize on additional value suppliers can extend to your business.

Sourcing's Dilemma: Balancing Disruption Management with C-Suite Expectations

While most industries have seen disruption to some degree these past two years, ​​few sectors have been harder hit than those responsible for navigating bottlenecked supply chains and enacting supply chain strategies for business survival. And as highlighted in Keelvar’s Voices of Sourcing Report 2021, procurement and sourcing leaders have had plenty to reassess regarding managing their priorities to cope with new challenges. 

A Call to Urgency for Sustainability in Procurement

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released during the summer 2021 confirmed that Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) are almost certainly to blame for increasing global temperatures and degradation in air quality levels.

Information Security Now a Top Priority in Strategic Sourcing

Information security is a journey where we move forward on with determination and resolve, ensuring we are as best prepared as possible for the next risk.

New ‘Voices of Sourcing Report’ Puts Spotlight on Current Pains and Opportunities

The procurement industry is in a state of flux. New challenges are emerging every day that play havoc with even the best and most strategically laid plans of sourcing professionals around the world. For many teams, the annual RFP has taken a backseat in favor of increasingly more routine sourcing, with logistics, in particular, seeing ever-more-frequent spot-buying needs. 

The Un-Optimized Middle: 60%* of Sourcing Needs Better Decision Support

Talk about nagging statistics: Not even half of enterprise procurement teams use an e-sourcing solution to automate their negotiations and improve award decisions with suppliers. In Ardent Partners’ 2021 State of Procurement study, 54% of 350+ procurement leaders report lacking an e-sourcing tool, and only 20% use sourcing optimization. Keelvar’s own August 2021 survey of sourcing professionals revealed that nearly one in three admit they rarely (less than 10% of eRFPs) or never use e-sourcing tech.

Four Ways Grupo Nutresa is a Champion of Best Practice in Sourcing Optimization

While many procurement teams are still grappling with when and how to use e-sourcing solutions, there are some industry leaders who have mastered best practice and are reaping the ROI benefits across many categories. Colombian food manufacturing giant Grupo Nutresa is just that company.

Insights from the Field: What We’re Hearing from Procurement Teams

As Keelvar brings our sourcing optimization and intelligent automation products to market, our solution selling organization is on the “front lines” talking to procurement and supply chain teams every day. Everyone is all-too-aware of the difficulties faced over the past 18 months, but we wanted to ask our own team members how that is changing the nature of their conversations with sourcing decision-makers who are planning for 2022.

The Logistics Spot Buying Dilemma: Let Intelligent Sourcing Bots Handle It

With little end in sight to the supply chain disruptions that have been making global headlines and the world seemingly “short of everything” thanks to pandemic-related hold-ups, it’s of no surprise that Chief Procurement Officers and sourcing teams are seeing an increase in workload complexity on all fronts. For logistics procurement in particular – ocean freight, air and even ground transportation – long-term commitments have taken a backseat as the practice of spot buying has become more routine come more and more into the sourcing picture. As a result, buyers are regularly forced to take an ad-hoc approach to meet business objectives and drive profitability.

Keelvar to Discuss Sourcing Modernization at Digital Procurement World 2021

In just a few short years, digital transformation in procurement has shifted from a fleeting consideration in board meetings to the top of the business agenda for myriad companies in the supply chain industry. According to Procurement Leaders (April 2021) research, there are multiple drivers for procurement’s accelerated march towards digital transformation, ranging from data-driven business objectives to contemporary supply chain challenges and the expanding scope of disruptors such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Re-Evaluating Incumbent Suppliers Via Sourcing Optimization (Part 2 of 2)

In part one of this blog series, we looked at two incumbency scenarios that customers typically evaluate using Keelvar’s Sourcing Optimizer, emphasizing the technology’s ability to factor in non-cost attributes when finding optimal outcomes in complex settings.

Re-Evaluating Incumbent Suppliers Via Sourcing Optimization (Part 1 of 2)

​​The most successful procurement leaders are acutely aware that in order to remain competitive, they need to integrate and collaborate effectively with the core suppliers that play a critical role in meeting their business goals and reducing risk exposure. Alongside the many current challenges confronting sourcing teams and their global supply chains, it is also important to explore and recognize new supplier opportunities and to identify when current supply lines have become stagnant. 

