Richard Donaldson is the VP of Management and Marketing for Requis, a technology company that according to their website “connects buyers and sellers, enabling enterprises to procure, manage, and dispose of assets with greater visibility, simplicity and capital efficiency.”
Richard joins us on the Payment Innovations podcast to share his insights for how the world of enterprise is expecting big changes.
Currently, there is a very large gap between what is needed and what is available within technology solutions of the enterprise supply chain, which Requis is working on filling.
The right experience to solve the problem
Before working with Requis, Richard spent 21 years in Silicon Valley. As an investment banker he got to help build out data centers globally, which led him to a transition from startups and infrastructure development, to a Supply Chain position for Ebay.
At Ebay, he bought and sold assets that totalled into 100’s of millions of dollars of infrastructure equipment. However, there was a glaring problem: most of the processes and systems that they used at Ebay were outdated by at least two decades, according to Richard.
At the time, he was upset with the way that was working. Then, shortly after Richard was approached by an energy company involved in oil production.
The problems with supply chains, according to Richard, are actually the same across all industries–pharmaceutical, automotive, manufacturing, etc. The reappearing problem is that assets aren’t tracked correctly, which means that they frequently get mismanaged. While most teams working to create these systems would throw their hands up, Richard’s past experience at Ebay showed him that he could solve this problem.
When he moved over to Requis, he was presented the opportunity to do exactly that.
Global logistics are still up for grabs in the enterprise market.
Of the global 2,000 enterprises (as measured by Forbes) those companies represent more than $12 Trillion of procurement per year. Their buying and selling per year adds up to over $20 Trillion per annum–which is the same size as the entire US economy based on GDP. That’s twice as big as the consumer economy!
The missing piece for most enterprises is the asset record within companies, much less within industries (something that Requis can help them create). This is evident in the consumer world where there are semi-standard records. The closest example would be VIN numbers for automobiles as a means of standard identification.
You can use this to see the entire history for the car across all of its owners. Requis is trying to achieve that same type of asset management with other enterprise scenarios in order to help large enterprises better manage and protect their assets.
Requis saw the opportunity because other systems that already exist only insure that the financial side of the transaction is complete, but they don’t want to touch the asset side of things.
All of the existing solutions within most enterprises combine a mix of different systems and modalities between technology and manual processes. The hardest thing for them to do is to sew together disparate pieces, which can leave most teams scrambling to keep up.
A four-part solution that delivers results
In order to better provide for their enterprise clients, Requis decided to implement a four-part solution that focused on key pillars where they felt they could provide more for their clients. They are as follows:
- Procurement
- Marketplace
- Directory
- Asset management
Never before have all four coexisted within one company that was built to be cohesive. (Although, individually, all of them have existed before as standalone pieces to existing solutions.)
According to Richard, the core mission at Requis is focusing on two sets of data: asset information and corporate information.
Both are integral steps towards improved solutions for enterprises. While there is a lot of great innovation today, Richard doesn’t feel the market was ready for Requis ten years ago.
Luckily, the current market is primed for a big transition in overall supply chain recognition, making a huge space for Requis to fill.
To hear how Richard and Requis are changing the way that enterprises are changing the space, you can learn more by clicking here to listen to this podcast now.
