Managing tail spend efficiently is a challenge many organisations face.
Those small, scattered purchases can be hard to keep track of and can quickly add up in cost, complexity and compliance efforts.
But Candex, led by CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Lappin, is tackling this issue head-on.
While in his previous company, Lappin was tasked with invoicing a number of large organisations when he discovered there was a gap in the market to simplify the process for purchasing from small vendors and one-time purchases.
“When I started Candex, I noticed that this problem was common to organisations all over the world,” explains Lappin. “So we decided to build a fantastic purchasing infrastructure to allow for the ability to invoice clients globally and then pay smaller vendors. We started focusing on recruitment vendors and then broadened into all types of vendors as we began to understand how things worked and how to better serve our clients. That’s the genesis of how Candex got to where it is today.”
Together with Co-Founder and Chief R&D Officer Shani Vaza, Candex was born. And today the company delivers a fast, compliant, and easy buying experience for requisitioners, while procurement gains automation, visibility, and control, reducing the vendor master by up to 80%.
Hitachi Energy was an early customer of Candex back in 2021. Lappin was introduced to Chief Procurement Officer at Hitachi Energy, Armin Ploetz, and his team in Switzerland.
The partnership continuously grew and developed into a strong alliance, which now acts as a template and best practice and helps shape how Candex works.
The journey between Candex and Hitachi Energy started as a pilot in Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, but following a successful year, Hitachi Energy decided to roll out the Candex solution in 40 countries. The adoption rate has more than doubled each year, and this year the trend is even tripling.
Inside Candex
Over the years, some of the biggest challenges procurement teams have faced involve the likes of fragmented data, manual vendor onboarding processes, and administrative bottlenecks. This leads to time and resources being devoted to low-impact tasks, causing major strategic projects to receive insufficient attention. In many organisations, 70% of vendors represent only 5% of total spend. Candex enables procurement teams to efficiently handle this long tail of spend without increasing operational workload. As a result, teams can concentrate on strategic goals, shift spending towards preferred suppliers, and generate greater value for the business. Currently, Candex is supporting procurement in moving beyond just compliance and cost reduction to achieve something much more meaningful – transparency.
Procurement leaders often face resistance when implementing new systems. However, Candex has ensured high adoption rates and navigation through some of this initial inertia because of its unique and simple user experience offering. “Usually when our clients first deploy us, it starts a little slow because people aren’t familiar with Candex or how it works,” explains Lappin. “But over time, we see incredible adoption from our customers like Hitachi Energy, who have got a real feel for how compliant this methodology is. We’ve seen a very steady growth within our clients in very predictable ways which is amazing.”
Candex and Hitachi Energy: Strategic partnership
Hitachi Energy’s core markets are expanding rapidly, demanding full attention on strategic and high-impact suppliers. Candex plays a crucial role in supporting this growth by efficiently managing short-turn, low-risk tail-end suppliers, for example in R&D – allowing Hitachi Energy to stay focused on its key business relationships, products and services.
Armin Ploetz explains that one of Candex’s biggest advantages is that it allows Hitachi Energy to act quickly and omit a lengthy supplier onboarding process for small-spend or one-time purchase suppliers.
“In R&D, teams often require unique suppliers for one-off tests of new materials or components – items they know they’ll purchase only once,” says Armin Ploetz. “Candex is ideal because there’s no need to qualify the supplier for ongoing production. Scalability checks aren’t required, making procurement much faster.”
“If a needed part isn’t available in our catalogue, R&D can use Candex to source it for their specific project. The key is clear communication because knowing when and how to use Candex makes all the difference. That’s why we stay in close contact with our R&D teams to ensure they use Candex as efficiently as possible.”
Building trust
As exemplified by the Hitachi Energy relationship, one of the things that stands out is the trust that exists in this partnership. In fact, Lappin reveals that his entire business revolves around trust. “It’s a relationship business,” he tells us. “Orders, invoices, and payments must go where they’re meant to, so the system has to function smoothly and any complexities should disappear into the abyss. It should feel simple and consistently dependable and like it always works.”
