Nina Vellayan: Vamping Up procurement industry with Xeeva
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With the spirit of helping others grow their business with
proper management, Nina Vellayan, President and CEO of Xeeva, is leading the
company with intelligent and innovative solutions. Before joining Xeeva, Nina
worked with a variety of organizations, including private, public, small, and
large companies, and enterprise SaaS. These valuable experiences allowed her to
expand her skill set and diversify her expertise.
She adds, “I was an investor and acting CEO of Stewardship
Technology. I have also held senior-level executive and investor positions
within financial, payments, and software technology organizations, including
CEO of FrontStream Payments, COO of Official Payments, and a divisional
President at Sallie Mae.” In 2020, Xeeva’s innovative approach attracted Nina
to the company. She saw a lot of potential in the company and its solutions. So,
she immediately jumped in to help the company continue to grow and thrive. This
marked the dawn of her journey with Xeeva.
Setbacks along the way
Nina stepped into the company during the time of the
pandemic. She states, “Not being able to develop relationships with the
entire team face-to-face has been very unfortunate. Additionally, every day, we
have to make difficult choices in order to put our employees and their
families’ health and safety first.”
However, these challenges prepared her and her team to be
ready for the unexpected. No matter what comes their way, they have to adapt
and offer the best services.
She adds, “It has also taught us not to take anything for
granted. Something as simple as going out to lunch with a coworker seems
unimaginable now, so we must never take the simple pleasures for granted.”
Bringing change with Xeeva
Xeeva started in 2014 as a business services and enterprise
software company selling procurement software to the automotive and
manufacturing industries in Detroit.
She adds, “Xeeva is a leader in indirect spend management
solutions that optimize the entire procurement process. The journey begins with
analyzing indirect spend data to then surfacing savings opportunities. The
sourcing platform helps organizations realize savings utilizing our Supplier
Marketplace and, finally, provides a consumer-like shopping experience for
requesters and buyers with a compliance and policy engine and catalog updates
in our Procure-to-Pay platform.”
Xeeva realized that 25% of a company’s overall spend is on
indirect items. However, the C-suite has very little visibility into what’s
being purchased, through which vendors, and at what price. Based on this
revelation, they started developing their data-driven, AI-powered XVA Platform
to help mid-market to large enterprise companies gain visibility into their
indirect spend, create sourcing events, and purchase items with a consumer-like
experience and a focus on compliance.
Their XVA Platform is the AI technology that powers our
cloud-based SaaS suite consisting of: Spend Analytics, Sourcing, and
Procure-to-Pay. Xeeva Spend Analytics visualizes cleansed, categorized, and
enriched data. Xeeva Sourcing is a strategic sourcing solution that leverages
deep spend category expertise and superior supplier and product data to
identify optimal suppliers, reduce time to contract, minimize indirect spend,
and simplify compliance within corporate sourcing guidelines. Xeeva
Procure-to-Pay simplifies the procurement process.
She shares, “Over the last six years, however, we have
expanded into eight different industries, including industrial manufacturing,
consumer packaged goods, energy and utilities, chemicals, and more. We are
continuing to expand our products and services in order to provide the most
value possible to our customers. We are also continuing to build out our team
and bringing in talented individuals across all departments. As Xeeva continues
to grow and thrive, our employees continue to do so as well, and it is a very
rewarding process to watch and be a part of.”
Life as CEO and President of the company
Wearing the hat of CEO and President of the company, Nina builds
on the company’s momentum with the development of additional initiatives to
maximize client experiences, expand its offerings, and accelerate growth.
As she stepped into the shoes of the CEO during the
pandemic, she witnessed closures, layoffs, and furloughs of their clients. This
caused them to refocus on ways to drive savings and cost-savings initiatives
across their organizations, and they looked to Xeeva to help.
She expresses, “There’s a digital transformation happening,
and due to that, organizations are turning to our intelligent spend management
applications, powered by our XVA Platform, to surface insights that drive
savings and bottom-line improvement in profitability. As a result, our
customers realize 10-30% savings on their indirect spend after quickly
deploying our solutions.”
Procurement has historically been known to be slow to adopt
new technologies. As more companies are going through a digital transformation
with their procurement processes, Xeeva’s spend management solutions will help
them realize value.
She states, “We plan to stay in the game by staying ahead of
the game. We plan to continue to innovate and differentiate our solutions as
well as our brand. We will remain focused on our journey to enhance our
offerings’ features and functionalities to empower our users to utilize AI to
surface insights, realize savings, and control indirect spend with a faster
time to value. With the constant evolution of technology, we are able to use
our data to understand our customers, expand our offerings, and identify
pockets of profitable growth.”
She believes that transparency and openness bring the inflow
of new ideas to the whole team. She focuses on the point by expressing, “Innovation
occurs because our employees feel empowered and aren’t afraid to share their
ideas and opinions. We also make sure our team never stops learning. Our
employees have the ability to train in new areas, develop new skills, and get
professional certifications, leading to greater knowledge of cutting-edge
concepts.”
Future plans for the company
Nina states, “Our mission and vision are to help
organizations unleash greater savings through data-driven spend management,
utilizing AI technology to surface insights, realize savings, and control
indirect spend.”
Further, she adds, “We will continue to best assist our
customers by looking at their future needs, surfacing new savings
opportunities, and making better business decisions based on their spend
data.” Over the next few years, they plan to improve their modeling, add
to their 40 million SKUs, and keep building out the features and
functionalities within their solutions.