A New Visual Guide: Logistics Spot Buys and Smart Automation

Henry Ford is cited as having said, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Like many memorable quotes, the message is both simple and powerful; if you are looking for an improved outcome from your efforts, you need to assess what can be done differently to ensure superior results. 

4 Common Sourcing Challenges Where Optimization Shines

Sourcing optimization solutions have been around for over 20 years, but let’s face it: They haven’t truly gone mainstream... yet. Many procurement teams may still have a view of these tools as limited to niche or large-scale sourcing cases and only to be wrangled by those staff members possessing specialized training and advanced skill sets. That was so 10 years ago.

Marketing Humor: Top Email Emojis + Sourcing Solutions

World Emoji Day 2021 is July 17th. In honor of this… Keelvar’s content marketing specialist shared some findings published by our CRM and marketing automation platform provider (HubSpot) of the top emojis used in email subject lines based on response rates:

Webinar Highlights: The State of Procurement & CPO’s Top Priorities 

More has been written about global supply chains in 2020 through 2021 than in the decade and a half preceding the COVID-19 crisis. Much coverage has been devoted to the devastating effects it has had on procurement functions. Today, procurement leaders are essentially facing an entirely new set of challenges, many of which will have significant impacts on future generations of Chief Procurement Officers and their teams. 

An Introduction to Sourcing Optimization

Sourcing Optimization is one of the best ways to reduce spending and increase the efficiency of your strategic sourcing process. Discover why.

Escaping the Hamster Wheel of Freight Sourcing in Volatile Markets

With the balance of power so heavily shifted towards carriers in today’s logistics markets, transportation procurement professionals more than ever find themselves caught up in seemingly endless tactical activities and unable to find enough time to drive strategic category changes. Carriers today are unwilling to hold rates for one year and are often asking for quarterly, monthly, or even more frequent changes. Competition today is often more about the buyer needing to secure reliable capacity than about seeking the best rate.

The Picasso Way for Procurement

Transposing complex subjects to simplified abstract forms is a major theme in art. Art is about shining a light upon what is most important. Seeing fundamental patterns amongst the noise; distinguishing simple forms amongst the complex and revealing salient details which convey the most meaningful attributes of the study.

Celebrating International Women In Engineering Day at Keelvar

On June 23, International Women in Engineering Day – an international awareness campaign that raises the profile of women in engineering and focuses attention on the career opportunities available in this exciting industry – celebrates its 8th year. 

Webinar Recap: Samsung Shares Their Sourcing Upgrade Evaluation Process and Results

With plants and sales subsidiaries in 74 countries and a footprint across Europe equivalent to that of 45 football fields, Samsung Electronics is well accustomed to the complexities that come with managing multi-layered and interconnected supply chains. But even for one of the world’s largest producers of high-tech electronic devices and appliances, uncovering new ways for tendering processes to be streamlined, logistics costs reduced, and advantages gained over competitors is of utmost importance to keep business thriving. 

Giving Autonomous Sourcing the Green Light

With autonomous vehicles no longer confined to the imagination of science-fiction writers – studies suggest that we can expect to see one in 10 cars self-driving by 2030 – there’s been plenty of murmurings about to what degree intelligent automation technology may diminish the need for hands-on human involvement in the future. These debates are now active and ongoing in Procurement.

Procurement Digital Transformation May Need Best-of-Breed Solutions

Procurement transformation has been a top priority, especially as many face a reckoning with legacy approaches now up against contemporary demands and disruptions. When you get to the heart of it, a transformation initiative means that you are advancing procurement processes by making changes that simultaneously involve internal practices, resource allocation, stakeholders, and enabling technologies. 

Uncovering Your eSourcing Tool's Most Valuable KPI

Supply chain disruptions call for rapid, agile solutions. To succeed in this ‘new normal’ with its new challenges requires new strategies and practices, with earlier whisperings of digital transformations now being widely implemented to help teams cope during quickly evolving times. Today, digital technologies impact every aspect of how companies run their businesses, from creating digitally connected products to automating data-driven supply chains. 

