Scott Macfee is the CEO of SpendHQ. During this conversation, he discusses multi-dimensional insights, ESG initiatives, team success over individual success, and his love for barbecuing! 

SpendHQ helps procurement turn vision and strategy into highly effective action. They are the leading best-in-class provider of enterprise Spend Intelligence and Performance Management solutions – with fast time-to-value and lightweight implementation for procurement teams. 

1. What is SpendHQ’s mission? 

Our mission is to facilitate insight identification, execution, and collaboration to establish procurement as a strategic value contributor to the enterprise. Simply put, we’re focused on delivering an integrated platform that takes procurement all the way from data to value – a concept that sets us apart as the first provider to do this. 

We help customers consolidate their enterprise spend and supplier data, identify key insights, and develop actionable plans to realise value. This means not only driving cost savings and enhancing EBITDA but also advancing non-financial goals such as improving diversity, reducing carbon footprints, and managing risk. 

We aim to be the centralised hub for all spend and supplier data, enabling organisations to leverage that data to maximise their contributions to the enterprise.

Historically, SpendHQ has been a market leader in the U.S. for spend analytics, offering insights that organisations rely on. By integrating these Performance Management capabilities into our platform, we've created a unique differentiator that resonates in the market. Today, we have about 50 joint customers using the platform, and we can meet customers wherever they are in their journey.   We can provide the full suite solution or add Performance Management on top of an existing spend analytics tool.  

We were built by procurement, for procurement. It's really been procurement professionals who have architected our solution and 70% of our customer facing team comes from procurement backgrounds.  

Some impactful stats highlight our success: we’ve analysed over $8 trillion in spend, over 100,000 projects were managed via Performance Management last year, resulting in $17.3 billion in savings – averaging $3 million per buyer.

2. What have been the most significant milestones in SpendHQ’s journey so far? 

I joined the business about three and a half years ago, during an exciting but transitional time. At that point, we had an emerging solution operating within the Inside Sourcing Group. It was a great collaboration and a strong foundation, but essentially, it was a software business being run within a consulting organisation. The first major milestone was spinning out the business to operate as a standalone software company. This allowed us to focus on investments and build a leadership team to drive growth and scale. 

When I joined, I came off a successful exit with another software company, so I was eager to contribute to scaling this new venture. Over the past three years, we've worked to build the right leadership team and accelerate growth. From a revenue standpoint, we've more than doubled since that time, and we've expanded our team to 120 global colleagues.  

A significant milestone was the acquisition of Per Angusta, which was a game-changer for us. We were building something innovative and found alignment with Per Angusta founder Pierre Laprée and Head of North America Jason Treida. Pierre was aiming to get closer to spend, while we were focused on getting closer to performance management, so the synergy was clear.  

Over the past year, we've achieved many remarkable milestones, such as now servicing 20 of the Fortune 100 companies. We've also eclipsed 500 global customers and 20,000 plus users – a testament to our scaling efforts. 

 3. What do you look for in the perfect customer? 

What I love about our solution is its versatility – we can work with any type of customer, regardless of size or where they are in their procurement journey. We become the front end or backbone of their transformation. 

Our most successful partnerships occur when there's strong alignment on the outcomes customers want to achieve. Often, we help craft their vision and guide their strategy, whether it’s related to Spend Intelligence or Performance Management. Success also hinges on adoption. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in deployment processes and post-deployment customer success and support to ensure the solution becomes integral to their operations. 

Customers who understand the importance of change management and have a clear vision for driving software adoption tend to thrive with our solution.

4. What are the foundations of growing a great team? 

Earlier in my career, I learned a critical lesson from a great leader: success comes from building a team that is smarter and better than you. This principle has shaped how I approach leadership, especially when assembling my leadership team and fostering talent across the broader organisation. It’s important to find the best people, who can fill our gaps and bring a diverse set of strengths. 

Taking a holistic view of the team – understanding everyone’s strengths, how they fit together, and helping them develop in areas of weakness – is key. At the core of my leadership philosophy are trust and transparency. For me, those are non-negotiable. One of the things I love about our business, especially at our current size of 120 team members, is the personal connections we can maintain. Building this kind of culture fosters trust and mutual respect. 

Leadership isn’t just about strategy, it’s about creating a culture where people are motivated to excel because they feel valued and supported.

5. How do you incorporate GenAI/advanced technologies, and what will be your next major digital innovation? 

Being in the spend analytics business, data is at the core of what we do. Getting the data right – ingesting and transforming it – is critical. While AI isn't new to us, the rise of generative AI, LLMs like ChatGPT, and other emerging technologies, presents an exciting new frontier. 

We see a huge opportunity in this space and are heavily invested in a couple of areas. First, we’re using genAI to accelerate the data transformation process. For example, when ingesting contract data, genAI can help bring relevant metadata to drive more informed decisions. This is part of how we’re embedding AI into our core categorisation process. 

We’re confident in the solutions we’re developing, particularly in the area of neural networks and private networks, which help us refine our categorisation process. While genAI is a powerful tool, we’re focused on leveraging it to enhance these existing processes to ensure that the right categorisation is achieved. 

Another huge opportunity lies in the vast amount of data we manage – over $8 trillion in spend across a global customer base. We’re exploring how to better leverage this data, including insights and benchmarks, through private AI models that bring more tailored solutions to the table. The potential here is massive, and we’re excited about the advancements we’re making. 

