Investment will expand product, team, sales and marketing efforts
Focal Point, provider of an end-to-end enterprise procurement management platform, announced the completion of a $3 million Seed round. Participating investors include Susa Ventures, Amplo, GoPoint Ventures, Bungalow Capital and Operator Partners. The investment will enable Focal Point to accelerate adoption of its platform, build enhanced software functionality and capabilities, add industry executives to its leadership team and modernize and optimize corporate procurement departments and operations at the enterprise level.
According to Research and Markets, the worldwide procurement analytics industry is expected to reach $8 billion by 2026. Traditionally, procurement performance has been measured purely by cost savings and misses the broader strategic contribution and value that procurement brings to the bottom line. Analytics, and more importantly, a unified view of data, is allowing procurement departments to shift from a tactical cost center to a strategic and dynamic driver of ROI.
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“This is truly a software solution that was built by a Chief Procurement Officer for Chief Procurement Officers.”
Focal Point was founded in 2020 by Anders Lillevik, a procurement industry veteran who understood firsthand these pain points for Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) and the need for technology and data innovation as businesses navigate digital transformation in the post-pandemic era. The company raised $670K from Surface VC, Techstars and various angel investors in 2021, which enabled it to build and launch version 1.0 of its Procurement Value Management Suite.
Focal Point’s platform empowers enterprise procurement teams to fill critical gaps in the legacy procurement software stack. With Focal Point’s open APIs, CPOs can unify data siloed across existing solutions without a total rip and replace. By presenting a fully-integrated view of procurement orchestration and category management, enterprises can leverage real-time analytics to monitor productivity, track requests, manage workflows and save money, all while navigating today’s supply chain challenges.
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“Having spent more than 20 years in the trenches as a Chief Procurement Officer, I experienced firsthand the challenges faced in procurement at the enterprise level,” said Anders Lillevik, Focal Point founder and CEO. “With digital transformation, the global pandemic and significant supply chain disruptions across industries, procurement teams need to evolve past the outdated and inefficient reliance on manually updated spreadsheets. In too many cases today, there are major blindspots in legacy solutions which leads to less than stellar procurement data aggregation, team collaboration and performance management. Immediately fixing this problem is the genesis for Focal Point, and this investment will help fuel our next phase of growth.”
“When evaluating a business to invest in, we always look at the make-up of the team and their experience in the market they are trying to sell into,” said Courtney Buie Lipkin at Susa Ventures. “One of the first things that attracted us to Focal Point is its leadership team, led by Anders. This is truly a software solution that was built by a Chief Procurement Officer for Chief Procurement Officers. We see great opportunity for Focal Point to capture significant market share and adoption by today’s leading enterprises.”
“Focal Point has very quickly driven impressive results and momentum. The leadership team, anchored by Anders, a former Chief Procurement Officer, has made it possible for the company to gain traction with global companies, hire great talent, and make its initial mark in the industry,” said Sam Garcia at Amplo. “We believe Focal Point is well positioned to emerge as a dominant player in a new generation of procurement management software.”
