About Us

Why Choose SpendMap?

Thousands of Buyers, Purchasing Managers, CFOs and business owners trust SpendMap to manage and control their corporate spending.

With over 25 years of success, SpendMap is the proven path to effective purchasing automation and spend control.

SpendMap Takes the Guesswork out of Purchasing Automation

We will take responsibility for helping you achieve your e-procurement objectives, not just sell you software and leave you to figure it out for yourself.

What really sets SpendMap apart from the crowd is our consistent and proven implementation methodology. We take the time to understand the existing Purchasing processes of each new client. Then, working with the customer to identify the priorities for improvement, we carefully “map” the solution to ensure that each SpendMap implementation achieves the client’s desired business results that drove the decision to automate in the first place.

At SpendMap, we have the tools, the technology and the expertise to help you simplify your purchasing processes, control spending, eliminate paperwork, lower prices, and comply with government and audit regulations.

SpendMap understands the complexity and process of procurement at a deeper level than most…They could see 5 miles down the road where I couldn’t

-Louis Titano, Purchasing Director, McKella280

Indirect Spending

Indirect spending includes any product or service that is needed to run the business but is not reported in the cost of goods sold. Some examples include:

• office supplies
• maintenance supplies
• computers and other capital equipment
• professional services
• scientific supplies
• furniture
• construction services
• printing
• etc.

While many of our clients exclusively purchase indirect items and so SpendMap is the only system they need, some SpendMap customers purchase both direct and indirect items and may even have another software system in place for their direct purchasing.  However, these customers found that their primary purchasing system is not suitable for the management of indirect spend, so SpendMap is implemented to complement the primary system.

For example, most manufacturers will use their MRP system to purchase raw materials for production (direct) but can’t use that system when, for example, a salesperson needs a new laptop or some office supplies (indirect). It is generally not practical to use a manufacturing/MRP system for indirect purchasing (e.g. you would have to process a Shop Order run to generate the Purchase Order, which obviously does not make sense for the salesperson’s new laptop).

Similarly, many retail (distribution, point-of-sale) systems can generate purchase orders for items that are being re-sold (i.e. that are processed through the POS system) but fall short for non-resale items that are needed to run the retail stores, like furniture, fixtures and equipment (FF&E purchasing).

In addition to the item requirement originating from a different source, the features that are needed for indirect purchasing are quite different than those that are available in systems that are designed for direct purchasing.

SpendMap is designed to meet the processing and management needs for indirect purchasing of corporate clients.

SMB Marketplace

Mid-Market Focus

Our sweet spot is the “M” in the SMB space; companies with somewhere between 50 and 1,000 employees.

Over the years we have seen increasing demand from midsize organizations for improved financial performance from the procurement function.

SpendMap meets the needs of our midsize customers with a feature-rich yet affordable e-procurement system and over 25 years of experience helping thousands of midsize organizations around the world.

For Smaller Companies

We often appeal to smaller companies that process a high volume of purchasing transactions or whose functional requirements are beyond the capabilities of smaller systems.

And with the introduction of The Free-Procurement Project, now companies of any size can start saving time and money today, regardless of company size or project budget.

For Larger Organizations

Our largest customer has over 40,000 employees.

While we usually pass on very large enterprise rollouts, we often find a good fit when larger organizations need a cost-effective solution to manage a subset of their spend, like large retailers that need a system for FF&E purchasing (furniture, fixtures and equipment) or large manufacturers that have trouble using their MRP systems for indirect purchasing.

Beyond PO Automation

The landscape of procurement software systems was originally driven by a singular focus on simply digitizing the Purchase Order…allowing a paper based form to be entered inside a common piece of software to support easy distribution.

Many applications have never grown beyond this basic requirement.  There is little or no thinking applied to addressing the deeper business process issues and opportunities for departmental performance improvement. As a result there are many competitors to SpendMap with low levels of functional sophistication including dedicated procurement systems and quick ERP add-ons.

