VendorPanel’s procurement platform just hit $11 million in Annual Recurring Revenue. Here’s how they did it.

Painful and unnecessarily complicated – that’s how James Leathem describes the procurement processes he was exposed to more than a decade ago while working at the corporate end of the market in his previous business.

This experience inspired James to transform the procurement process and make it easier and fairer for buyers, organisations and suppliers to do business – founding VendorPanel, the Melbourne-based  online procurement platform as its CEO in 2008.

VendorPanel has become Australia’s most-awarded ProcureTech solution. Its procurement, risk and contract management software helps clients  streamline and integrate procurement planning, supplier management, go to market, contract management and manage the Source-to-Contract cycle.

More than 100,000 people across Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand use VendorPanel’s web and mobile platform, which handles billions of dollars in procurement for thousands of buyers and tens of thousands of suppliers across a range of spend categories.

VendorPanel has 72 employees and offices across the globe, including its headquarters in Melbourne and locations in Brisbane, Sydney and, Los Angeles.

With the team in a big hiring phase, James said LaunchVic’s 30X30 Program stood out to him for its focus on the back office functions crucial to growth.

“It was targeted at the next layer down in terms of the management layer of the business. That’s unique in its own right, and I also think it’s eminently sensible,” he said.

“In that transition to a scale up and growing a bigger business, you really do need to have more capability, competency and power residing within that management layer.”

Scaling people, not just the tech.

Seeing the program as a great way to invest in the team and build some competence, experience and confidence, James said the program was very timely for where VendorPanel were at.

“The focus on HR, finance and operations was attractive as these are more generic across B2B SaaS companies so seemed more likely to benefit from an incubator model than other parts of our business,” he said.

“After the program we embraced some of the methodologies and tools that we were exposed to in 30X30, and the strategy model in particular played a pretty significant role in our recent strategy off-site .”

“I think it’s given us some good tools, processes and systems to scale the organisation in a more methodical and resilient kind of way.

“We’re very good at scaling the technology, but I think scaling people processes is something that we’re still learning about.”

Building networks

So far, VendorPanel has achieved $11 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and $30m ARR in future contracts

Its clients include household names from the corporate world, government, education, health, utilities, infrastructure, energy, transport and aged care.

VendorPanel Head of People, Performance and Culture Chloe Bartle, who participated in the 30X30 Program’s HR  stream, said the program was an invaluable way to develop your network with lots of learning opportunities and ‘aha’ moments.

“Having access to the facilitators and a fantastic cohort was a real highlight,” she said. “You gained access to the types of networks that would normally take you years to develop.

“It was refreshing to time with people who spoke your language and really understood the challenges you often faced in a scaling business’.. It was reassuring to know ‘oh it’s not just me’

“Finally it was also invaluable to spend time together as a senior VendorPanel group. You had the opportunity to have some very real and vunerable conversations that you might not otherwise get to have at work”.

Procurement as a force for good

Since starting the 30X30 Program, VendorPanel has expanded to new international markets and landed its first enterprise customers in North America, with James confirming that they would continue expanding sales operations overseas.

“Expanding globally is a key focus for us, as is continuing to evolve the product and grow locally.

“I am proud of what the VendorPanel team and our customers have achieved together especially in what we have been able to do in helping to redefine the impact of procurement as a force for good in the broader economy and community.”