Automation Ahead of Its Time: Sourcing Optimization

Procurement has been gripped by the buzz surrounding emerging technologies for the last couple of years. We can hardly contain our excitement over the idea of applying Artificial Intelligence (AI), MachineLearning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA), and blockchain to age-old spend management problems.

Procurement Automation Is Top Priority For CPOs In 2021, Ardent Partners Report Reveals

Digital transformation has been firmly pushed to the top of the business agenda for organizations in the past year, reports Ardent Partners

3 Reasons Sourcing Optimization Is Ready To Go Mainstream

As a concept in procurement, sourcing optimization is nothing new. In fact, it first emerged almost two decades ago as a process that combines a sophisticated form of mathematics with computer technology to analyze large numbers of bids and seek out the ‘optimal’ or most cost-effective supplier or carrier when given a set of resources, cost, quality or time restrictions. 

How Keelvar Can Help Steer Customers Towards Sourcing Success

The way we define success at Keelvar is simple: if our customers are successful, we are successful, and that is why we introduced a new Keelvar Customer Success team at the beginning of 2021. The Customer Success team acts as our customers' voice within Keelvar, working with our customers worldwide to ensure the highest level of satisfaction when bringing advanced sourcing optimization ROI to a broad range of their spend categories and sizes.

Keelvar Stays a Sourcing Value Leader in Spring 2021 SolutionMap from Spend Matters

Spend Matters provides procurement teams a lot of value with their bi-annual SolutionMaps, packing a lot of insight into this visual vendor analysis. Keelvar is proud to once again rank as a value leader for both “optimizer” and “nimble” procurement team personas in the Sourcing SolutionMap in the spring 2021 update cycle. To achieve placement in the value leader quadrant, solution providers like Keelvar must have high combined scores from solution analysis and customer feedback.

A Definitive Guide to Building the Sourcing Optimization Business Case

Sourcing optimization has been around for over two decades, so it’s been puzzling that its use across procurement and supply chain has remained limited -- especially when there is so much proven ROI, usually after running just one sourcing event. It’s time for sourcing optimization to “go mainstream,” but that’s going to take an honest look at justifying and building the business case and having the right solution in place to ensure adoption and scale.

5 Tips to Elevate Your Procurement Function’s Digital Transformation Journey

Given the multitude of challenges that procurement professionals have faced with frustrating regularity in recent times, now more so than ever teams have to be ready to expect the unexpected in the industry. In dealing with the current crisis, the most successful organizations to emerge at the other end will likely be those that moved quickly to digitize much of their procurement operations and provide employees with the right technology and tools to reduce their current workloads while preparing for the disruptions that are as of yet to come. 

Why Intelligent Sourcing Bots Are Not Just Another Chat Bot

Most of us will be familiar with the pop-up chat bots that often greet us on e-commerce websites: virtual assistants designed to handle very specific interactions with customers and often also to ensure a smooth hand-off from automated messaging flows to a human for more personalized and qualitative assistance. But it’s important to remember that these chat bots are not fueled by optimization, and while sourcing bots -- such as the ones developed by Keelvar -- bear some similarities (both are primarily designed to save people time), they are also very different. 

Keelvar Welcomes David Clarke as Incoming Chairperson: Céad Míle Fáilte

Ireland is known as the land of a hundred thousand welcomes due to a common refrain when a visitor is welcomed into someone’s home. Céad míle fáilte means just that, a hundred thousand welcomes, and we would like to warmly welcome David Clarke into the Keelvar family. 

A True Pro to Know: Keelvar’s CEO Makes Waves Across Global Supply Chains

The vision of Keelvar’s Irish Founder and CEO, Dr. Alan Holland, has always been to push the boundaries of Sourcing Automation to a level that is unrivaled elsewhere in the industry. I think it’s fitting then that on St. Patrick’s Day -- a day where many parts of the world celebrate the wonderful things about Ireland -- Alan has been named a Pro to Know 2021 by Supply & Demand Chain Executive, and included among the innovators making waves in the global supply chain.

