Magic Quadrant for Source-to-Pay Suites

24 March 2025- ID G00809887- 44 min read

By Micky Keck, Kaitlynn Sommers, and 5 more

Procurement is tasked with delivering cost savings, improving efficiency and managing risk and
compliance. This Magic Quadrant will help procurement technology leaders evaluate and select
the most suitable software vendor to optimize and digitize their sourcing and procurement
processes.

Market Definition/Description

Gartner defines the source-to-pay (S2P) suite market as an integrated set of solutions to source,
contract, request, procure, receive and pay for goods and services across an enterprise. These
solutions typically are sold as cloud-based software as a service.

Source-to-pay suites allow organizations to manage all of their sourcing and procurement
activities within a single integrated solution. These solutions are modular in nature, allowing
customers to activate/implement the functionality that is relevant for their needs, and are
ERP/financial-system-agnostic. The integrated nature of these solutions allows for data to easily
flow across the source-to-pay process, providing needed visibility to upstream and downstream
information. For example, users can view a purchase order alongside its related contract,
the sourcing event that led to the contract, and connected downstream documents like
receipts, invoices and payments.

Mandatory Features

The mandatory features for this market include:

• Sourcing: The creation and management of strategic and tactical sourcing activities.
These include: request for information, request for quotation and request for proposals;
and the associated collection of information, evaluation, negotiation and the awarding
of sourcing events.

• Contract life cycle management: This manages contracts from the initiation stage
through the award, compliance and renewal stages.

• Supplier Information and performance management: The ability to manage supplier

onboarding, data validation and performance.

• Procure-to-pay: The automation of the transactional procurement end-to-end process,

which includes purchase requests, purchase orders, catalog management, goods
receipts, and invoice processing up to “OK to pay.”

• Supplier collaboration portal: This enables document and information collaboration

with suppliers across the source-to-pay process.

Common Features

The common features for this market include:

• Spend analytics: The robust reporting and analysis of spend activities across all systems
and data sources.
 • Category management: The ability to create and manage category management strategy
documentation and track activities required to execute that strategy.

• Operations and savings management: The tracking of strategic and tactical sourcing and
procurement activities by user and project.

• Advanced sourcing optimization: A more advanced form of sourcing for very complex
events that may have thousands of data points to consider for building an award
solution.

• Intake management: This provides a simplified channel for end users to submit queries
and requests to procurement, automatically routing them to the appropriate person or
technology for tracking and processing

• Supplier risk management: The ability to monitor, manage and mitigate risk.

• Payments: The ability to pay supplier invoices via bank transfers, purchasing cards or
other methods.

• Robust API access: S2P suites need to integrate with numerous adjacent systems and
data sources, such as ERPs, and APIs, which are a common way to enable real-time
integrations.

Magic Quadrant

Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Source-to-Pay Suites

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Coupa

Coupa is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its Coupa Total Spend Management unifies
processes across supply chain, procurement and finance functions. Coupa’s global operation
serves clients ranging from small prerevenue enterprises (e.g., pharma and tech) to large
multinational companies. Coupa’s investment focus areas are generative AI (GenAI)-powered AI
agent named NAVI Assistant, UI enhancements and advanced category management.

Strengths
 • Product vision: Coupa’s comprehensive vision for its source-to-pay solution offers
advanced customers the tools to find additional ROI opportunities. It continues to invest
in a strong mix of innovative solutions such as product expansion, GenAI, built-in
automation tools and community intelligence.

• Deployment models: Coupa offers a variety of options for deploying its S2P solution,
ranging from standard multitenant to partner- or customer-managed cloud options. It
also offers Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) options
that are highly attractive for customers in the public sector.

• App marketplace: Coupa offers various prepackaged applications from third-party

developers via its App Marketplace. Customers can extend the capabilities of Coupa’s
product with minimal effort, as some of these apps can be deployed with a single click
to activate nonstandard functionality.

Cautions

• Customer support: While Coupa has been under new ownership for over a year, the
impact of headcount reduction from the ownership change appears to linger for its
customer support operations. Gartner clients have reported inconsistencies with
Coupa’s customer support, requiring them to take a more active role to ensure timely
resolution.

• Sales execution: Gartner clients continue to routinely cite Coupa as challenging to

negotiate with and requiring more time and effort to reach a final agreement. This
negotiation challenge affects both initial acquisitions and license renewals requiring
entitlement changes to match customers’ evolving business needs.

• User interface (UI): As a wave of updated UIs appeared across the S2P landscape,
Coupa did not have major updates to its UI during the evaluation period. Customers
should review Coupa’s roadmap if this is a concern.

ebidtopay

ebidtopay is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its product offers well-balanced coverage in
both direct and indirect spend to provide an all-purpose purchasing solution for both private
and public sectors. Its operations are primarily in Europe, and its clients range from companies
with $100 million to $3 billion in revenue. ebidtopay’s investment focus areas are AI-enhanced
processing of unstructured documents, enhanced carbon footprint reporting and direct
material use cases, such as bill of material (BOM) explosions for direct material ordering.

Strengths

• Pricing model: ebidtopay’s customer-friendly pricing model allows customers with

smaller budgets to access its solutions without losing functionality. It also offers fixed-
price implementations with a true enterprise (i.e., unlimited usage) licensing model.

