Why advancing our people is as important as advancing our solution.

Author

Darren Blakely

Chief Revenue Officer

Darren leads the Unimarket team in North America to deliver the procurement, invoicing, and payment solutions our clients rely on every day. Darren has founded multiple B2B payment and AP automation companies, including establishing one of the fastest-growing private companies in America, as recognized by Inc. Magazine. Away from the office, Darren is an investor, EPL fan, father, and husband.

At Unimarket, we’re often described as a software company. It’s an appropriate description of what we do: our team of very smart coders and product designers built a dedicated eProcurement solution that integrates with our clients’ finance software to help make their procurement process simpler and more efficient.

Like all good SaaS solutions, it’s updated and improved regularly to meet the evolving needs of the organizations we partner with. Features are added, the user experience is enhanced, security patches are applied, and so on.

But Unimarket is just as much a people company. Our team works hand-in-hand with our clients at every step in their eProcurement journey, from the moment they first sit down to talk about their needs and goals, through to implementation, change management, and day-to-day use. Our success as a business relies as much on the experience, skills and collaboration of our people as it does on the software solution we provide.

“Our success as a business relies as much on the experience, skills and collaboration of our people as it does on the software solution we provide.”- Darren Blakely, President Unimarket North America

For this reason, we’re as committed to advancing the development of our team as we are to improving our software. Our solution never stays the same — it’s better and more capable of meeting the needs of our clients today than it was six months ago, and it will be better still in six months' time. We believe it should be exactly the same with our people.

That’s why we’re currently supporting members of our North American team to earn their Procure-to-Pay Manager (APPM) certification through the Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM). Designed to help procurement leaders analyze and redesign their processes and manage change, the program reinforces the real-life experience of our team with the concepts and best practices of P2P.

It also provides valuable insight into the environment our clients and future clients work in every day and means our people are better equipped to help them navigate the journey to better procurement within their organizations.

For many within Unimarket, this certification is another step in a career spanning years, or even decades, within the procurement space. A number of Unimarket team members have earned their APPM certification to date and we’re supporting several others as they work to achieve theirs in the coming months.

As a company, we’re always looking for opportunities to improve our service and provide better outcomes for our clients. Our people are fundamental to that service so the ongoing development of our team, combined with the constant improvement of our eProcurement solution, will ensure we can continue to be the best possible eProcurement partner for our clients.