Keelvarsity Launches With Certification Path for Sourcing Optimizer

As Keelvar’s customers start to run e-sourcing events on our Sourcing Optimizer platform, a key ingredient for success is customer adoption and application of best practices. Sourcing team members greatly benefit from a flexible, efficient onboarding experience that acknowledges their time is limited and results must be delivered quickly.

3 Big Questions Answered About Sourcing Automation Bots

In a recent blog post, we looked at some of the most common challenges that drive Keelvar customers to re-evaluate their sourcing tools and how modern sourcing optimization and intelligent automation solutions can help to overcome them.

New Ardent Partners Report Gives 2021 Predictions

Against the backdrop of challenges that 2020 brought for the procurement industry, Chief Procurement Officers and their teams had to adapt and pivot their processes as part of their effort to build supply chain resilience.This report published by Ardent Partners and sponsored by Keelvar explores some of the significant trends in procurement in recent years, and makes predictions for 2021 as businesses and the CPOs managing their procurement departments seek to optimize how work is done in the year ahead.

Webinar Gives Intro to Sourcing’s Next Advancement: Intelligent Automation

The use of automation technologies can look quite different in various parts of the procurement umbrella. For example, RPA (robotic process automation) may be developed to boost speed and accuracy in invoice processing or related data entry by automating typing and clicks previously executed by humans. In other areas, document and/or voice recognition automation features may be used to digitize incoming information.

Complementing SAP Ariba with Sourcing Optimization and Intelligent Sourcing Automation

In February 2020, Keelvar’s Sourcing Optimizer Connector became available for online purchase on the SAP App Center, heralding an exciting opportunity for sourcing teams that rely on the SAP Ariba Sourcing solution to leverage our best-of-breed sourcing tool to deliver powerful sourcing-optimization capabilities for large or complex sourcing events. Since then, a number of customers have gone live with this integration.

McKesson Talks ‘Pandemic Lessons Learned’ on Supply Chain Resilience and Agility

The events of 2020 tested the mettle of procurement teams managing volatile supply chains across the globe like never before, with resilience and agility emerging as essential qualities for business survival.As supply chain congestion and interruptions became more frequent throughout the pandemic, the critical role of pharmaceutical and medical supplies industries was thrust into the public eye.

Keelvar Launches Intelligent Sourcing Automation for Air Freight Procurement

Read how Keelvar's AI-enabled procurement solutions radically improves sourcing agility, efficiency and effectiveness.

Garry Kasparov's Perspective on AI Meets the Future of Procurement Work

While the chess world enjoys a Queen's Gambit-fuelled resurgence in the game's popularity, it's somewhat amusing to think that in 1997, a real-life chess world champion was beaten by "a $10 million alarm clock". At least that's how Garry Kasparov likes to depict his then formidable opponent – IBM's AI-powered chess computer Deep Blue – and it was a symbolic moment in the competition between man and machine for those who witnessed it. "I was a sore loser at the time," Kasparov recalls. "The writing was on the wall. The machines had caught up."

Why It’s Time to Kickstart Your Sustainable Sourcing Strategy

Following a groundswell of public support for action on environmental, social and corporate governance issues in the first few weeks of 2020, an almost universally observed pivot on the part of large global enterprises towards incorporating more sustainable strategies into their supply chains was put on ice as the coronavirus crisis gained traction.

2020's Disruptions to Accelerate Procurement Transformation in 2021

In January 2016, we asked, “What will procurement look like in 2020?” Few could have predicted the year would bring a perfect storm of events that would necessitate companies across all industries to adopt intelligent automation into many of their daily processes, solutions, and resources just to survive.

The Autonomous Procurement Gambit

In the past year, we saw a backlash against the emerging consensus that Autonomous Procurement will be a key part of the future for procurement. Although it’s been a year since Andrew Bartels, a VP and principal analyst with Forrester and former guest speaker at a Keelvar Konnect event in New York City, launched a broadside claiming ‘Autonomous Procurement is a Really Dumb Idea’ (December 2019), the topic in the past few months resurfaced as a discussion on social media.