• Sales and support network: ebidtopay’s network of resellers and distributors sell its
solution to end users, and some even provide Level 1 support to customers. This allows
highly localized sales and support for customers while enabling ebidtopay to grow in
new regions without robust local staffing.
 • Direct material procurement: ebidtopay offers an array of direct material sourcing,
procurement and management capabilities that are more difficult to find in cost-
effective solutions. This is especially valuable for prospective buyers who want to run
both direct and indirect spend through their S2P solution.

Cautions

• Geographic coverage: ebidtopay continues to focus its operations on Europe, where its
primary customer base and support organization are located. Prospective buyers should
closely evaluate ebidtopay’s ability to implement and support in their regions, especially
those operating in Asia and Latin America.

• Operational resources: ebidtopay has a smaller development team compared to other

vendors in this research. Prospective buyers should evaluate how well ebidtopay’s near-
term roadmap aligns with their expectations.

• Brand visibility: ebidtopay does not have a strong brand presence outside of Europe,
which may make it difficult to get executive buy-in. Prospective buyers should consider
whether putting in additional effort to earn executive buy-in is justifiable compared to
other well-known solutions.

Esker

Esker is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant. Its Esker Source-to-Pay specializes in streamlining
sourcing processes, improving policy compliance and enhancing supplier management to
remove functional silos. Its global operation serves clients who tend to be finance and
procurement leaders in midsize to large international companies with revenue from $1 billion to
$10 billion. Esker’s investment focus areas are claims and deduction management to
streamline payment, GenAI-based supplier communications and support and AI-enhanced
sourcing award suggestions.

Strengths

• Sales strategy: Esker has a strong direct sales force for both new and existing customer
sales. It also offers enterprise pricing models for unlimited usage with no planned
upcharge to access GenAI functionality. For regions without its direct presence, Esker
leverages channel partners to enable sales activities.

• Strong foundation in finance: Esker has a long history in the accounts payable invoice
automation (APIA) and order-to-cash markets. Prospective buyers looking for a source-
to-pay solution with strong support in finance requirements should consider its finance
foundation an advantage.

• Financial viability: Esker has been both cash flow positive and profitable with faster
overall growth than the industry as a whole, indicating strong financial viability and
resilience to volatility. As a publicly traded company, customers also have access to
fully audited financial statements to directly monitor Esker’s financial health.

Cautions

• Vertical strategy: Esker’s product is a general-purpose solution with a limited vertical-

specific strategy. Prospective buyers who need deep direct material or service
 procurement support should evaluate whether Esker’s limited vertical capabilities can
meet their needs.

• Self-administration: Not all administrative functions of Esker’s product are available to

customers, which restricts the ability to self-administer the solution. Prospective buyers
looking for a high level of control without vendor involvement should evaluate and
consider if key functionalities and settings are available.

• Bring your own GenAI model support: Esker does not currently support customers
bringing their own GenAI solution to its product. The company only supports OpenAI
large language models (LLMs) from Microsoft Azure, which may be challenging to
address for prospective buyers using a different GenAI solution in their current source-
to-pay processes.

GEP

GEP is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its GEP SMART mainly supports procurement and
supply chain operations. Its global operation serves clients who tend to be procurement and
supply chain organizations with revenue of $1 billion or more. GEP’s investment focus areas are
real-time prescriptive analytics across S2P, prioritized sustainable buying and GenAI agents for
workflow optimization and orchestration.

Strengths

• Product offerings: GEP’s product offerings provide a true platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to

customers — GEP QUANTUM. Customers can use its platform-based development
environment to customize the S2P solution without changing the core code and ensure
add-on development works seamlessly with the rest of the solution. GEP also offers its
CLICK integration layer for simplified integrations with external systems.

• Bring your own LLM model support: GEP’s product supports large language models from
a range of major AI vendors. This allows customers to match the best LLM model to each
specific use case in their source-to-pay processes.

• Product development resources: GEP has a large development team devoted to its S2P
solution and spends a larger-than-average percentage of its revenue on R&D. Its
dedicated resources allow for co-development with customers without sacrificing the
core product roadmap.

Cautions

• App marketplace: GEP’s app store may not have as many third-party solutions.
Prospective buyers who require extensive add-ons should evaluate whether GEP’s
platform-based development would be sufficient to fill any gaps in capabilities.

• Customer support: The average number of outstanding support tickets for GEP’s
customers is higher than those of other S2P vendors. Customers should evaluate how
GEP’s support model matches their requirements if they have a high number of
nonstandard use cases.

• Optional product releases: GEP allows customers the option to take new product
releases or not, which, based on their business requirements, may delay them from
 leveraging modern functionality. Prospective buyers who choose to opt out of new
product releases may introduce security or support issues.

Ivalua

Ivalua is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its Ivalua Source-to-Pay offers a unified spend
management experience with a single codebase, data model and UI. Its global operation serves
clients with more than $1 billion in revenue from various industries. Ivalua’s investment focus
areas are natural language analytics and configuration, smart savings opportunity finder and
autonomous negotiation bots.

Strengths

• Comprehensive product capabilities: Ivalua’s product offers robust capabilities that

excel especially in sourcing, supplier management, procurement and UI/user
experience (UX). Ivalua also works with multiple LLMs to offer GenAI capabilities to its
customers, as well as a bring-your-own GenAI provider option.

• Operation support: In the past year, Ivalua has seen a significant improvement in the
percentage of customers within one to two versions of their current solution. It also
increased the number of data centers and security certifications for its S2P product,
including FedRAMP support.

