The global suite provider Jaggaer made many changes this year-integrating its solutions into a single platform called Jaggaer One, and gained a new owner this summer and saw a change in leadership a few weeks ago.
To learn more about these changes, Spend Matters founder Jason Busch spoke with Jim Bureau, Jaggaer's new CEO, who has been with the company for more than two years and most recently was the executive vice president.
He said: "When looking at our vision and enthusiasm for the work we do, it depends on the customer experience." "If there is no widespread adoption, the customer experience cannot be maximized. Therefore, it is necessary to gain adoption and truly achieve this level of customer experience , We believe you must understand and understand their business."
In Part 1, the Bureau will introduce the advantages of Jaggaer and understand the vertical market, serve the European market and plan the expansion of Jaggaer.
Jim Bureau: When looking back at the history of the various companies that we have established over the past few years, there are three real core areas. The first is the comprehensiveness of our solutions. Therefore, if you pay attention to the market, Jaggaer can do everything from upstream to downstream (directly and indirectly) in the expenditure management space. In each of these areas, we provide the level of granularity required by our customers. You might like that we have a very demanding customer base who expects Jaggaer to provide a certain level of detailed information, which they can't find elsewhere.
Another thing that really stands out is customer loyalty. At the REV meeting we held a few weeks ago, I participated in a breakout session. We walked to the meeting room and asked, "How long have you been a Jaggaer customer?" Many of our customers have served for more than 15 years, which is in today's SaaS solutions. The times are very satisfying because it is relatively easy to change suppliers.
The third thing that stands out to me is how we got here, which means highly qualified staff and professional knowledge. The people we have in our organization really bring them into this customer base.
Therefore, these three areas (comprehensiveness of our solutions, customer retention and domain expertise) are special strengths, and how we will continue to work in these directions.
Verticalization (or focus on the target industry) has long been Jaggaer's DNA. Will this continue to matter? If so, which vertical is the most attractive?
Interestingly, when you look at verticalization, the question actually becomes: Why are you vertical? What value does it bring? When we observe our vision and passion for the work we do, this is the customer experience. Without widespread adoption, the customer experience cannot be maximized. Therefore, to gain adoption and truly gain this level of customer experience, we believe that you must understand and understand their business. For us, this means entering the market vertically so that we can gain insight into details and nuances.
The industries we are deeply interested in are the public sector, manufacturing, logistics, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, retail, and CPG. Higher education has always been an important part of ours. In addition, there are business services, and of course energy and utilities. Our view is that each of these vertical markets has specific and profound nuances that "universal solutions" cannot provide.
Whether it is a pharmaceutical company that needs chemical inventory management in the procurement process, a higher education institution that needs to manage funding, or a logistics company that needs to optimize procurement for transportation activities; each of them has nuances, a bit like only Special-shaped nails suitable for special-shaped holes. We have a responsibility to ensure that it is available to customers. Therefore, we will definitely continue to focus on vertical markets, because we believe that this is how you get adopted, that is, how you deliver the return on investment your customers expect.
Jaggaer has quietly become one of the largest buyers in Europe today, even if it is not the largest buyer, at least outside of SAP. What makes the European market unique-I deliberately use the plural! —How do you continue to grow in the region?
First of all, we don't have to do this quietly, so we will solve this problem. We do have a large share of the European market, and we have the opportunity to continue branding under the Jaggaer brand. The Bravo Solution brand is very strong and will continue to be a very strong brand, but for our global customers, Jaggaer is our only way to enter the market, which is important because it will utilize all the assets that we have integrated into the company Jaggaer One. For our large global customers, a seamless experience from China to London to San Diego is very important. But again, there are nuances in the European markets, and I think we have done a good job navigating these markets.
When you travel from one country to another, you must be able to incorporate language nuances, legal requirements and tax requirements. And proceed seamlessly. Then, another interesting thing in the European market is that depending on your region, you have a lot of specialties in the vertical market. We do have the opportunity to take this pocket money and expand it to other parts of Europe. For example, as we all know, in the DACH region composed of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, manufacturing has become our real difference. Now, we see people using this expertise to carry out activities in Spain, Dubai and Australia. As we mature, we will integrate all of these into our Jaggaer One platform.
To do this, you need to navigate from one country to another. Through the acquisition of Bravo, we have a long history. We do rely on the domain expertise we have acquired to navigate the nuances of each of these countries, and then introduce best practices from one country’s vertical market to another country’s similar vertical market. For example, we have done a lot of work in the public sector in the UK and gained domain expertise that we will bring to the public sector in Italy (and then France). We are indeed trying to expand our business in all these vertical markets.
You mentioned manufacturing. Obviously, in DACH countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and other regional markets you mentioned, there is a huge market for direct material procurement. Do you also see it as a standalone function in North America?
Yes, for many reasons, we are very excited about incorporating direct material sourcing into our product portfolio. First, if you look at the total expenditures of the various organizations, direct material expenditures are not only significant, but also vital to these customers. We think this is a huge difference for us. We have some very large customers, such as PPG, Kohler, Bosch and Siemens, who rely heavily on direct material solutions in their broad product portfolio. We have also seen considerable expansion in the US market, so much so that we are pulling dedicated resources to meet this demand.
We also cooperate with some external partners who specialize in manufacturing, and we can truly tailor our solutions according to the needs of direct procurement customers.
If you look at direct material expenditure, another interesting thing is that it is very suitable for manufacturing. When you look at direct material, you think of vertical industries like healthcare, right? I myself have spent a long time in the healthcare field, so this is an excellent environment in which to provide direct expenditure solutions that meet the market needs of healthcare providers. Therefore, we see the substantial interest of organizations in this area, and this can of course be applied globally.
Looking ahead, what do you think is Jaggaer's biggest potential area of interest in expanding its current products? Is there the most relevant adjacency?
We have seen several very important things in changing market dynamics. One of them is embedded intelligence.
When people interact with spending management solutions, they usually have to work together to find something. People are not actually the way people expect to interact with the system today. What I mean is simple: when I got in the car, my car knew it was Saturday, so I was probably going to Home Depot. What does it do? It prompts me, "Hey, are you going to Home Depot? Do you want the route? Similarly, if I work in a certain category, in a certain category, what I do every day should provide me with my expectations Information. When there are differences in these aspects, these differences should be clearly pointed out without my intervention and search for the information.
So when we look at adjacent markets, we are actually focusing on ways to make the user experience unique, so the interaction with the system really enables human capital to focus on activities that can bring a huge return on investment. The other areas we are interested in are the payment market, the supplier market, and we will continue to focus on vertical specific areas. In these areas, you will see the continuous development of the Jaggaer One platform.
In Part 2 of this series, CEO Jim Bureau discussed Jaggaer's partner network and looked forward to the company's future to discuss the appearance of its products and the company's achievements.
Use the following categories to discover the content of the "Expenses" members. Select a category to view the available PRO content.
Post time: Oct-14-2020