NPI Year in Review 2024 – A Year Like No Other!

In our 21 years of business, no year has been quite as pivotal as 2024. The changes were big, the work was bigger, and the results have surprised even the most seasoned NPI’ers. Here’s a recap:

Top 5 Enterprise Software Deal Savings

The savings being driven for our clients have jumped dramatically. We used to get giddy with 7-figure savings. Now, it takes 8-figures to generate that level of excitement. Here are the top five software deals by savings in 2024:

• $77 million on VMware
• $31 million on Salesforce
• $30 million on Splunk
• $25 million on Palo Alto Networks
• $22 million on Broadcom

Top 11 Suppliers Reviewed

The top eleven suppliers reviewed changed in 2024. Why eleven, you may ask? Well, the team decided they were tired of Top 10 lists. So here are the top 11 IT vendors we saw in 2024:

#11 – VMWare

#10 – SAP

#9 – Adobe

#8 – Palo Alto

#7 – Dell

#6 – IBM

#5 – ServiceNow

#4 – Cisco

#3 – Salesforce

#2 – Oracle

#1 – Microsoft

Workday and CrowdStrike dropped off the top 11 suppliers from 2023, making way for SAP and IBM.

Most Valuable Player

Our analyst team is hands-down the MVP of 2024. The final numbers aren’t in just yet, but the volume of deals submitted reached an all-time high as more and more clients integrate NPI into their IT procurement workflows. Correspondingly, the savings our analysts identified reached an all-time high. They are amazing. Full stop.

New Vendors

The number of new enterprise-grade IT vendors entering the marketplace is astounding. At NPI, we analyzed deals from over 500 new suppliers, blowing previous years’ numbers out of the water. As a result, we have a new protocol developed specifically for analyzing deals for emergent IT suppliers.

Top 3 Announcements

This year, we’ve made several transformational announcements:

1.     The Launch of Vantage Pro – the world’s first platform purpose-built for IT procurement. In July, Vantage Pro emerged from Early Support to General Availability. We believe the platform is the future of category-specific ProcureTech, with AI-enabled tools empowering IT procurement practitioners to do their jobs faster, more easily, and with better negotiation outcomes.

2.     Making Spend Matters’ 50 Providers to Know List. The team at Spend Matters is one of the few organizations tracking the ProcureTech landscape, and the trajectory of NPI’s technologies and services (see #1) has captured their attention. Now in its 11th year, this list highlights the top performers in the supply chain and procurement sector, recognizing companies that deliver exceptional value and innovation.

3.     A significant growth investment from Falfurrias Growth Partners. The stage was set for a year like no other in January. We kicked off 2024 with a game-changing investment from the team at Falfurrias, which has accelerated our product development and growth initiatives.

Understatement of the Year: “Our product development team was busy.”

To say our product development team was busy in 2024 would minimize and downplay their efforts. They were swamped, and enthusiastically so. Thanks to this team, NPI became a full-fledged technology product company this year. The accomplishments are too numerous to count, but we’re going to try:

• 5 AI-powered applications built in 2024 using 6 different AI technologies
• 20+ major capabilities released in 2024 for the Vantage Pro platform
• SOC 2 certification by independent auditor
• Increased 3X software development horsepower in 2024
• Increased 5X the self-serve-research supplier coverage in 2024 to over 1,000 supplier
• 100,000 lines of original proprietary code written to support Vantage Pro, with a total codebase of 11,000,000+ lines. That’s more lines of code than many popular operating systems and illustrates the vast scope and complexity of our platform.

Our Proudest Achievement: Client Satisfaction

These are the stats that sum up why we do what we do. Our client logo board looks like the Who’s Who of Global Industry. And they are happier than ever.

• Current Fortune 500 Client Count: 134
• Renewal Rate: 90% (again!)
• Net Promoter Score: 92! For reference, anything above 80 is the top percentile. Here’s what the survey experts over at Qualtrics have to say: “This is the Holy Grail of NPS, and rarely attainable. A company with a score in this (71-100) range is considered to be among the absolute best in their industry.”

Looking Ahead to 2025

2024 was a wild ride in all the best ways. It was exhilarating, challenging, and full of growth and development. We’ve emerged as a better team with even stronger capabilities and focus.

In 2025, we will turbocharge the value we deliver to clients at every juncture – from our products and services to in-person learning and training and everything in between. We’re immensely proud and thankful for our team and for our clients as they join us on this adventure, and we look forward to setting the bar even higher in the year ahead!