The Ivalua tail wags the CGI dog

On the 26th of April, I will be interviewing Ivalua’s SVP Sales and Business Development Amol Joshi for the PI Window on The World radio show. The segment will air on the 27th of April at 12:00 Noon.

In preparation for the interview with Joshi, I had the opportunity to talk with him earlier today for about 30 minutes. Here is an advanced peek at what I consider to be one of the most interesting stories of 2017.

As you know from my coverage so far – refer to my April 7th, 2017 post Ivalua WINS Arizona, but will the award be challenged?, Ivalua’s win in Arizona shocked almost everyone including CGI. CGI was supposed to be the hands down favorite to win the state for a variety of reasons of which I will not go into at this time.

What you probably do not know, is that in the not too distant past, CGI actually teamed-up with Ivalua to win the Canadian Government’s Shared Services contract. That’s right, CGI worked with Ivalua to win a major contract.

One would think that given this success when the opportunity to go after what Joshi referred to as being a major transformation initiative with the City of New York, CGI would again team up with Ivalua. It didn’t happen. In fact, CGI competed against Ivalua and lost.

At this point, I think that it is important to note, that Ivalua also went into CGI’s own backyard and won the Quebec Hydro account. Add in Toronto’s Cadillac Fairview, and other notable account wins including US Foods, Honeywell and Credit Suisse, and you can understand why CGI would be inclined to challenge the Arizona decision.

When I asked Joshi for his thoughts about this being 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.

I even went so far as to suggest that this may be the reason why CGI didn’t team up with Ivaula after the Shared Services win. After all, an Ivalua tail wagging the big CGI dog is not an enviable position for the latter.

One thing that stood out from my discussion with Joshi is his comment that before now, companies like Ariba and COUPA never took Ivalua seriously. With the Arizona win, as well as the other new client additions, he believes that this will all change going forward.

But CGI probably knew this already.

That said, I will be sharing the link to my radio interview with Joshi on the 27th so be sure to mark down the date on your calendar as you will not want to miss this one.

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