6. What’s the vision for SpendHQ? What does great look like in three to five years’ time? 

From a technology standpoint, we’re really excited about the concept of multi-dimensional insights. Traditionally, spend data insights have been fairly unidimensional – focused on things like spend, supplier, or risk, which could be financial, cyber, etc. What we’re now focused on is bringing these insights together for a more holistic view of risk across the supply chain. 

We recently launched our Supplier Risk solution, which offers a composite risk scoring system using multi-dimensional insights. This includes data from sources like RapidRatings, Sayari, or apexanalytix for cyber risk. We’re really excited about the potential here.  

Looking at the future of SpendHQ, our vision is to become the tool procurement teams open every day to do their jobs. That's what success looks like for us. To make this a reality, we work closely with our customers, gathering input on how we can expand, grow, and enhance our solution with new features and functionalities. 

Growing and scaling the team with the right technical talent is critical to our success. We’ve dedicated significant time to aligning our technical capabilities with our vision and roadmap. In the software space, I’ve found that staying aligned with your customers and listening to their feedback is key. 

We’ve built strong relationships with our customers, leveraging our customer advisory board, which includes CPOs from some of the largest organisations in the world. Our biggest enabler in driving success is actively listening to their challenges and insights and crafting our solutions around their needs.  

Rather than acquiring every solution, we prefer to integrate with market-leading, best-of-breed providers. This decision allows us to maintain a flexible, interconnected system, while providing our customers with the insights they need to drive value.

7. What are you doing that is good for the planet?

From a solution standpoint, we offer a comprehensive ESG module that helps our customers advance their sustainability agendas. ESG is becoming increasingly important, whether it's carbon emissions, diversity, or other aspects of ESG, we’ve expanded our platform to support these goals. 

What sets us apart is that it's not just about the data. We've built our platform to enable and track the execution of ESG initiatives. In Performance Management, we incorporate non-financial goals, allowing organisations to set initiatives and metrics beyond cost savings to focus on other key imperatives. 

Internally, we take ESG seriously as well. We track our carbon footprint, and sustainability is a key focus for our team. We also encourage employee-led groups focused on areas they’re passionate about, with our social responsibility group being the most active and engaged. 

INSTANT INSPIRATION 

1. What is your favourite book/blog? 

Two books have been influential in my career. The first is The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Katzenbach, and the second is A Sense of Urgency  by John Kotter. Both are foundational in leadership and organisational change.  

2. Who is your favourite inspirational leader? 

My all-time favourite leader is a man named Jere Brown. He taught me more about leadership than most leaders I’ve worked with. Unfortunately, he passed away about a year after his retirement, but before he retired, he left us with a takeaway card from his retirement dinner. On it were eight lessons he learned as a leader – simple, pragmatic, yet insightful. I’ve kept this card on my desk ever since, and it has served as a guiding set of principles. It's shaped the kind of compassionate, people-focused, and inspirational leader I strive to be, just like Jere was to me and my team. 

3. What is your favourite piece of technology? 

I love to cook, especially grilling and barbecuing. Recently, I was introduced to this wireless thermometer called the MEATER. It's amazing in terms of precision and accuracy. Whether you're cooking a brisket, a filet, or even salmon, it’s a game-changer for ensuring the best possible outcome. 

4. What is your favourite cocktail or guilty pleasure? 

Old Fashioned. It’s the staple go-to. 

5. What is your favourite way to celebrate success?

By giving credit and praise to the team behind the success. As I’ve said before, we can’t achieve the great things we do without a great team. For me, the most rewarding part is, when we have a big win or finish a great year, handing out awards and recognising those who made it happen. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

1. The Role of Procurement in Strategic Value Creation: Procurement is increasingly seen as a strategic contributor to the overall value of the enterprise. Companies are evolving to view procurement not just as a cost-saving function, but as a key player in delivering value through data, insights, and supplier collaboration.
2. Data-Driven Insights for Business Value: Consolidating enterprise spend and supplier data is crucial for driving both financial and non-financial goals. Businesses are leveraging data analytics to not only drive cost savings but also to advance diversity, sustainability, and risk management goals.
3. The Importance of Risk and Performance Management: A holistic view of risk management and performance is becoming essential, with an increasing focus on integrating various types of risk (financial, cyber, ESG) into the decision-making process.
4. Embracing Change and Software Adoption: Successful procurement transformations require strong change management and software adoption strategies. 
5. Leveraging Emerging Technologies: The rise of generative AI and other advanced technologies is shaping the future of procurement. AI, particularly in areas like data transformation and categorisation, is being integrated into procurement platforms to enhance decision-making and deliver tailored solutions.
6. Growing Teams with the Right Talent: Building strong teams is key to scaling any business. The most effective organisations focus on aligning the right technical and leadership talent with their vision and roadmap, while fostering a culture of trust and transparency to drive success.
7. Advancing ESG Initiatives: Procurement teams are not just tracking ESG data but are actively involved in setting, executing, and managing sustainability goals, with a growing emphasis on carbon footprint reduction, diversity, and social responsibility. 

About SpendHQ 

SpendHQ helps procurement turn vision and strategy into highly effective action. They are the leading best-in-class provider of enterprise Spend Intelligence and Procurement Performance Management solutions – with fast time-to-value and lightweight implementation for procurement teams.  

About ProcureTechSTARS

ProcureTechSTARS are the digital procurement CEOs and Founders who are transforming procurement and the enterprise. In an open conversation with these leaders, Lance Younger discusses the highs and lows of building the future, the challenges they’ve faced, their perspective on the latest developments, and what motivates them.