HICX, a supplier experience management platform designed to give companies visibility into their supply chain, has raised $30 million in a funding round led by US private equity firm Wavecrest Growth Partners and Canada’s Espresso Capital. The funding was a mix of $22 million in equity and $8 million in debt.
Businesses from across the industry spectrum often need to demonstrate – to their boards or regulatory bodies, for example – that they comply with company policies and all laws of the land. While it’s easy to provide internally generated data to demonstrate compliance, many suppliers find it more difficult to demonstrate that a company is maintaining a strict procurement system from the outside, down the supply chain.
For example, a bank may want to demonstrate that it is only investing in climate-friendly companies, or a global consumer brand may want to demonstrate that it is only doing business with suppliers that have net zero carbon emissions. So-called “scope 3 emissions” — emissions in a company’s supply chain that are not directly controlled — are difficult to track. And sustainable supplier procurement is not only about tracking carbon emissions, but also about how the products are produced and delivered, what the life cycle is, and much more.
Throw into the mix the dozens or hundreds of suppliers a company might have in its supply chain, and you can get a picture of how difficult it is to get a full picture of what’s going on. And that, basically, is where HICX comes into its own, having a platform that acts as a single source of truth for supplier information.
In the year Founded in 2004, London-based HICX offers a single channel for companies to onboard new suppliers, a SaaS-based low-code platform that captures all the information needed by various departments and systems within the company. This includes integrations with enterprise resource planning (ERP), purchase-to-pay (P2P) and supply chain management (CCM) systems, and serves to ensure that all stakeholders are working from the same data.
HICX also includes independent compliance management tools that ensure suppliers comply with all tax, commercial, trade, diversity or sustainability provisions a company has.
Supplier compliance management Image credits: HICX
Today’s announcement represents the first major outside funding in HICX’s 18-year history, with a small “friends and family round” of nearly $1 million in investment from its inception to full launch in 2018, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. He has amassed an impressive portfolio of clients including Unilever, Lenovo and BAE Systems.
It’s important to note that supplier management tools like HICX are designed not only to arm companies with information and insight into their supply chain, but also to make suppliers’ lives more modern and easier to enjoy working with. User-friendly platform.
“At the most basic level, companies deliver value to their customers through the combined efforts of their internal teams and suppliers,” HICX CEO and co-founder Costas Xyloyiannis said in a statement. “Companies often invest in the supplier experience, making it easier for suppliers to deliver their best work. However, we’ve seen a big shift recently, and many of the world’s leading brands are investing in technology to address this and become the ‘customer of choice’ for as many of their suppliers as possible.” it is.