• Configurable product delivery models: Ivalua offers multiple deployment models and
has built a PaaS that allows a higher degree of configurability. Customers that require a
highly tailored solution can customize Ivalua without touching its core code.

Cautions

• Customer experience: Ivalua scored slightly below average in customer satisfaction

compared to other vendors in this research. Prospective buyers should evaluate Ivalua’s
customer success programs to ensure they meet their requirements.

• Geographic strategy: Ivalua’s market strategy prioritizes organic, customer-led growth

within regions in which it operates and supports invoicing compliance in 40 countries
across these regions. Prospective buyers outside of the regions currently supported
should ensure Ivalua can meet their geographic requirements.

• Sales execution: Ivalua’s total customer base remains smaller than many of the other
vendors evaluated, as it added fewer S2P customers in 2023. Potential customers may
not have as many peer connections to share best practices and should evaluate Ivalua’s
customer community programs.

JAGGAER

JAGGAER is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Its JAGGAER One provides an AI-powered
source-to-pay solution, which supports all spend categories and offers many vertical-specific
capabilities. Its global operations serve clients who tend to be large organizations from various
industries. JAGGAER’s investment focus areas are GenAI-based chat with document/data,
agentic AI to drive process automation, process orchestration and supplier intelligence,
including CO2 calculations by supplier based on spend and embedded financing to maximize
buyer and supplier working capital.

Strengths
 • Product strategy: JAGGAER has a strong understanding of the evolving needs of
procurement around top priorities such as advanced sourcing and spend optimization,
end-to-end AP automation and supplier management. It has aligned its product strategy
to develop capabilities in support of the market’s priorities, including automation and
analytics for delivering better and faster decision making.

• Product capabilities: JAGGAER’s product has strong capabilities across a breadth of

functionality, including sourcing, supplier management and procurement. It is also
delivering key AI use cases (e.g., Chat with Your Contract, GenAI-powered resolutions on
supply chain nonconformities) to support task automation and navigation across the
suite.

• Industry-specific extensions: JAGGAER provides multiple add-ons, configurations and

capabilities for specific industries with additional requirements for its S2P tool (e.g.,
manufacturing, life sciences, higher education/public sector). Its roadmap includes
multiple additions to this feature set, including intelligent recommendations for
suppliers, remediating nonconformities and make-versus-buy decision support for
manufacturing.

Cautions

• Change of ownership: Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm, acquired JAGGAER
from Cinven in August 2024. Customers and prospects of JAGGAER should monitor the
impacts of this transaction as it could lead to strategy and operational changes that
could impact customers’ strategic priorities.

• Customer experience: JAGGAER’s average number of days to resolve support tickets is

higher than other vendors in this evaluation.

• Sales execution: JAGGAER’s pricing model can include price increases each year of the
contract, which may be challenging for prospective buyers with an inflexible budget. It
also has the second fewest number of new full S2P customers added during the
evaluation period. Prospective customers should confirm that JAGGAER’s licensing
model conforms to their annual budgetary expectations.

Mercado Eletrônico

Mercado Eletrônico is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its ME Source-to-

pay product provides a comprehensive B2B procurement management platform. Its operations
are primarily in Latin America (e.g., Brazil, Portugal, Mexico) and the United States, serving
clients who tend to be large enterprises from various industries. Mercado’s investment focus
areas are real-time punchout catalog search and GenAI-based document creation from
unstructured data (e.g., email and voice) and payments.

Strengths

• Marketplace: Mercado Eletrônico’s product specializes in building a solution that

connects buyers and suppliers in a mutually beneficial marketplace. This is extremely
beneficial for customers looking to start sourcing and buying quickly with engaged
suppliers.

• Pricing model: Mercado Eletrônico’s pricing model is the only one in this research that
can be fully funded by suppliers, which could bring the buyer customer’s cost down to
 zero or even make procurement a profit center. This is a unique advantage for
prospective buyers, as charging suppliers for participation is usually considered a
source of friction to the supplier rather than a value-add.

• Implementation time: Mercado Eletrônico’s active supplier network reduces onboarding

time to drive quick product implementation time, which is significantly less on average
than other products evaluated in this research. Prospective buyers looking for a quick
time to value should consider Mercado Eletrônico’s implementation speed as a key
advantage.

Cautions

• Limited coverage outside Latin America: Mercado Eletrônico is expanding its operations
outside of South and Latin America, where it’s well-known, but its global operation is
still limited. While Mercado Eletrônico has customer growth and support in North
America and Europe, prospective buyers in those regions should ensure Mercado
Eletrônico can sufficiently support their operations.

• Brand visibility: Mercado Eletrônico has a small marketing team compared to other
vendors in this research and does not have a strong brand presence outside of South
and Latin America. Prospective buyers may need to spend more time and effort to earn
stakeholder buy-in and user acceptance for Mercado Eletrônico compared to other
vendors.

• Self-administration: Only about 70% of ME Source-to-pay’s administration functions are

available for customers to access. Prospective buyers looking for a solution they can
self-administrate should evaluate whether key functionalities and settings are available.

Oracle

Oracle is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications deliver tools for
spend and policy governance across the source-to-pay process to procurement and finance
organizations. Its global operations serve clients ranging from companies with $100 million to
$10 billion or more in revenue, spanning across industries. Oracle’s investment focus areas are
implementing the Redwood UI across the entire source-to-pay suite, GenAI for messaging and
summarization and virtual card payments from a requisition.