How Automation Can Calm the Waves of Reactive Ocean Sourcing

Keelvar Showcases a Sourcing Bot in Advance of the Human+Machine Contest

On December 3rd, Keelvar hosted a prequel event in the lead-up to the groundbreaking Human+Machine Contest due to take place in 2021.The Human+Machine Contest will test how one of Keelvar's sourcing bots designed for intelligent sourcing automation fares against an expert human buyer in a bidding event (Ocean Freight sourcing) under real-life conditions. The Human+Machine Prequel was designed to whet the appetite of attendees and sought to provide further context for the event next March.

Webinar Takeaways: How optimization has transformed Grupo Nutresa's strategic sourcing journey

Forget the adage about dogs and tricks: you don't make it to your first 100 years in business without finding innovative ways to capitalize on opportunities and manage potential risks. After nine decades, food processing giant Grupo Nutresa pivoted its supplier negotiation process for complex categories by swapping basic spreadsheets and desktop tools for e-sourcing and optimization solutions.

Supply meets demand: New sourcing automation solution targets ocean freight procurement

Keelvar provides new AI-powered ocean freight sourcing automation software to help procurement teams respond in disruptive climates.

Automization: Sourcing’s Very Own Portmanteau

“The most fruitful areas of R&D are at the intersection between disciplines where previously siloed concepts are blended to form novel breakthroughs. The combination of optimization and automation is proving to be compelling because synergies generate force multiplier effects in speed, agility, and excellence.”- Alan Holland, CEO and co-founder of Keelvar

Will COVID-19’s Impact Permanently Change Air Freight Sourcing?

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected global supply chains in countless ways, but it appears that the category of air cargo transportation has been particularly impacted. Dramatic drops in air cargo capacity continue to be a significant constraint due to the ongoing decline in commercial flights since Q1 2020. According to weekly flight data from Statista, for the week starting October 5, 2020, the number of scheduled flights globally was down by 46% compared to the same week in 2019. And Accenture, in its weekly updates to the industry, has reported that global air cargo capacity is down 22% year on year.

Keelvar Customer Grupo Nutresa Shares Their Optimization Journey

Celebrating 100 years in business in 2020, Grupo Nutresa N.A., headquartered in Colombia, is one of the most important food processing companies in Latin America, with 46,000 employees covering eight business units. Their supply chain involves 47 production plants and products distributed to 74 countries on 5 continents.

The Human Benefits of Transportation Procurement Digital Transformation

While technology is starting to play an important role in some shape or form in the logistics industry, it will be the digital transformation in freight procurement that separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to world-class performance and world-class operations.

How Keelvar Ranks in Spend Matters’ Latest Sourcing Solution Map

Spend Matters published its Fall 2020 Solution Maps for various procurement categories on October 1. Within the Sourcing category, Keelvar is proud to announce its very favorable standing among solution providers, particularly against larger suite providers like Coupa and JAGGAER.

Prequel to Human+Machine Contest to Feature Keynote from Garry Kasparov

Keelvar’s intelligent Sourcing Bots are ready to compete. Our debut Human+Machine Contest has been rescheduled for 2021, due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdown restrictions affecting our studio location and travel in Ireland. During that Contest, attendees will see how a Keelvar sourcing bot compares to an expert human buyer of ocean freight, as buying organizations submit spot bids to invited shipping carriers to win new pieces of business.

Will You Get a Sourcing Automation “Story” or Reality?

A few of my Millennial friends get together at the beginning of each year to create literal “vision boards” for goals they want to achieve and changes they want to make over the next 12 months. They paste collages of photos, drawings, and encouraging quotes onto sturdy cardboard posters and make notes on them. My Gen X approach to life always found the exercise amusing, quietly thinking to myself, “just develop a plan and do it.” But I get that this could be a fun activity to do with a group.

