Microsoft acquires Suplari to strengthen business insight for finance and procurement leaders

In a world where efficiency is more important than ever, companies are turning to new ways to unlock actionable insights to improve their businesses from the massive amounts of data they manage across their many data silos. This move to a new breed of “data-first” applications, which we introduced for other business processes through apps like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, is now coming to the supplier spend domain.

For most companies their financial data is locked in silos, making in-depth analysis difficult. With many companies facing rising costs and deteriorating margins, access to actionable insights for finance and procurement leaders is critical. They want to be able to bring down costs and manage their spend. For most companies, supplier spend represents a significant percentage of their revenue, yet most do not feel they are managing it strategically. But this has started to change, and Gartner* forecasts that by 2022, 50 percent of all legacy spend analysis software will be replaced by AI-powered, cloud-based solutions, and by 2024, 50 percent of organizations will have near-real-time procurement analytics.¹

Today, Microsoft is announcing the acquisition of Suplari, a leading provider of supplier spend insights that enable companies to proactively manage supplier spend by transforming data from multiple sources, such as contracts, purchase orders, invoices, expenses, and supplier risk, into valuable insight. By bringing Suplari’s spend intelligence insights together with the existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities, Microsoft is further helping organizations become insight-driven and enabling business leaders to take strategic action.

Suplari currently helps mid-size and large enterprises continuously manage costs and cash flow using unified, cleansed data, automated insights, and predictive actions. Together with Dynamics 365, the Suplari Spend Intelligence Cloud will help customers maximize financial visibility by using AI to automate the analysis of current data and historical patterns from multiple data sources. It will also help customers enhance financial decision-making by predicting the best spend management actions moving forward. The Suplari Spend Intelligence Cloud remains in market with no change for existing customers.

This acquisition will further empower Microsoft to help our customers turn data into actionable insights, including:

• Making comprehensive enterprise spend data and insights accessible to all. Customers can have a shared view of supplier spend everyone can use regardless of skill level. The simple, intuitive, and interactive user experience provides a single source of truth and insights for all users.
• Unlocking new financial insights to help with strategic procurement decisions. Microsoft is committed to helping customers transform data into immediate action and now with Suplari’s AI-powered library of over 175 insights, teams are empowered to manage demand, spend, and cash flow on a daily basis.
• Getting up and running with predictive insights in weeks, not months. Suplari’s data requirements are simple and flexible. Quickly access clean spend and operational data that includes your internal data sets as well as your external supplier data. Make better decisions faster, leading to stronger financial performance with measurable outcomes.

Today’s announcement also signals our continued commitment to enabling organizations to move beyond transactional financial management to proactive operations that enhance decision making, mitigate risks, and reduce supplier costs through our data-first approach. Learn more about getting started by visiting the Suplari website or request a demo. Learn more about Dynamics 365 by visiting our Dynamics 365 product page.

1- Gartner, Inc., Boost Supplier Management by Integrating Use-Case Driven Spend Analytics, Koray Kose et al, January 25, 2021.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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