Strengths

• Organizational viability: Oracle has generated above-average customer growth over the
evaluated period with its stable leadership team and no significant employee
turnover. The growth rate and organizational stability indicate strong resilience against
volatilities, which should be attractive for prospective buyers looking to secure a long-
term contract.

• Vertical strategy: Oracle offers packaged extensions to support unique vertical use
cases and allow third-party development that can be used across the Oracle customer
base. Oracle also controls the hardware, database and hyperscaler layer, which enable
customers to get deeper support for niche, non-software-related requirements beyond
what other solutions offer.

• GenAI strategy: Oracle has a robust strategy for delivering GenAI-based innovations,
which includes delivering embedded functionality via Cohere. However, customers can
 embed their preferred AI models as desired via the Redwood UI page extensibility
capabilities.

Cautions

• Product awareness: Oracle does little to promote sourcing and procurement

technologies outside the scope of a larger Oracle Fusion deployment. Users of Oracle’s
older on-premises procurement solutions are often unaware of Oracle’s cloud S2P
solution and the significant improvements it provides, which may create difficulties in
change management and user acceptance for prospective buyers migrating from an
Oracle on-premises S2P solution.

• Non-Oracle Fusion ERPs: Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications are designed to deliver
business impact to a full stack Oracle deployment that includes the technology and
expertise of the Oracle portfolio. Prospective buyers who use non-Oracle capabilities
should carefully assess the loss of business impact in transitioning Oracle’s S2P
solution to a non-Oracle technology ecosystem.

• Deployment model: Oracle Fusion does not offer deployment options other than public
cloud. Prospective buyers who require specific deployment models other than public
cloud or are migrating from an Oracle on-premises S2P solution should evaluate other
available options and their feasibility.

SAP

SAP is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its SAP Ariba solutions provide a full suite of enterprise-
level functionality spanning the full S2P functional scope. Its global operation serves clients
who tend to be large enterprises across all sectors and types of spend. SAP Ariba’s investment
focus areas are intake management, a new UI and UX across the S2P suite and a GenAI-based
assistant, Joule, for simplifying tasks.

Strengths

• Global scope: SAP continues to demonstrate and prove its ability to deploy and support
an S2P solution that meets global requirements and high transaction volumes. Its
integration options support various back-end ERPs with the potential to span a network
of suppliers in 190 countries.

• Supplier network: SAP has the largest supplier network in the industry and continues to
invest in supplier-facing capabilities to reduce friction for suppliers’ participation.
Prospective buyers can expect to collaborate with suppliers without fees through SAP’s
supplier network, and suppliers can obtain advanced capabilities by paying license
fees.

• Product strategy: SAP’s product roadmap includes significant GenAI capabilities and
leverages other products in its portfolio, such as using Fieldglass to deliver functionality
into Ariba without requiring customers to buy additional licenses. SAP is also adding
user aids like WalkMe to improve the user experience.

Cautions

• Self-administration: SAP Ariba does not make all of its configurations available to
customers without SAP’s support team. Prospective buyers who desire high levels of
 control over their system should ensure configurations available for SAP Ariba match
their expected use cases.

• Support operations: SAP Ariba disclosed the longest average open ticket time and a
below-average Net Promoter Score when compared to what other vendors reported to
Gartner in this research. Customers with a large number of edge use cases should
evaluate how well SAP Ariba can support them with standard configurations.

• Sales execution: Based on Gartner estimates, while SAP Ariba’s overall year-over-year
revenue growth is the largest among peers, SAP Ariba had an average sales growth rate
by percentage for the enterprise procurement software market. Gartner forecasts that
sales growth for the procurement market will increase over the next five years, so
potential customers should monitor SAP’s continued market traction.

Synertrade

Synertrade is a Niche vendor in this Magic Quadrant. Its Synertrade Accelerate suite targets
larger enterprises looking for full source-to-pay technology that can support direct material
procurement. Its operations are primarily in Europe, serving clients who range from $500 million
to $50 billion in revenue. Synertrade’s investment focus areas are a modernized user interface
and user experience across the S2P suite, intake management, data fabric to help customers
make the right decision at the right time and AI-based sourcing optimization.

Strengths

• Customer support: Synertrade offers around-the-clock support in nine languages for

direct support and via a chatbot that can support any language. Additionally, 90% of
Synertrade’s solution can be configured by the customer, reducing the number of
configuration support tickets and helping reduce implementation costs.

• Partner strategy: Synertrade leverages go-to-market partners to expand its market

coverage outside of what its direct sales team can support. Prospective buyers can
connect with its channel partners, typically adjacent technology providers or consulting
companies, to access its services outside the areas where Synertrade would typically
directly support.

• Pricing strategy: Synertrade provides all customers with fully itemized pricing, which is
rapidly disappearing in the S2P market. The detailed price breakdown allows customers
to fully understand the cost of each piece of functionality they are procuring.

Cautions

• Sales execution: Synertrade had the lowest new customer acquisition and existing
future sales funnel among the vendors evaluated in this research.

• Low focus on innovation: Synertrade’s roadmap prioritizes UX/UI and extending existing
functionalities rather than adding advanced functionalities and GenAI support.
Customers should evaluate Synertrade’s long-term roadmap and determine its ability to
confirm alignment with their evolving needs.