Webinar: Supply Chain Optimization – Uncovering Hidden Opportunities

Companies are currently facing many challenges in a rapidly-changing, disrupted market. In this 60 minute webinar, you will learn how to fully optimize your supply chain to maximize the return on your team's work processes.We will discuss minimizing risk through contract optimization by looking at fixed versus flexible contracting.

Faster Awards with Automated Spot Bids for Pharma Air Freight

Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on air freight rates, putting an additional strain on resources within pharmaceutical procurement departments. Almost every airline has stopped honoring contract rates and is relying on the spot market due to severe capacity constraints. The capacity shortage is because more than half of all belly cargo options have become unavailable as commercial flight routes are eliminated. The elimination of flight connections beyond major hubs is also increasing the need to source truck lanes to replace the lost flight connections.

Keelvar, the Industry Leading Sourcing Software Provider, Raises $18 million in Series A Funding

4 June, Ireland - Cork-based Keelvar, an industry-leading strategic sourcing software company, has announced that it has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Elephant and Mosaic Ventures with participation from Paua Ventures.The investment will support Keelvar’s expansion plans for Europe and the US, amid the rapidly-growing need for supply chain automation solutions, which has been further accelerated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Keelvar - The Journey Continues

We are proud to announce that Keelvar has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Elephant and Mosaic Ventures, with participation from Paua Ventures. We’re excited about experiencing the further growth and expansion of Keelvar, aided by the experience of these investors.

Webinar - Agile Sourcing via Intelligent Automation

Companies need to respond quickly and effectively to rapidly-changing market conditions so agility is a critically important attribute. Procurement teams are scrambling to ensure customers are sufficiently equipped with the goods and services they need to not only survive and thrive.

Procurement: Be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover.

Dr Michael Ryan of the WHO recently made a powerful statement that resonated across the world."Be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don't move quickly. If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection."With the world reeling from the impact of the coronavirus, healthcare professionals remain in the eye of the storm.

Digital Darwinism: Early adoption of emerging strategic sourcing solutions key to business survival

Technological progress is accelerating, and it has been for quite some time. In an era of persistent digital transformation, the ever-increasing rate of disruptive innovation in enterprise-level solutions can leave businesses scrambling to ensure each department is sufficiently equipped with the tools they need to not only survive rapidly-changing market conditions, but to thrive in them.

Four Signs You Need Sourcing Automation

In January 2016, we asked “What will procurement look like in 2020” and one of the most notable points from the discussion was “The transformation in sourcing will be led by sectors with the biggest need, those most receptive to innovation and with the technical ability to deliver change.” Scalable and transformation requires machines to reduce the burden for procurement teams.

Keelvar Strategic Sourcing Software at SAP Ariba Live in Vegas on March 16 - 18

Keelvar is a proud sponsor of SAP Ariba Live. Talk to us at the SAP Ariba Live conference in Vegas, from March 16 - 18, to discuss how Keelvar can help to transform your sourcing process. Keelvar is leading a new category of Strategic Sourcing Solution with intuitive, AI-powered sourcing software that's used by Fortune 250 companies globally, optimizing over $100bn+ dollars in spend annually.

Keelvar Sourcing Optimizer Connector Now Live and Available for Purchase in SAP® App Center

The Keelvar Sourcing Optimizer Connector connects SAP Ariba Sourcing with Keelvar Sourcing Optimizer, allowing customers to avail of the breadth of SAP Ariba and the depth of Keelvar in Sourcing. Keelvar today announced that its Keelvar Sourcing Optimizer Connector is now available for online purchase on SAP® App Center, the digital marketplace for SAP partner offerings, in what heralds an important new opportunity for sourcing teams that rely on the SAP® Ariba® Sourcing solution. 

Intelligent Automation is Not a ’Tool': It's much bigger than that.

Conventional thinking is that software‘tools’ equip professionals to do their work. Software as a Service (SaaS)applications have proliferated in recent years and include CRM tools, Accounting tools or eSourcing tools. Keelvar developed one such tool, a Sourcing Optimizer to manage bid events.

