The procurement management process is largely the same as it was twenty years ago, says Emilijus Vinča, CEO and co-founder at DealLink, a B2B procurement system. But is this state unchallengeable? DealLink believes it is not.

DealLink – an open B2B procurement system was created to fill the need of an effective and simple to use platform for business purchases management. The platform allows business owners to easily issue a tender in any of the listed economic activity areas and get offers from local and international suppliers. The module helps to organize the purchase process and to find exactly what one is looking for by choosing the best offer.

“Efficient cost-cutting, time-saving and instant valuable connections are what DealLink offers for the better B2B procurement management. Going for the mission to connect small and big businesses, we seek to be beneficial not only for the contractor but also for the small supplier that gets an immediate access to published purchasing tenders, can expand the customer base and is able to maximize sales by connecting to the largest buyers in both local and international markets,” – DealLink’s Emilijus Vinča says.

Currently, the startup is being developed in Lithuania and the module fully operates in all the Baltic countries with recent expansion to Poland and Finland. E. Vinča confirmed that this is not the end and with the encouragement of the successful expansion to Finland, they are ready to move forward and implement the module in other Scandinavian markets. The platform should be launched in Sweden in January, reach Denmark in March and Norway – in May.

“The strategic expansion to Nordic countries surely puts a spotlight on the suppliers from the Baltic countries and the goods or services they have to offer,” says E. Vinča. According to him, the most active participants are still Lithuanians; however, comparing the number of participation in tenders, within a very short period of time, suppliers from Poland are now in second place.

“The emerge of Finish and Polish companies’ on DealLink.biz system significantly increased competition among suppliers. The reasons are quite obvious: better price and bigger capacity, nevertheless, this increased competition is only a benefit from a contractor’s point of view,” shares E. Vinča. Currently, DealLink has more than 700 000 companies-suppliers in their database, which could potentially react to the published procurement.

DealLink has a lot of plans for the future; the predictions are that in 2017 the total expenditure of all procurements will reach 20 million euros. Mr. Vinča also pointed out that the open B2B procurement startup is looking around the Germany and United Kingdom markets. The intention is to enter them in the near future.

Everyone is free to issue a tender and get proposals from the rapidly growing circle of suppliers. “What is most important, we feel that the tool we’ve created will revolutionize the outdated environment of business procurements, not only by maximizing the efficiency of this complex process, but also giving an opportunity to research and evaluate the markets DealLink operates in,” adds E. Vinča.

We asked him a few more questions.

Please introduce your founders? Also, how are you funded?

Emilijus: The co-founders are myself, Emilijus Vinča, and also Remigijus Kalpokas. We fund the company with personal investments. 

When and how did you come up with this idea?

Emilijus: It started in 2015 spring. Public procurement is usually carried out through open governmental portals, but in B2B sector there are almost no open procurement platforms and even closed systems are used rarely. Tenders for the best supply offer are not often carried out. Suppliers rarely change, price and quality competition is poor and local. Contractors do not have a cheap and effective way to get a lot more and international supply proposals and for suppliers there is no system in which the bidding is open to everyone and which is not limited to the local market.

How has the business been so far?

Emilijus: 2015 – 1 market, 45,000 suppliers, 2016 + 4 markets, 700,000 suppliers; registered contractors – more than 1400.

What are your biggest challenges and how are you overcoming them?

Emilijus: Old habits. Business very rarely chooses the best supply deal from hundreds or thousands of proposals, as it is in DealLink system. We are creating a new business behavior – to conduct business tenders electronically to a huge and target audience. The recipe – work, work and work.

How big is your team? Can you introduce your core team?

Emilijus: 5 members of the team; core: Emilijus Vinča – 14 years experience in the areas of procurement, improvement of investment environment and in the area of EU support projects; Remigijus Kalpokas – works for almost 20 years in sales, marketing and advertising industries 

What are your main competitors in Lithuania and globally? What makes DealLink stand out?

Emilijus: In the Nordic/Baltic countries in B2B procurement sector there is only one competitor – http://lt.mercell.com/ , but they provide procurement and market development services acting as an agent and administrates a closed system with high fees. 

In Germany for example there are http://www.evergabe-online.de/search.html?0  and http://www.vergabe24.de/   – but these systems offer only a manual search for companies. In other European countries there are also closed, specialized electronic purchasing communities (communities operate within plastics, chemical, pharmaceutical industries, e.g. – https://www.pipelinepharma.eu/, etc.), but such an open, versatile and simple B2B model, as DealLink is planned to be, was not found. In North America the market is more competitive, but large auctions prevail – online bidding, high cost of participation, large participation barrier, etc. Also in US and worldwide there is www.ariba.com , but it is more of a matching platform (“matchmaking service that helps you find leads") with a strong American focus and different monetization principles (and it is very expensive!). Worldwide several start-ups are being developed, for example http://www.procurify.com/   (view permanent records of all purchasing activity; ensure purchase orders are created for authorized vendors), http://vendorregistry.com/  (notification service), http://tradeshift.com/  (free electronic invoicing, faster payments and predictable cash flow), https://exploreb2b.com/ (“expand your professional network, interact with a relevant audience and present your expertise”)   seeking to optimize tendering procedures, procurement management resources or payments, expertise but such services are different from the ones that DealLink is going to provide. 

What makes DealLink stand out? – our openness.