• Brand awareness: Synertrade has the smallest marketing team among the vendors
evaluated in this research and is not well-known outside of Europe. Prospective buyers
in other regions may have difficulties getting stakeholder buy-in.
Zhenyun Technology

Zhenyun Technology is a Niche vendor in this Magic Quadrant. Its Zhenyun digital procurement
platform heavily focuses on direct material use cases but can also manage indirect goods and
services. Its operations are primarily in China, and its clients tend to be large enterprises in
manufacturing. Zhenyun’s investment focus areas are AI negotiation bots, centralized
procurement with support for multiple companies and multimilestone service procurement.

Strengths

• Direct material capabilities: Zhenyun has developed a strong set of capabilities related
to direct material procurement that would normally be executed inside the ERP for many
of its customers who do not have traditional ERP solutions for handling transactions.
Prospective buyers without access to ERP solutions should consider its direct material
capabilities an advantage.

• Licensing cost: Zhenyun leverages its low corporate overhead in China to drive a more
aggressive pricing strategy compared to most other vendors in this research. Zhenyun
was the only vendor with decreasing licensing costs over the past year.

• Deployment model: Zhenyun supports all deployment models, from on-premises to all
cloud types, as well as single or multitenant. Prospective buyers who must match the
technical deployment with specific requirements should consider its flexibility an
advantage.

Cautions

• Product functionality outside China: Zhenyun is a China-native technology company,

and a vast majority of its customers are based in China or China subsidiaries of non-
Chinese companies. Prospective buyers not based in China or Southeast Asia may not
have access to some functionality, such as marketplaces that are only available in
China at this time.

• Partner strategy: Zhenyun primarily sells directly and does its own implementations,
which may require consultants and third-party developers extensive ramp time to
support Zhenyun’s solution. Prospective buyers with a large network of partners should
consider the implications of its lengthy implementation period for partners.

• Geographic support coverage: Zhenyun’s support is all located in China and only offers
native support for five languages. Prospective buyers outside of China should evaluate if
Zhenyun’s current support model will meet their requirements.

Zycus

Zycus is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Its Zycus Source-to-Pay, powered by Merlin AI,
provides an AI-powered, value-driven source-to-pay suite. Its global operations serve clients
ranging from midsize companies to large enterprises. Zycus’ investment focus areas are Merlin
Agentic Platform for autonomous negotiation and other personalized AI agents and GenAI-
enabled intake management.

Strengths

• Investments in AI: Zycus develops AI functional modules of its Merlin AI product line
outside the normal product codebase, allowing it to quickly iterate on AI functionality
 without accruing technical debt in the main codebase. It has proven its ability to deliver
a strong pipeline of GenAI and agentic AI use cases, with Merlin Intake Agent and the AP
SmartDesk release.

• Brand awareness: Zycus continues to aggressively invest in both sales and marketing at
rates higher than the market average to increase and maintain its brand awareness. The
Merlin AI brand, in particular, is cited by Gartner clients as a reason they engaged with
Zycus.

• Customer experience: Zycus was among the best for support ticket closing time and the
number of tickets generated by customers compared to other vendors evaluated in this
research. Customers can configure 90% of its product, and it also provides a Smart
Admin function that automatically transports configurations from test environments to
procurement environments.

Cautions

• Scalability: Zycus has fewer proof points of customers using its complete S2P suite at
very high volumes compared to other vendors in this research. While it has large
customers rolling out the complete suite, prospective buyers in large multinational
enterprises should evaluate Zycus’ ability to support their exact use cases.

• Global coverage: Zycus is still building out support and functional requirements for Latin
American countries. Prospective buyers with significant operations in Latin America
should ensure that Zycus is capable of meeting their support and product expectations.

• Implementation cycle time: Zycus has, on average, the longest average implementation
time compared to other vendors in this research. Potential customers should review
implementation plans to ensure they match their project expectations and identify
areas where work can be shortened.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result
of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A
vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not necessarily
indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in
the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added

• Synertrade

• Zhenyun Technology

Dropped

No vendors were dropped from this Magic Quadrant.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

To qualify for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant, each vendor must:

Own the source code, market and offer to sell all of the required source-to-pay modules as a
single, stand-alone, integrated solution, including:
 • Sourcing: Creation and management of strategic and tactical sourcing activities. These
include request for information, request for quotation, and request for proposals and
the associated collection of information, evaluation, negotiation and the awarding of
sourcing events.

• Contract life cycle management: Manages contracts from the initiation stage through
the award, compliance and renewal stages.

• Supplier information and performance management: The ability to manage supplier

onboarding, data validation and performance.

• Procure-to-pay: Automation of the transactional procurement end-to-end process,

which includes purchase requests, purchase orders, catalog management, goods
receipts, invoice processing up to OK-to-pay.

• Supplier collaboration portal: Enables document and information collaboration with

suppliers across the source-to-pay process.

And at least one of the standard capability modules:

• Spend analytics: Robust reporting and analysis of spend activities across all systems
and data sources.

• Category management: The ability to create and manage category management strategy
documentation and track activities required to execute that strategy.

• Operations and savings management: The tracking of strategic and tactical sourcing and
procurement activities by user and project.

• Advanced sourcing optimization: A more advanced form of e-sourcing for very complex
events that may have thousands of data points to consider for building an award
solution.

• Intake management: Provides a simplified channel for end users to submit queries and
requests to procurement, automatically routing them to the appropriate person or
technology for tracking and processing.

• Supplier risk management: The ability to monitor, manage and mitigate risk.

All products must have been generally available and sold as part of the integrated suite since 1
September 2023.