2019: The Rise of the Sourcing Bots

In 2019, Sourcing Bots began automatically running negotiations for large enterprises and closing deals with almost no human involvement. This was a milestone in the path to Autonomous Procurement. Let’s take a recap on the major events that capped a great year for Keelvar.

Sourcing Automation Conference: Keelvar Konnect in Zurich

Following the success of Konnect in Amsterdam, the next stop for Keelvar Konnect was Zurich on November 6th 2019. Keelvar’s Sourcing Automation Conference drew a full house of procurement professionals from Europe, North and South America.

How Sourcing Bots automate 93% of tasks in Ocean mini-tenders

Keelvar and Siemens hosted a Learning Lab at Digital Procurement World in Amsterdam on September 19th last, presenting the successful deployment of Keelvar’s Sourcing Bot at Siemens AG. 

Part 2: Looking back and moving forward: The past, present and future of e-sourcing

Dr Rich Wilson outlines the history of e-Sourcing, and the processes it has shaped as we know them today in Part 1.No doubt, current processes and technology signify that it is time for another technology revolution in e-sourcing today. We don’t have to look far to know where that revolution is likely to originate.

Part 1: Looking back and moving forward: The past, present and future of e-sourcing

The past three decades years have brought a whirlwind of advancements to Procurement teams globally. Gains and losses brought many lessons: some learned, some still being learned. In this blog I will outline what I have seen in my years within this industry (what some would now call the history of e-sourcing!) how it influences procurement processes today, and how it will shape the future.

Keelvar - Category Leaders in Sourcing Automation & Autonomous Procurement

In a previous post of mine, I talked about the problems that modern procurement teams still face despite decades of technological advances. I introduced sourcing optimization as one of my top bets for introducing cost and time savings into your organization.

That's not a Bot, This is a Bot

In a famous scene from a Crocodile Dundee movie set in New York, a criminal attempts to mug the Australian Bushman with a knife; at which point Mick Dundee utters the famous words ‘That’s not a knife, this is a knife’. He then produced a long blade that sent the mugger scampering when he realized he couldn’t compete. 

How to Develop an Intelligent Sourcing Bot that Will Change your Procurement Process Forever

Keelvar’s inaugural Konnect event took place on May 9th last in Amsterdam and focused on the future of Sourcing Automation. Keelvar showcased real examples of Sourcing Bots that were developed with participants in a “Build a Bot” workshop (if you are unsure as to what sourcing bots are, then check out our previous blog post: Sourcing Bots: What, why and how).

Mega-Bids: the good, the bad and the ugly.

How large sourcing events can turn into a Fyre Festival style disaster when preparation is overlooked.Large enterprises like to pool spend and run large sourcing events that attract wide supplier interest and maximize competitive tension. It makes complete sense but comes with a health warning: if you fail to prepare yourself for a flood of bidders and a deluge of bid data then chaos will ensue.

Sourcing Automation - Bot Prototyping at Konnect ‘19

Keelvar’s inaugural Konnect event took place on May 9th last in the city of bicycles and canals, Amsterdam. Konnect ‘19 drew a large audience of experts in Procurement across Europe as the focus of the day was Sourcing Automation. The event showcased real examples of Sourcing Bot prototypes tackling actual business challenges so digital transformation and hands-on problem solving was a core aspect of this unique event.

Game Theory and Procurement: Scaling Excellence

Game Theory is a term that is used liberally in the Procurement profession at present. It’s often used in the wrong context and is in danger of being regarded as a fad because it has been oversold as a panacea. It is quite common to see new ‘Centres of Excellence’ for Sourcing and Negotiations springing up with the intention that Game Theory is central to their strategy.

Sourcing Bots: What, why and how.

Procurement in 2019 has hardly evolved in almost twenty years. Sourcing teams still face the same difficulties that they did since the turn of the millennium:

Minneapolis - Oct 11th

AI-enabled Sourcing Bots are being deployed in 2018 for the first time, leveraging AI to automate strategic sourcing. This is the biggest advance in procurement since the invention of the eAuction and will herald a new era in sophisticated sourcing operations with implications for how teams are organized, new roles required, roles no longer required and also how organizations structure teams globally.