Before Candex, Hitachi Energy spent a significant time with onboarding and invoice alignment to specific countries, where their specific efforts often outweigh the cost or even the benefits. “Now, with Candex handling and streamlining this for their infrequent, low-value and low-risk areas, Hitachi Energy is able to better focus on where it matters most for them, their line of business, products, markets and their clients,” adds Lappin.
The Candex difference
According to Armin Ploetz, the management of tail spend is an important area because it touches many stakeholders. “Imagine we run a one-time team-building event in the UK.” reveals Armin Ploetz. “Normally, bringing in a new supplier means going through a full onboarding process and checking the likes of cybersecurity, sustainability, and financial liability, which is similar to what we do for critical, strategic suppliers. While this process is necessary for our core business, it exceeds the actual need in other areas and consumes valuable time.”
“For low-value, one-off events like this, it’s far more efficient to work with a company like Candex, which performs the essential safety checks without going as deep as our full supplier onboarding process. That way, we can onboard and purchase from such suppliers much faster, avoiding the specifics and additional efforts necessary for others. Payment, as a consequence, also becomes quicker, making the entire process smoother.”
Previously, internal requesters often found this process frustrating and questioned why a small, one-off event was difficult to arrange and why payment couldn’t just be made quickly. Now, there is a targeted solution – faster processing, better efficiency, and improved internal reputation. Lappin reveals how delighted he is that Candex is able to provide that value to organisations the size of Hitachi Energy.
“It’s humbling to see that a company like Hitachi Energy finds what we do to be so important, and that’s what drives us day in and day out,” he tells us. “We love listening to their suggestions for improvements and their excitement to bring us into new markets. We love how it makes their automation goals more achievable and makes their processes more efficient and easier to follow. I think that is the reward that we get from doing it and it’s always fun to see the surprise on their requisitioners’ faces at how effective our solution is and how easy it is to use.
“Hitachi Energy has been incredibly efficient and effective at how they’ve performed change management and rolled Candex out around the world to their people and got them using it. We’ve learned quite a lot from that experience in terms of collaborating and we’ve been able to use that learning with some of our other clients.”
However, success is not without challenges. According to Lappin, one of the biggest hurdles is being available within each individual country. He stresses that there are key criteria to meet such as following local rules and regulations, understanding how taxation works and opening new bank accounts. Fortunately, Candex has become well-versed in handling those challenges within different countries.
“The first part is being available in the countries where the clients need us, which is basically everywhere,” explains Lappin. “Then the second challenge is getting set up as a vendor in those countries with our clients and enabling the users in those countries to trust us for their purchases. They don’t want things to get messed up. They want everything to be right, because they know how things work in these countries. So, we have to work perfectly, and ensure Candex is working perfectly for the purchases that they’re making in these countries. Being good at this is one of the hardest challenges that Candex has.”
Future facing procurement
The future of the partnership between Candex and Hitachi Energy looks bright. Already using this alliance as a template for others, Hitachi Energy is set to continue to roll out Candex to as many countries as possible. “Our plan will be to go with them as far as we can go, because we currently see a massive increase in efficiency on our side since partnering with them,” says Armin Ploetz. “If Candex comes up with additional solutions in the future, we will certainly consider and evaluate these according to our needs, to embrace new solutions as long as they fit within our overall technology landscape. For the time being, we are still rolling out the existing solution and ensuring we drive the adoption of the tool but there is still a way to go.”
From Lappin’s perspective, he is well aware about how the future of payments in procurement is evolving and believes compliance is becoming increasingly important. “There’s a lot of sanctions and screening processes that are expected of companies,” he says. “The requirements on that front are getting more significant, and the government requirements on invoicing are similarly getting substantially more difficult. As time progresses, I think people will be even more concerned with compliance, and government processes will become even more complicated to deal with in terms of how invoicing needs to be done. I don’t see that trend stopping at all, nor do I see an easy way around it.
