Ivalua WINS Arizona, but will the award be challenged?

“Ivalua is excited to be awarded the business for Source-to-Pay solution along with our partner KPMG. State of Arizona Procurement and IT teams have been leaders in procurement transformation and have been using procurement technology for the last 8 years. As the State looks to start the next leg of their transformation journey, a modern, easy-to-use yet incredibly adaptable cloud solution like ours was, we believe, a natural choice. Our solution, combined with transformative and implementation consulting from KPMG, is designed to provide rapid and measurable but also sustainable value to the State. City of New York last year selected Ivalua (with KPMG as Ivalua sub) for technology enabled transformation for citywide procurement and I believe this win cements Ivalua’s leadership as the next-gen platform for the public (and private) sector.”

Amol Joshi, SVP Sales and Business Development at IVALUA

In my March 30th post Who won Arizona? I promised that I would reveal the name of the service provider that won the State of Arizona. The answer is Ivalua.

Based on the response from those in the know, Ivalua’s win surprised almost everyone including CGI which was purported to have had the inside track on landing the state’s Source-to-Pay solution business.

Besides the obvious surprise, there are also rumblings that CGI may challenge the contract award. This is, of course, interesting because Arizona faced a formal letter of protest from incumbent Periscope last year regarding the issuance of this particular RFP.  You can read about it through the following link; Periscope Letter Protesting Arizona RFP Eye Opening.

In the end, it seems that the service provider market – in particular, those who now find themselves on the outside looking in, are telling the Arizona team that they know what’s best for the state. I am not sure if this is a sign of arrogance or sour grapes.

I for one believe that Arizona should have every right to make the decision it feels is in the best interests of the state and its taxpayers. I also think that the Ivalua win is noteworthy as very few people – including industry pundits, saw it coming. For those who believe that the industry could use a good shake-up, then this is definitely what the doctor ordered.

Anyway, stay tuned as I am confident that I will have more to write on this story in the coming days and weeks, especially regarding the KPMG connection.

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