Acquisition News: Ivalua CMO Alex Saric Talks About Directworks Acquisition

Jon Hansen (PI Window on The World)

Back in April I welcomed Ivalua SVP Sales and Business Development Amol Joshi to the show to talk about the company's big win Arizona, as well as successes with Quebec Hydro, Toronto’s Cadillac Fairview, and other notable account wins including US Foods, Honeywell and Credit Suisse. To say that Ivalua is a company on the rise may be an understatement, especially given their recent acquisition of Directworks, a company who has cloud-based platform that provides supplier management and process automation solutions for the manufacturing sector. Joining me today to discuss the "business" implications of this news is Alex Saric. Alex is Ivalua's CMO, and we will be focusing on the following three discussion points; 1. In my April interview with Amol Joshi, I suggested that we are perhaps seeing "the dawn of a new era, where companies such as Ivalua will begin to dominate both the market and its traditional big players." He did not disagree. Within this context, and from a business and branding standpoint, how important is this acquisition? 2. One thing that stood out from my discussion with Amol is his comment that before now, companies like Ariba and COUPA never took Ivalua seriously. At the time he said that with the Arizona win, as well as the other new client additions, he believed that this would all change going forward. What message does the Directworks acquisition send to your competitors? 3. Is this the first of what could possibly be many "strategic" acquisitions? How does the company view the acquisition approach to gaining both technical superiority and increased market share?