“In procurement, there’s some amazing analytical tools that are coming out that’ll be incredibly valuable that use AI to get real important knowledge out of what’s happening. I think that people will figure out how to use AI to help them find the right vendors, to help them create the right quotations and scopes for the projects that they’re embarking on. I don’t think the payment infrastructure will be affected as much as some of the other user-facing areas that are gaining traction in the space such as guided buying and orchestration. Everyone is focused on making the user experience easier and helping people make the purchases that they need to make.”
How do you ensure compliance and efficiency without slowing down business processes?
Jeremy Lappin: “One of our greatest strengths at Candex is the way we’ve engineered compliance into the purchasing process. Normally, making a compliant purchase means going through sanction screenings, verifying beneficial owners, and waiting for approvals before a vendor can act. This creates a common bottleneck, “I can’t do my part until someone else finishes theirs.”
“With traditional onboarding at companies like Hitachi Energy, vendors must complete a thorough and detailed process before a purchase order can even be released. At Candex, there’s no waiting period. Vendors can move step by step through our system without relying on others, which makes the process faster, smoother, and less complex.
“We’ve optimised it so purchase orders go through without delays, confusion, or unnecessary complexities. Of course, payments are never as simple as handing someone cash – there are still taxes, invoices, and compliance requirements. But compared to any other method, we make the process simpler and more efficient.”
Jeremy Lappin
CO-FOUNDER, CEO, Candex
Jeremy is one of the co-founders and the CEO of Candex. He is responsible for driving the company’s business innovation, overseeing product development, and implementing growth strategies.
Prior to Candex, Jeremy served as the CEO of Bounty Jobs, a prominent Enterprise Agency Management solution and recruiting platform. During his tenure, he successfully raised $18 million in funding and led the company to achieve over $20 million in annual revenue within three years. With a diverse background in the internet, financial, and technology sectors, Jeremy brings valuable entrepreneurial and management experience to the table. In 1998, Jeremy founded Versity.com, an internet software company where he developed enterprise course management software for universities. Jeremy managed to secure $12 million in funding for Versity and eventually sold the business for $80 million.
Jeremy earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and holds an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Outside of work, he enjoys skiing and playing tennis during his spare time.
Shani Vaza
CO-FOUNDER, Chief R&D Officer
Shani is the powerhouse behind Candex’s cutting-edge technology, where she serves as the Co-Founder and Chief R&D Officer.
Before joining Candex, Shani held the esteemed position of Director of Engineering at SuperDerivatives, a prominent Fintech company renowned for its expertise in derivatives.
Her journey into the tech world began in the prestigious tech unit of the IDF, where she honed her coding skills straight out of college.
Armed with a degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, Shani’s expansive knowledge forms the foundation of her unwavering dedication to achieving technological excellence.
Armin Ploetz, Chief Procurement Officer, Hitachi Energy
With more than 30 years of experience within the supply chain management realm, Armin is the Chief Procurement Officer at Hitachi Energy and leads Supply Chain Management and the Common Shared Services.
Armin is passionate about driving value creation beyond cost reduction and efficiency improvements. He is continuously improving sustainability maturity, leveraging technology and promoting diversity and inclusion at work.
Armin’s most recent focus is on implementing robust risk management strategies and ensuring proactive supply chain regulatory compliance by leveraging artificial intelligence. Armin holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland and has held various leadership roles in multinational companies, such as Ernst&Young (EY) and IBM.
At companies like Hitachi Energy, onboarding high-risk, high-spend suppliers – especially those tied to critical production elements – requires rigorous due diligence and thorough evaluation. This process is essential to ensure compliance, quality, and operational continuity. However, for infrequent, low-value, and low-risk purchases, such extensive onboarding can be disproportionate. Candex streamlines this segment by enabling suppliers to onboard quickly and independently, without lengthy delays or complex dependencies – allowing procurement teams to focus their resources where it matters most.