On a mission to simplify procurement, Vertice recently announced US$50m in Series C funding – which will accelerate its growth, allow it to open new regional offices, drive product development and launch new automated products.
It is all part of its mission to become the unified backbone for modern procurement teams.
Vertice was founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneurs Roy and Eldar Tuvey, who have two decades of experience running enterprise SaaS companies under their belts, most notably founding ScanSafe and Wandera, which exited for US$200m (Cisco) and US$400m (Jamf) respectively.
The funding marks a landmark moment for Vertice in what has been an incredible two-and-a-half year journey since going to market with its first product, a SaaS purchasing solution.
Not so unlucky 13 (times)
Vertice now manages around US$3.5bn worth of spend worldwide for hundreds of customers, most of which are enterprises. The company has customers in about 30 different countries around the world, with the majority in the US and Western Europe, but many in APAC.
"The company's revenue has grown by about 13 times over the last two years," Eldar adds. "It has been a challenge to keep up with because you need more and more – more office space, more people, more desks, more laptops and yes, ironically, more software, but that's kind of fun for us, we enjoy it."
The staff has grown from its beginnings to now over 250 employees, with that number set to increase with plans to increase headcount, particularly in its engineering team, and to expand its office space around the world – as shown by the recent opening of offices in South Africa.
All of this growth is intended to support Vertice’s single-minded focus on building products that perfectly meet the most pressing needs of the market, says Eldar, “ranging from optimising your SaaS spend, to managing all of your cloud costs, and now also bringing them all together under a single, unified orchestration platform that simplifies the whole procurement process, end to end from the intake form all the way through to the approvals.”
The vital importance of spend optimisation
Vertice was built on its SaaS and cloud spend optimisation products, which have seen rapid growth among procurement and finance leaders worldwide.
Eldar explains how he noted the need for such a tool.
"From our experience running rapidly-growing businesses previously, we realised that businesses need much greater visibility and transparency in their SaaS and cloud spend," he says.
"I think nothing like this has been done before. No one really represents, supports or partners with customers. So, that's the angle that we took. We decided that there was plenty of room in the market for someone to really support customers by being independent and securing them the very best kind of offer and capability that meets their needs – and who is not paid for or rewarded in any way by vendors. So, that's the positioning we took and will never compromise on."
Software shopping is a more opaque experience, where one company could be paying many times what the company next door is paying for exactly the same software. This could happen for many reasons, from when in a quarter the deals are struck, to individual salespeople needing to hit targets or even simple currency discrepancies.
But this leads to problems, according to Eldar – which Vertice looked to solve.
"You get this massive disparity between what the person is paying at the bottom end and at the top end. We thought that, by bringing some transparency to this, we could help customers achieve better pricing and faster renewals, saving them time and money."
Vertice found that a particular problem – and a potentially costly one – was the issue of invisible over-licensing. Companies may have 5,000 licences of a particular software but were really using 4,000 – a clear opportunity to reduce costs by 20% without any impact on business operations, but one that was too often going unnoticed.
Eldar explains: "We bring so much data and intel together – the negotiation playbooks, what's important for the vendors, our expertise in the market, customers’ own usage – we can bring all of that together, deliver some actionable insights to customers and help them. The value proposition is we save them a lot of time and a lot of money.”
The rapid rise is down to its users, with Eldar believing strong word-of-mouth has played a huge part in its expanding customer base.
"We guarantee what we do, we don't leave it up to chance and there's very few things that you can buy software-wise which guarantee the results and savings for you," Eldar says. "That's helped us a lot in terms of just establishing credibility very quickly. We've got a fantastic reputation in the market and we're good at what we do. People have learned that and they're giving us the chance to prove ourselves - and we routinely deliver."
Simplifying procurement
This comes back to Vertice's goals: to solve problems for modern procurement teams.
"What we discovered a modern procurement team needs above all else is simplicity and a flexible workflows framework that they can adapt to orchestrate how they procure, both direct and indirect," Eldar adds.
In 2024, Vertice launched Intelligent Workflows, a procurement orchestration tool that helps teams streamline their intake-to-procure processes, halving procurement cycles and more than doubling compliant purchasing.
But these benefits are not only achieved through customisable intake forms, parallel approval routing, integrations and the analytics dashboard that reports on workflow performance.
"The best decisions are backed by accurate data,” continues Eldar. “But for procurement, this data is usually siloed across the company in disparate places – if it even exists. You need real-time insights into tools’ pricing, usage, suitability and benchmarks, and you need it accessible at the right moment within the workflow itself. Then you can make the right decision over whether to renew, amend the contract or buy from scratch."
Vertice brings all of this together, imbuing better-designed intakes and workflows with the most pertinent data to help make the best direct and indirect purchasing decisions faster.
The data is born from Vertice’s experience in SaaS and cloud spend optimisation, so includes negotiation intelligence, pricing benchmarks on more than 16,000 vendors, peer insights, usage analytics and more. With the help of AI and machine learning, this is delivered as practical insights at the right moment within the workflow itself.
A single solution
Eldar says modern procurement teams often encounter numerous, disconnected solutions that purport to solve individual problems, but no single platform that finds root causes while providing visibility, control and simplicity.
Vertice saw this inconvenient reality as an opportunity to become procurement’s backbone.
"We spent a lot of time building what we think is the best and most flexible solution that exists and we think we were in a unique position to build it,” Eldar goes on.
“No one else can match our combination of data, heritage in SaaS and cloud spend optimisation – two of the largest areas of spend in any organisation – and our product development. By bringing these together, we have created a unified procurement platform that goes right to the core of procurement leaders’ daily challenges.”
Vertice: Not resting on its laurels
Following its successful Series C funding, Vertice is doubling down on product development with several groundbreaking features. The company's latest innovation focuses on comprehensive document extraction capabilities, allowing for seamless processing of invoices and purchase orders.
"We're building technology that automatically extracts relevant information from uploaded documents or emails, streamlining the entire process," explains Eldar. "Plus integrations with ERP systems that significantly improve the quality of data available for decision-making."
One of Vertice's standout achievements is its extensive library of workflow templates, customised by industry and geography. With templates covering dozens of verticals and regions, the platform enables companies to implement procurement best practices specific to their needs.
"A shipping company's software procurement process differs significantly from that of a fashion retailer," Eldar notes. "Our template library addresses these unique requirements while enabling cross-industry learning. We can show companies how their peers approach similar challenges, fostering continuous improvement."
Control centre innovation
The company's newest feature – a unified control centre – represents a significant advancement in procurement management.
This "single pane of glass" approach provides real-time visibility into workflow metrics, enabling procurement teams to identify bottlenecks and prioritise actions effectively.
"Our customers now have unprecedented visibility into their procurement processes," Eldar explains.
"They can instantly identify priority tasks and track performance against industry benchmarks."
Scaling for success
With its recent funding secured, Vertice is positioned for continued growth. The company embraces the challenges of scaling, viewing them as opportunities for innovation rather than obstacles.
"Each expansion milestone initially seems daunting," Eldar reflects.
"But the industry recognition and customer satisfaction we've achieved validate our approach. The minor, entirely surmountable growing pains of scaling are signs that we're pushing boundaries and creating real value for our customers."
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