think: A Disruptive Procurement Solution Buying Better Profits

Over the past few years, the value of procurement has become increasingly apparent. Recent research has shown that more and more professionals recognize the need to have efficient procurement processes, especially those, who deal with various kinds of trading transactions. The role of procurement is essential to any business that purchases goods, services or any other items as its effectiveness has a direct result on an organization’s overall profit.

Typically, businesses buy products or services from multiple vendors. Procurement professionals handle the details of procuring these purchases at optimal prices. By establishing rational procurement policies and procedures, a mid-sized business can arrange its buying strategy for its long-term goals and objectives. As Australia’s leading provider of business procurement SaaS, think leverages technology, market knowledge, and procurement expertise, to enable organizations to increase profitability by buying better. Serving the needs of mid-sized businesses, the company has designed some impeccable solutions, which are dedicated to improving scalability, purchasing and payment processes of these organizations.

think is focused on the automation of buying and selling transactions in B2B commerce and has chosen to solve challenges associated with procurement processes such as workflow approvals, GL Coding, reconciliation and goods receipting amongst others. Its rapid deployment and easy configuration capabilities, combined with a simple transactional charging model builds comprehensive value-based strategies that allow organizations to revitalize the overall process cycle of their organization.

As the founder of think, Adam Ryan has been the driver of its success. He is the visionary who started think in a garage and has now taken it to the level of a market leading innovator. Adam has been involved in Tech start-ups for over two decades and was a part of the founding management team of SEEK an ASX listed TOP 100 company with a market capitalization of over $7B amongst other successes. He has played vital roles in numerous management schools and universities. As an avid speaker in fintech, banking and procurement conferences globally, he has also been instrumental in transforming the views of banks and payment providers showing them what can be achieved in the digital payments space for B2B commerce.

In this interview, Adam shares some insights about the organization’s procurement solutions and services, their unique value proposition, and their roadmap for the future.

Can you shed some light on think’s procurement solutions that enable organizations to increase profitability?

Founded in 2010, think identified that existing players already served the enterprise market, hence focused its attention on mid-sized organizations. The company has intentionally designed an easier, efficient and flexible platform for small organizations. think’s adaptive platform enables clients to manage their catalogs effectively, and ensure that content is classified and enriched accordingly. These capabilities allow them to have a better pricing structure. We offer a modular approach to features and flexible self-configuration tools to make the procurement process easier and more efficient.

In addition to this, think takes an active role in ensuring the quality and accuracy of seller catalog information including images, descriptions, supporting documentation, classification and search metrics at the very start of the process right through to invoice automation, reconciliation, and payments at the end of the process. We are truly P2P in this regard as it integrates each of the required steps ensuring greater automation at the highest levels of accuracy. The delivered solutions benefit clients with reduced process costs, better pricing opportunities with sellers and reduced errors compared to any other offering in the market today.

What are the strategies employed by think to thwart the market competition and what according to you are the distinct features and differentiating factors that give think a competitive edge?

think had its classic startup struggles of balancing its ambitions of disrupting the B2B commerce market in which procurement and payments are at the core. Convincing customers to change the way they engage with sellers and sellers to think differently about their go to market strategy, including how to get paid earlier was a challenging task for think initially.

However, we focused on creating an easier, more flexible and customizable system that will offer clients efficient procurement solutions. This focus helped us build an astonishing platform that attracted many clients. We envisioned "to be the best in the market" and "not the biggest in the market." Hence, the strategies powered with this vision had a notable impact on client processing cycles, and many of the world leaders of the industry admired think for its precision in solutions. Coupled with think reaching the highest security grade in payments of any organization in this space is a testament to the quality of think's application.

Can you share details of the firm’s plans pertaining to new solutions and technologies that could play a role in the company’s offerings in the near future?

In the coming times, procurement solution providers with an ability to incept platforms that are contemporary in their charging model will be the true disrupters. The companies with the innovative transaction-based pricing methodology, which aligns to value created with customers, and ensures a much faster and greater return on their investment will witness more outcomes than the traditional ones. think is a true disruptor in that sense.

think is pursuing opportunities with its B2B commerce platform across a number of its core capabilities ranging from Content Management Services and buyer and seller platforms into a range of vertical industries allowing for specialization of content for its customers. Combining greater content and features which unlock access to this content with process automation such as invoice automation is core to think's future initiatives.

The approach of collaborating with industry leaders, leading consulting firms, security experts, banks and progressive customers has ensured think’s ability to disrupt the e-procurement market with its offering addressing real issues in creating real value.