Basware Enhances Vendor Sourcing In B2B Marketplace

Electronic invoicing and source-to-pay company Basware has introduced new features into its Marketplace eProcurement offering, the company said on Tuesday (Nov. 19).

Basware is adding framework agreement capabilities to its platform, which enables businesses sourcing products to “initiate a mini-competition” between qualified vendors to secure a more competitive price and contract terms. The functionality means procurement teams can access more comprehensive options in the Marketplace platform, the company said.

“We have seen that customers usually have a strong process for strategic sourcing, but there are gaps when it comes to operational pricing, and a framework agreement is a way to address those gaps,” explained Basware VP of P2P solutions Sami Peltonen in a statement.

He offered software development as an example of this capability. A framework agreement enables a business to take multiple software vendors that have already been contracted by a corporate buyer, and leverage that framework agreement to submit requests for proposals to those vendors at different stages of a project. A buyer can choose a supplier based on turnaround time or price, essentially setting up a supplier on demand when professionals need to access a pre-approved supplier for various initiatives.

“The professional procurement teams don’t even have to get involved in the entire process,” Peltonen explained. “All they need to do is set up the agreement, allowing them to focus on more strategic areas.”

Basware first integrated B2B payments capabilities into its platform last year to streamline the invoice-to-pay process.

Earlier this year, Basware enhanced that accounts payable (AP) functionality by broadening AP and spend analytics for business users. The initiative allows professionals to manage key performance indicators (KPIs) and AP workloads as part of Basware’s AP Performance and AP Productivity dashboards within the Basware Analytics offering.

“You can’t achieve [efficiency and productivity] unless you automate AP department and shared service center processes, and know in detail where bottlenecks are and how invoices are being handled,” said Basware Product Manager Kevin Kamau in a statement at the time.