Still winning major deals
Sopheon has this morning announced a major win for Accolade – the global snack food giant, Mondelez. The deal is good evidence that Sopheon continues to win material deals despite the pressures of COVID-19, and that its innovation management platform is genuinely market-leading. We continue to believe that the group will see a return to strength as the market slowly recovers, and see today’s announcement as a useful signal.
? Major customer – Mondelez, despite being relatively unknown in the UK, is listed in the USA ($82bn market capitalisation), owning brands from Cadbury to Oreo, Belvita to Toblerone. Revenues for 2019 were some $26bn, and the group employs around 80,000 staff around the world. As with Sopheon’s other blue-chip customers, we can be sure that Mondelez conducted an exhaustive search as it looked to professionalise its innovation and product development processes – so Sopheon’s selection is another strong reference point for the business. The anticipated benefits to Mondelez are familiar for Sopheon’s customers:– increased visibility over innovation processes, improved allocation of capital to the most-appropriate projects and faster decision-making.
? Rapid deployment and SaaS model The announcement describes a rapid rollout of Accolade, which is targeted to go live before the end of 2020, and is replacing two different legacy platforms. Sopheon prides itself on speed of deployment, but in a large organisation such as Mondelez, this anticipated pace is impressive. The RNS also makes clear that this is a SaaS implementation, in line with Sopheon’s strategy, and which adds to longterm revenue visibility.
? Strong success in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Sopheon is, we believe, already a supplier to both P&G and Pepsico, so adding Mondelez (the world’s #2) adds to the group’s credentials in this segment. The win also proves beyond doubt that customers are comfortable relying on Sopheon to maintain confidentiality of information between customers, again an important proof point for other potential customers both in the CPG segment and more broadly.
Overall, this deal is a useful and material win in its own right, but just as importantly signals three things:
* business continues to be won despite the COVID-19 pressures,
* Accolade retains its market-leading position, and
* Sopheon is building ever-greater sector credentials in relevant key markets