It's the final episode of our second series. So to finish up, we're going to be doing something a little bit different.

This week we're bringing you 10 new startups for the price of one!
10 cool early stage European startups from Procurement Summit
I recently attended Procurement Summit in Hamburg. It's a fun, pleasingly non-corporate showcase for new companies in the digital procurement space. Where else would you find a Mario Kart competition at a procurement conference?

I saw loads of exciting new ideas there, and I'd like to share ten of the best new startups that caught my eye during the conference's pitch event.
1. Flowciety
Flowciety won the startup pitch event this year, and with good reason.

They're a Berlin-based startup, all about data exchange and process automation, across both internal departments and external third parties.

This automation enables you to have a fully auditable trail, avoiding PDFs and emails in favour of realtime tracking. It also enables you to manage supply chain and inventory across, for example, a subcontracted part of an external process.

Link to Flowciety website
2. Shouldcosting
This Swiss-based startup aims to make companies more competitive by using their internal data more effectively. This is a really smart calculation tool that takes things from the bottom up.

It's a data driven engine that estimates product prices based on CAD drawings, specifications and materials. It estimates the cost of raw materials and of cost changes per part, based on engineering changes during the new product development process, or on commodity price movements in our increasingly volatile world.

It also calculates labour costs and provides advanced analytics and material grouping.

Link to Shouldcosting website
3. Hivebuy
Hivebuy is a source to contract solution, strongly focused on process optimisation for small to medium sized businesses.

The solution supports companies in budgeting, requesting and ordering services for their business. It also establishes better purchasing conditions for your business, through pooling of pricing on popular catalogues.

Obviously this is quite market-dependant, and the company has a strong focus on Germany at the moment, but I'm told that they are looking to expand this scope.

The software relies an intuitively designed approval process that link departments with a simple communication flow and approvals process.

Control features offer a transparent dashboard for budget management per department. Hivebuy also offers supplier catalogues both externally and internally, along with contract management and repository as part of their more top end plans.

It's a unique spin in a crowded niche, which I find very interesting.

Link to Hivebuy website
4. TrueLedger
This startup from Zurich is a professional services platform focused on external workforce. According to their presentation, 30% of human capital is now external contractors, and this represents 42% of a company's spend on people, on average.

As opposed to other external workforce platforms that focus on audit and legal compliance, these guys are very much focused on smart contracting as a way to reduce costs.

TrueLedger offers many forms of control here: Time and materials contracts, cost ceilings, standard contracts, and risk sharing, across both blue collar and white collar. All of which flows through to automatic invoicing and ERP integration.

Link to TrueLedger website
5. Lhotse Analyitcs
Lhotse are very much focused on industrial manufacturing companies, from the midmarket to enterprise. Because these are often low margin industries, it's crucial to have better data that creates measurable value.

They...