Additionally:

• S2P modules must natively integrate together, with no additional integration work
required for the customer.

• Be ERP/financial system agnostic with the ability to integrate into the customer’s chosen
ERP/Financial system

• Have at least 40 customers (logos) with $500 million in revenue or operating budget (or
more) live in production who run the defined required modules and at least one of the
standard modules.
 • Have added 12 or more new customers (logos) with $500 million in revenue or operating
budget (or more) signed in the calendar year 2023 who bought the defined required
modules and at least one of the standard modules.

• In the last 12 months, have sold at least the defined S2P required modules and at
least one of the standard modules to two or more customers with expected primary
usage in different geographic regions from the vendor’s home region. Geographic
regions are defined as:

o North America

o Latin America

o Europe

o Middle East and Africa

o Asia/Pacific and Japan

Honorable Mentions

Raindrop did not meet the inclusion criteria for the required number of existing customers
running a full S2P suite due to the midyear 2024 release of its accounts payable invoice
automation solution. Raindrop has shown significant market sales growth during its five-year
life span and has expanded its solution to offer a full S2P suite. Raindrop is built on a modern
platform with a significant amount of AI and generative AI functionality built in.

Zip did not meet the inclusion criteria for actively selling and marketing a contract life cycle
management solution during the evaluation period. However, Zip has considerable market
traction, with 400-plus customers using its solution. Zip can deliver most of the required S2P
functionality and can be used in conjunction with existing installed S2P technology to enhance
the user experience.

Evaluation Criteria

Ability to Execute

Gartner evaluates an S2P suite vendor’s Ability to Execute by assessing its products, services,
sales, marketing execution and overall operations. We evaluate how these criteria enable the
vendor to be competitive and effective in the market. We also evaluate the vendor’s ability to
retain and satisfy customers, create positive perception and respond to market changes.

The ability to provide a product and a customer experience that delights clients is what drives
value and motivates buyers to choose one solution over another, and as a result, product or
service carries the highest weighting in this report.

Overall viability, along with sales execution/pricing, is important because customers buying S2P
suites are making a major, potentially long-term commitment with high switching
costs. Vendors experiencing declining sales or financial instability often find themselves in a
detrimental cycle. As customers become hesitant to purchase from these struggling vendors,
the vendors’ ability to invest in product development diminishes, rendering them even less
appealing to potential new customers.
Operations are important, as they impact the vendor’s ability to deliver on its stated roadmap
and effectively run the business. Issues in either of these areas directly impact a customer’s
ability to drive additional value from its S2P investments.

Customer experience relates to the quality of customer support and other customer-facing
areas such as user groups, conferences and cross-customer engagement opportunities. A
strong customer experience directly impacts a customer’s ability to implement and support the
vendor’s S2P solution over the long term. Breakdowns in this area often lead to an erosion of the
overall value proposition and ROI the customer obtains.

Marketing execution is weighted low because driving potential customer awareness is

important for a viable sales pipeline and is therefore a component of the vendor’s long-term
health.

Market responsiveness/record was not rated because we have found that this is highly
correlated with the operations and sales execution/pricing elements. Given the size of an S2P
suite, only minor changes can be made to the codebase on short timelines. However, the ability
to adjust factors like pricing, terms and operational execution are strong indicators of a
company’s capacity to swiftly respond to changing customer demands.

Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Enlarge Table

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record NotRated

Marketing Execution Low

Customer Experience Medium

Operations Medium
 Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Source: Gartner (March 2025)

Completeness of Vision

Gartner evaluates an S2P vendor’s Completeness of Vision by assessing multiple criteria that
show its ability to understand current market trends, influence the future state of the market
and respond to customer needs and competitive forces.

In a rapidly evolving market, product strategy and innovation are key differentiators between
vendors and their ability to anticipate and respond to future customer requirements. Market
understanding and geographic strategy both convey a vendor’s ability to understand customer
demands and deliver value to organizations of different sizes across the globe. These criteria are
split, as many vendors have effective visions for the future market. However, they lack a strategy
to deliver to customers no matter their location due to a large part of the market that may be
inaccessible to them.

A vendor’s Completeness of Vision is also judged on sales and vertical/industry strategies,

although at a lower weighting. There are differences in these strategies, especially in how
industry-specific functionality is delivered.

Marketing strategy and business model were not rated in this research. The S2P market is one
with long sales cycles, and the methods of marketing to potential customers are fairly
standardized across the space, so differentiation is not highly valued by customers. Business
models in this space are also highly standardized around software licensing, and there is no
clear better or worse business model that would materially impact buying decisions.

Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Enlarge Table

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding Medium

Marketing Strategy NotRated

Sales Strategy Low

Offering (Product) Strategy High

 Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Business Model NotRated

Vertical/Industry Strategy Low

Innovation High

Geographic Strategy Medium

Source: Gartner (March 2025)

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders

Leaders are in the strongest position to influence the market’s growth and direction. They
demonstrate a market-defining vision of how S2P technology can help procurement leaders
achieve business objectives for managing compliance and controlling external spend. Leaders
have the ability to execute against that vision, through products and services, and they have
demonstrated business results in the form of revenue and earnings. They excel in their
combination of market understanding, innovation, product features and functions, and overall
viability.

While maintaining a well-established base of long-term customers, Leaders show a consistent

ability to win new deals and deliver successful implementations. Their customers are deployed
in the most geographic regions, and they cover a wide variety of industry verticals and sizes of
organization.

