U.S. Energy Producer Battles Weak Market Conditions with Investment in Procurement Technology

PRINCETON, NJ December 10, 2015 – Zycus a world leader in Procurement Technology solutions across the source-to-pay cycle, announced today that it has added a large, independent U.S. gas and oil producer to its client base for Spend Analysis.

Until now, the energy company’s procurement team had been relying on an ERP-based spend classification tool that enabled categorization of indirect spending transactions to only two levels of detail. They had reached a common inflexion point where they needed to increase granularity of spend data and to enhance both spend analytics and reporting capabilities if they wished to continue finding fruitful opportunities for delivering cost savings and other forms of business value.

Based on past experience working with other U.S. corporations, the energy company’s executive procurement team already knew they wanted to take advantage of Zycus’ market-leading, AI-powered spend classification capabilities. What sealed the deal – and differentiated Zycus from other more generic Big Data, business intelligence, and data visualization tools – was:

• The decidedly procurement-centric reporting capabilities already embedded in Zycus iAnalyze,
• Exciting, soon-to-be-released new spend data visualization capabilities from Zycus, and
• The Zycus team’s deep expertise and accumulated knowledge in classifying spend data within the oil, gas, and energy utility verticals.

While the company’s procurement execs knew they wanted Zycus for spend analysis, they had two big hurdles yet to clear. First, they needed to convince the company’s executive team to authorize an investment in procurement technology at a time when plunging fuel prices were dramatically undermining corporate profitability. Second, as all Zycus solution sets are cloud-based, they needed to pass the IT organization’s intensive data security evaluation and testing process.

A successful proof of concept (POC) exercise addressed the first challenge by utilizing a sample of the company’s spend data to reveal significant and immediate opportunities for strategic sourcing, spend management, and cost savings. As a SaaS native company, Zycus has always been deeply and proactively concerned with protecting customers’ data security and was able to respond easily to the rigorous data security-related requirements set forth by the company’s IT team.

“With fuel prices looking to remain low for the foreseeable future,” observes Zycus CEO and founder Aatish Dedhia, “we are seeing two distinct behaviors from energy companies in the marketplace. While some are shifting into reactionary mode – cutting back on procurement technology and other investments – others, such as this new customer of ours, are taking the longer-term, more strategic view. They understand there are many paths to corporate profitability and performance improvement and are investing now to empower their strategic procurement teams with information that will enable them to go out into the market, collaborate with suppliers, and lead the charge back to profitability, growth, and innovation in this difficult market environment.”