Vendor Network Is Procurement's Moat
Gaurav Baheti, CEO of Procol, on bringing procurement online in India
The real moat in procurement software is not the workflow screen, it is the vendor graph that sits underneath it. Once a buyer has loaded hundreds of suppliers, mapped who gets each RFQ, trained those suppliers to answer on mobile or web, and routed requests from multiple internal teams through one system, replacing the platform means redoing both internal process and external supplier behavior at the same time. That is why procurement tools tend to deepen with company growth instead of getting swapped out.
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At Procol, the product starts with sourcing, requirement gathering, supplier selection, quote collection, negotiation, and PO award. That matters because supplier onboarding is not a side feature, it is part of the daily transaction flow. Procol also built supplier mobile apps and says onboarding can take minutes, which makes adoption easier, but also makes the resulting network more embedded.
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This pattern shows up across procurement incumbents. SAP Ariba runs a large buyer and supplier business network, Coupa operates a supplier community around orders, invoices, catalogs, and sourcing events, and Tradeshift built its platform explicitly as a buyer and supplier network. In each case, the software becomes a place where counterparties already are, not just a tool a buyer logs into.
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The strongest comparison is with newer orchestration layers like Zip or vendor intelligence tools like BRM. Those products can sit on top of existing systems and improve approvals, intake, or vendor data without requiring a buyer to migrate every supplier relationship at once. A network centric product like Procol is harder to displace once supplier participation becomes part of the system of record.
The next phase is that procurement winners will move from workflow software to network infrastructure. As Procol expands from sourcing into downstream procure to pay and financing, every additional supplier interaction, invoice, and renewal handled on platform should make the vendor graph denser and the switching cost stronger, pushing the market toward a small number of deeply embedded networks in each region and segment.