GEP SMART is a procurement platform, meant as an end-to-end unified procurement solution that provides synergy between finance and purchasing and process fluidity.
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Periscope Source
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Periscope Source (formerly BidSync) is a suite of e-procurement software now owned and supported by Periscope Holdings in Austin, Texas since the December 2014 acquisition.
They are starting to expand in the direct procurement area and it would be good to see continued offerings in this area. The GEP supplier portal is a great way for suppliers to maintain visibility and increase efficiencies without an additional charge to the supplier. It has a high ease of use.
Well suited for tracking partner success and other commercial roles but can seem overwhelming for those who are new to it. Specific scenarios are the ability to be able to pull relevant data into charts and graphs that can be made into actionable tasks for commercial teams to pursue. It is less appropriate for non-tech associates due to its data analysis ways.
The account team is there to listen client concerns and business needs.
The engineering team is willing to share their concepts in development and vet with their clients prior to production release. They value client feedback.
GEP has a lot of progressive thinkers and is willing to invest in new technology trends such as AI, Machine Learning, digital adoption, etc.
Our organization has yet to take advantage of upgrading to the latest version of GEP SMART. The version that we are on does not make use of the full screen for the different internal windows and pop-up windows. I find it cumbersome to scroll left-right and up-down on the smaller windows when there is much real-estate on the screen that could optimize the user interface.
GEP SMART provides technical support but our vendors seem to have some difficulty logging in to their profiles and updating their information. Occasionally, the salesperson delegates to another internal member so we'll have to set up the new member with their log in.
The digital signature process requires that the signers of the agreement be defined before the agreement is routed for approval. Sometimes our vendors have a pool of signers that could sign the agreements and it can become a small challenge to change the signers after it has already been defined in GEP SMART.
The tool is fantastic, but we are investigating a broader spend management solution at the moment which may mean we look in a different direction for this capability, most likely internally developed.
The platform's usability compares favorably with those that it competes within the market. Our employees have not endured a stressful change management process because the tool is relatively intuitive. The advantage of being cloud-native and built with usability in mind from the get-go gives GEP a real advantage over many of its competitors.
I experience many issues in the UAT environment when the page is slow to load or will not load at all. I use the UAT environment to run training sessions to take potential users through all the functionality available. When the system is slow to load and keeps crashing it gives potential users a very bad first impression and significantly reduces the adoption rate.
The support team is responsive, smart, and knowledgeable about their product and about our business needs. They are also flexible to respond to questions and find solutions to our requirements.
Although we had encountered many bugs, GEP was able to address them quickly, and sent a technical person to sit in our hands-on training sessions to address bugs efficiently
We selected GEP SMART for its ability to offer a full end-to-end integrated source-to-pay solution, pricing, and ease of use. There was an implementation series offered by GEP, as well as flexibility, customization, account management team dedication, and the overall service and support.
GEP SMART has improved our spend analytics speed by allowing analysis to be completed in minutes compared to days when we previously used Excel spreadsheets.
The SMART Sourcing (RFX) solution has greatly improved the consistency of our supplier quoting and information gathering process.
