Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for strategic cost optimization, 2025
CIOs face persistent cost pressures amid economic uncertainty and rising digital demands. This Hype Cycle, new for 2025, identifies technologies that enable strategic cost optimization, balancing efficiency, resilience, and innovation across enterprise operations. Raindrop is proud to be recognized as a Sample Vendor in the 2025 Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for strategic cost optimization
Raindrop Positioned in the following categories:
Technology Spotlight:
Raindrop is recognized as a sample vendor in two areas that are in the “Slope of Enlightenment” phase of The Hype Cycle, defined as “After early challenges, these technologies are gaining clarity and practical use cases. CIOs are learning how to extract real value.”
Operations and savings management solutions help organizations manage, track, and report projects across the procurement organization. This typically focuses on savings initiatives from sourcing and other cost-reduction activities. Chief procurement officers gain comprehensive oversight of all ongoing procurement projects. This strategic visibility allows them to effectively allocate resources and balance workloads, enhancing team productivity. At the same time, such visibility increases financial outlook accuracy while also promoting objective individual job performance metrics. Properly calculated savings and reliable forecasting will vastly increase the credibility and strategic impact of the procurement department.
Source-to-Pay Suites manage a wide breadth of sourcing and procurement processes in a single, vendor-integrated set of modules. These suites address both strategic and operational processes that help organizations manage spend and suppliers. S2P suites offer an integrated platform with a normalized data model, analytics, standardized UI, and best-practice workflows. The potential for end-to-end visibility and traceability from sourcing to payment allows for tighter business controls and policy compliance. Increased cost savings can be realized by using spend analysis and e-sourcing, as procurement professionals spend more time executing insights provided by an S2P tool.
Raindrop is a modern, AI-native Source-to-Pay platform that empowers procurement and finance teams to optimize costs, improve visibility, and drive strategic outcomes. Recognized by Gartner in multiple Hype Cycles, Raindrop helps organizations adapt quickly with speed, clarity, and intelligence.
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We believe Raindrop’s inclusion reflects growing recognition for platforms that deliver AI-powered decision support, intake orchestration, and modern, modular capabilities across the source-to-pay journey.
Raindrop is AI-enabled by design, leveraging the power of AI to deliver real, tangible value — not empty hype. From AI ingestion for AP to GenAI Contract Management, Raindrop is guided by a clear set of founding principles. We prioritize transparency and security, ensuring our AI solutions are actionable, reliable, and built to empower
Gartner Disclaimer:
Gartner, Hype Cycle for Strategic Cost Optimization, 2025, By Lauren Wheatley, Robert Naegle, August 2025.
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This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Raindrop.
