'Zip is one of those rare opportunities in enterprise software that doesn't come along often,' said Jay Simons, general partner at Bond. 'What sets Zip apart is its relentless focus on customer success and product innovation, which in today's tough macro environment, is exactly what enterprises need to drive efficiency and rein in costs.' The company will use the new cash to invest in engineering and research and development, including a new internal AI lab to create new AI-powered tools. The money also will be used to expand geographically....

Most Asian economies face two key challenges: expanding welfare services amidst tightening budgetary conditions and stimulating economic growth that generates youth employment. These twin challenges require innovative solutions and have elevated the importance of social delivery organizations (SDOs ' nonprofits and social enterprises) across the continent. Government procurement from the social sector, or social procurement, can take a range of forms. The government could hire the SDO as a knowledge partner (e.g., consulting on the delivery of a service), a service provider (e.g., delivering elderly care services to a community) or a product supplier (e.g., making handicrafts for diplomatic gifts). By procuring from SDOs, governments can leverage the subject expertise and community networks these organizations have built over the years, saving resources that would otherwise be used to replicate knowledge and networks. Furthermore, social procurement allows governments to use market mechanisms to deliver public services while supporting the social sector, which is especially valuable to governments with fiscal constraints that are unable to afford separate grants or subsidies. Social enterprises and nonprofits are also significant job creators, especially for key demographic groups such as youth, women and people with disabilities....

In today's tumultuous business landscape, where price volatility, geopolitical tensions, and sustainability imperatives converge, one function stands at the forefront of navigating these complexities: procurement. In this context, the procurement function will act as a strategic lever for value protection and creation. Procurement sits at the confluence of huge quantities of data, flowing from within the organization (for example, spend, demand patterns, specifications) and from without (suppliers, market insights databases, and the wider web). Today's digitized, connected organizations must tap into this data and develop new tools to make faster, better sourcing decisions. Mastering the data will empower procurement teams to achieve strategic objectives that go far beyond traditional cost, quality, and delivery metrics. Better data can support activities and decisions across the sourcing life cycle, from the development of category strategies and the assessment of potential suppliers to the execution of negotiations and ongoing supplier performance management. Done well, that can increase the pipeline of value creation initiatives by up to 200 percent. Let's look at five areas where data will have the most impact:...

City governments spend $6 trillion annually buying goods and services from private sector suppliers, amounting to 8% of world GDP in 2021. These delivery contracts represent a huge commercial opportunity for suppliers, but also a policy tool for local authorities to shape markets and steer private sector research and development towards priority policy goals ' from environmentally sustainable mobility, improvements in public health, safe and affordable housing, to resilient infrastructure. But in many countries, public procurement is widely perceived to be a barrier to innovation and improvement, a necessary evil to be navigated with caution. There is some truth to this perception. The UK government's national Innovation Strategy (2021) notes that public procurement culture is characterized by 'a low appetite for risk and experimentation' due to 'the overall culture, expertise and incentive structure of the public sector'. Consequently, many entrepreneurial suppliers simply do not seek to compete for public sector contracts. Between January 2021 and January 2023, 20% of openly competed UK public tenders only received one bid. This is bad news for taxpayers who miss out on potential improvements to public services....