Leaders are often the vendors that other providers measure themselves against. They are also
the most likely vendors in this Magic Quadrant to still be in the S2P suite business five years
from now. Leaders are suitable vendors for most organizations to evaluate when seeking an S2P
suite. However, they should not be the only vendors evaluated.

Challengers

Challengers have established presence, credibility and viability, and have demonstrated the
ability to meet customers’ expectations in terms of functionality and customer experience.
Challengers tend to have a good technology vision in terms of architecture and other IT
considerations but have strategies or a vision that is not completely aligned
with what customers expect from an S2P solution vendor.

Challengers are well-placed to succeed in this market. However, they may not demonstrate
thought leadership or innovation to the same degree as Leaders. They may be a good choice for
organizations that value execution and a broader integrated product suite that can be delivered
at scale over the potential of what might be delivered in the future.

Visionaries

Visionaries are ahead of most potential competitors in their vision of what a future S2P solution
will look like. These vendors embody trends that are shaping or will shape the S2P market. There
may be some lack of awareness of these vendors in the market and some concerns about their
ability to execute effectively at scale. Visionaries have a strong vision and roadmap, which
brings innovation and strong functionality to their platforms.

Visionaries may be a good choice for organizations that want innovation without a big brand or a
premium price. These vendors may also give customers an opportunity to more quickly evolve
their S2P technical maturity and have more say in the product roadmap. They often lack the
proof points of referenceable customers who are using the full S2P suite at scale but can still
show proof of large customers. However, as these vendors mature and prove their ability to
execute, they may become Leaders.

Niche Players

Niche Players offer compelling S2P suite portfolios, but their solutions may also:

• Be limited in terms of cross-industry adoption

• Lack some functional components

• Lack the ability to handle deployments consistently across multiple geographies

• Lack strong business execution in the market

• Have an inconsistent implementation track record

• Lack the ability to support large enterprise requirements or complex global deployments

Niche Players can often offer the best solutions to meet the needs of particular procurement
organizations, considering the price-to-value ratio of their solutions. These vendors may win
deals in specific regions or industries, but they are not consistently winning new business
across multiple regions or industries at the same pace as vendors in the other quadrants.

Some Niche Players demonstrate a degree of vision that suggests they might become
Visionaries; however, they may struggle to make this vision compelling. They may also struggle
to develop a track record of continual innovation. Other Niche Players may have the opportunity
to become Challengers if they continue to develop their products with a view of improving their
overall execution.

Context

S2P suites help organizations automate the entire end-to-end sourcing and procurement
process within a single integrated solution. However, vendors in the S2P market may not have
market-leading capabilities across the full suite. Most vendors started with smaller solutions in
different categories, such as procurement, sourcing, spend analytics or APIA, and expanded
their products either organically or through acquisition to address the entire functional space.
The S2P market is relatively mature as a result, but the breadth of functionality and use
cases varies among vendors, and customers may need to make compromises or obtain
supplemental solutions to address their needs.

Procurement technology leaders should:

• Use expected outcomes to determine primary use cases. Ensure vendors’ solutions
support specific use cases driven by your organizational goals. Examples include
providing end-to-end process visibility, reducing the source-to-contract cycle time and
consolidating supplier collaboration into a single solution.

• Ensure the user experience matches users’ expectations. UX expectations are

constantly changing, and the capabilities across the market are evolving from the
digitization of processes to automation driven by both AI and machine learning. Both of
these elements drive an organization’s ability to gain adoption by internal end
users. Therefore, their alignment with user expectations and the cost will impact the
business case.

• Review supplier-facing capabilities, such as network size, features, onboarding

practices and UX. Supplier adoption is often a key factor in maximizing the effectiveness
of an S2P suite. Large supplier networks and supplier-friendly functionality are generally
beneficial to reducing the effort required to gain supplier adoption.

• Understand global requirements. E-invoicing and tax regulations vary by country and
change regularly. Assess the vendor’s capabilities in processing fully compliant invoices
where necessary.

• Explore integration and extension capabilities. Extending and enriching the S2P process
can bring more long-term value to your investment. Open APIs for simplified integration
are common, but may not cover the entire data model or functionality. Third-party app
stores may be available for one-click buying and activation of custom-made capability
extensions. Additionally, many solutions offer deeply configurable platforms to enable
customer-specific capabilities that do not negatively impact the ability to deploy
standard upgrades.

• Examine industry-specific requirements and experience. S2P suites widely vary in their
ability to support sourcing, contracting, supplier management and purchasing practices
unique to specific industries (e.g., manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, public sector
and education).

• Compare vendor-led and partner-led implementation models by level of experience,

best practices, time frames and costs. Implementation support may vary by region
based on available local resources or lack thereof. Vendor-led implementation models
are typically strong with software configuration and often have better hand-off to long-
term support. Partner-led models are typically stronger with business process changes
and overall organizational change management.

• Compare on-premises and cloud delivery models. Most vendors included in this
research have a preferred multitenant public cloud delivery model. However, some will
offer on-premises, private cloud or single-tenant deployment options. If your
organization requires specific deployment models, raise that early in the evaluation
process.
 • Examine differentiating features and vendor roadmaps. Prioritize GenAI, UI/UX
improvements, analytics and automation in your evaluation. Ensure that the selected
vendor is focused on growth and development that tracks with market expectations and
trends to future-proof your investment.