SpendMap fills the gap with a complete application that, through a detailed review of the steps and tasks in the process of procurement, a broadly thought-out system architecture and a complete suite of functionality, provides the market with an option to achieve greater business performance improvements than simply making a single form electronic.

You can’t eliminate rogue spending if all you are doing is automating a purchase order.

-Louis Titano, Purchasing Director, McKella280

Purchasing Management

The job of a Purchasing Manager is hard work. Their day is full of investigations and efforts to verify the details of requisitions, purchase orders and receipts. Policies are often difficult to enforce and a large part of their day is spent correcting errors or finding out what went wrong.

Today’s Purchasing Manager usually comes to the search for a new procurement system hoping for increased visibility into what is happening and improved tools to reduce paperwork and the number of errors.

SpendMap is designed to help purchasing managers gain visibility and control over the processes of procurement. However, the pleasant surprise for Purchasing Managers with SpendMap is that it makes the achievement of the financial rewards of spend management possible too.

As an end-user of SpendMap and someone who uses the system every day, I really appreciate the real-world functionality that SpendMap offers to make my job in Purchasing easier.

-Jeanette Stone, Purchasing Agent, Carnegie Observatories

Our Functionality

A more functionally-rich and flexible e-procurement system means that you can automate more of your processes with less manual workarounds, which translates to higher levels of user adoption and a better return on your investment.

Our clients agree that our functionality makes us stand out; however, this depth of functionality has developed from our focus with our clients on the processes of procurement.

Throughout our history we have looked for the business performance rewards found through effective Spend Management. We have closely examined where the typical problems occur in procurement processes supported by manual systems or rudimentary applications and we have built SpendMap to eliminate those problems with an easy-to-use solution.

The result is an application with outstanding functionality that enables our customers to improve their processes and achieve their spend control objectives.

The rich functionality that we have accumulated over two decades of constant development allows our clients to apply the solution where they need it with confidence.

Source-to-Settle

Sometimes also called “Req-to-Check” or “Purchase-to-Pay”, this process includes initial requisitioning and approvals, sourcing, procurement, spend analysis, receiving, payment approval and management of accounts payable and general ledger accounts.

SpendMap is designed to support increased alignment between indirect purchasing transactions and corporate intentions as typically reflected in budgets and other process disciplines.

Therefore our clients tend to be a part of the expanding segment of procurement system purchasers who are looking for increased control and to assert greater corporate discipline throughout their entire procurement process.

Anyone that is considering an investment in a new system should take a good, hard look at SpendMap.

-EJ Gilmore, Purchasing Manager, ACI Worldwide

Managing Budgets

The purpose of a budget is to align spending with business strategic and financial objectives. However, in a manual environment (and even with most basic procurement systems), it is just not practical to compare individual expenditures against the budget at each decision point; there is just too much labor involved.

SpendMap makes it easy to compare expenditures to real-time budget data when entering orders and/or at the time of approval.

In addition, budgets are updated much earlier in the procurement process (e.g. during Requisition creation, rather than weeks later when the supplier’s invoice shows up).

With SpendMap, the procurement process can always be executed within the context of the budget and therefore ensures the alignment of expenditures with business objectives.

The numbers are in for last year. Because of SpendMap, we were under budget! For the past 5 years, we were over budget every year, by significant amounts. Just wanted to share the great news with you.

-Eric Jeffers, Purchasing, Managed Care Systems (MCS)

Increased Visibility

Without visibility into your purchasing process, lots of consequences occur:

• Unauthorized spending
• Commitments can be missed
• Budgets exceeded
• Duplicate purchases
• Receipt and accrual tracking is difficult
• Audit trails: cannot find things
• Cannot identify issues in advance – corrective action needed

SpendMap improves visibility for procurement system purchasers who are looking for increased control and to assert greater corporate discipline in their spend management.

Now I see everything. We have eliminated unauthorized spending which translates to immediate, bottom-line cost savings for our company.

-EJ Gilmore, Purchasing Manager, ACI Worldwide