New Year’s Day should be in the fall, not January.  After all, fall is when: we have a change of season, the new school year starts, Muslims and Jews are already celebrating the New Year, the harvest comes in, etc.  Apparently, fall is also the new year for procure-to-pay suite vendors, as both Basware and Sciquest announced new CEOs this week.

Basware

The Basware announcement seemed odd.  The announcement came just before the end of the quarter and no real reason was given for the change.  Basware’s board Chairman and new CEO provided a 15 minute investor call that thanked the exiting CEO and introduced the new one.  Reading through the tea leaves, one gets the impression the board felt the company’s strategy had been right, but execution and team-building could be improved.  The new CEO has been with the company less than 1 year. He comes from the network part of the business, which is clearly one of the strategic priorities for Basware.  See the press release here if you have any interest in such things. If not, we are Finnished (get it?) and we can move on to Sciquest.

Sciquest

Sciquest replaced its longtime CEO, Steve Wiehe, with Rob Bonavito.  (See an article from the local paper here.)  The article suggests there are other changes going on at Sciquest as well, but does not specify these changes.  (There’s been a fair bit of turnover at Sciquest generally.)  As the article points out, Rob Bonavito was CEO of iTradeNetwork, which I have blogged about previously here and here.  iTradeNetwork was one of the first successful B2B platforms.  Through acquisition and organic growth, iTradeNetwork built a great offering in the foodservice industry.  Accel-KKR, which owns Sciquest, also owned iTradeNetwork and successfully sold the business to Roper Industries.  In other words, Mr. Bonavito has delivered for Accel-KKR before. (Accel-KKR also owns Oildex, so they also know industry platforms.)

Meanwhile, Coupa’s IPO road show begins soon.  Who knew there would be all of this palace intrigue in the procure to pay suite market?!