• Ensure understanding and alignment with the post-go-live service model. There are
various service delivery models (e.g., local and remote support, multiple languages
supported and premium levels of support). Ensure that any specific needs can be met
and be aware of any additional associated costs.

• Understand the monetization model for AI. Vendors have different approaches for GenAI
and agentic AI: Include it at no cost, create new product SKUs, increase the price of
standard offerings or combine all these approaches. Given the market’s
excitement about AI’s expected impact on productivity, customers should ensure they
understand the current and future costs to gain access.

Market Overview

Source-to-pay suites have a broad appeal for organizations across all industries and
geographies, and interest in S2P suites remains high among sourcing and procurement buyers
looking for cost savings, process automation and risk reduction in daily procurement activities.
The market offers a wide variety of options, such as ERP vendor-integrated S2P, stand-alone,
cloud-based and on-premises solutions. However, while available options are quite
comprehensive, customers’ biggest challenge is that no solution is perfect across every
dimension. This keeps the market evolving to meet new customer demands and backfill
incomplete functionality. Gartner estimates that the S2P technology market will experience a
five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16%, resulting in an annual spend of
approximately $16.315 billion on S2P software in 2028 (see Forecast: Enterprise Application
Software, Worldwide, 2022-2028, 4Q24 Update).1

Key differentiators in the market remain similar to the previous year, but the list has expanded as
customers seek more flexibility in S2P solutions. They include:

• Generative AI for simplifying tasks, making configuration easier, improving the user
experience and improving analytics.

• Configurable platforms that allow customers to customize their environment to a much

greater degree without requiring any core code changes.

• Intake and process orchestration, which is now top of mind for buyers as they look to
simplify how users interact with S2P solutions and to better integrate external systems.

• Ease of use for internal users and external suppliers as implementation fees continue to
grow, making successful user and supplier adoption critical.

• Depth of support for multiple spend types (see Note 1) across sourcing, supplier
management and procurement activities.

• Unified supplier networks that provide a single location for all supplier-facing
collaboration.

• Tight integration across the S2P process so that actions and data are linked and visible
to upstream and downstream activities.
 • Actionable analytics and intelligence that guide users to opportunities to improve their
process automation or where additional savings, quality and policy compliance could
be obtained.

• Global support, supplier onboarding and configurable industry capabilities. Gartner

expects increased process automation, prescriptive analytics insights and turnkey
integrations to heavily influence vendor selection in the coming years.

The differentiations between solutions are often not obvious and hinge on how each solution
addresses specific requirements. Thus, an in-depth evaluation is required to closely match
requirements with the solution, especially considering that S2P implementations and support
are significant long-term investments.

Market Trends

Generative AI and AI

Smart automation is in high demand, even if buyers are not specifically calling out generative AI
or AI in their selection criteria. Common desired capabilities include:

• Supplier recommendations for setting up a sourcing event or raising a purchase request.

• Chatbot for buying and executing various tasks.

• Intelligent digitization of contracts with extraction of metadata and clauses.

• Intelligent risk analysis of contracts.

• Assisted authoring or editing of contract language.

• Automated creation of category strategies based on inputted data, past orders and
market intelligence data feeds.

• Automated supplier risk identification from public news sites and social media.

• Assisted creation, execution and analysis of sourcing events.

• Intelligent invoice digitization, matching and coding.

• Analytics created via natural language.

• Automated supplier response agents.

Category Management

Buyers are increasingly looking for S2P solutions to provide value beyond process automation.
They seek smart systems that will assist them in creating strategic plans to drive greater savings
and reduce supply disruption risks. Additionally, buyers want to track the actions taken against
their strategic plans and track them to completion for performance reporting.

Risk Management

Organizations often deploy an S2P suite as a system of record that’s ideal for enforcing
company policies and mitigating supplier risks. It empowers procurement to impact spend
before it happens by seamlessly guiding end users to suppliers and products that support
internal policies and goals. The desire to quickly reduce or shut off new purchases from high-
risk suppliers is also growing, leading to more scrutiny on how well supplier information and risk
management are integrated into S2P solutions. Country-level legislation around “know your
supplier” and carbon footprint reporting is also forcing organizations to enable controls earlier
in the S2P process.

Deep Integrations

Customers continue to demand fully internally integrated solutions that enable users to access
accurate data and information related to the actions they are taking from anywhere in the
solution. Deep integrations reduce errors and magnify the value of the single integrated S2P
suite. Examples of deep integrations include:

• Integration of supplier risk ratings into sourcing events.

• Contract pricing that can be converted to a shoppable catalog in one click.

• Purchase requisitions that can be flipped to a sourcing event with the results
automatically populating back to the purchase requisition.

• Contracts available for matching against invoices.

• Negotiated terms in a sourcing event that are automatically included in the final
contract.

• Updating supplier data based on supplier responses to sourcing events and contract
negotiations.

Evidence

Note 1: Gartner Spend Type and Source-to-Pay Definitions

Spend Types:

• Indirect goods: Purchases of tangible items consumed by the organization that are not
directly related to the manufacturing or sales of products. These goods are typically
needed to operate.

• Direct goods: Purchases of tangible items directly related to the manufacturing of a

company’s products. Examples include raw materials, component parts and hardware.

• Services: Transactions of intangible deliverables purchased by the organization,

typically defined by a statement of work.

• Source-to-pay: A suite of applications that address spend analysis, sourcing,

contract life cycle management, supplier management, supplier risk management,
category management and procure-to-pay.