My name is Neeharika Damera and I am the Senior Product Manager at Stimulus. I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself and my role at the company. I have 12+ years of experience guiding teams to deliver innovative technology products from conception to launch across different industries and organizations of different sizes. I have an Engineering degree and an MBA.

I joined Stimulus at the onset of the pandemic last year. At Stimulus, I am responsible for product strategy, engineering management, and customer success for the Stimulus Relationship Intelligence Product (SRIP). I serve as a bridge between the core functions within the organization and ensuring that we build a product that is useful, efficient, and intuitive. In the last year, I oversaw the launch of our SaaS platform and most recently version 2 of the product.

The team is excited to be part of the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 campaign and contribute towards causes like gender equality and building an inclusive economy. It is specifically important now, as women have lost 5.3 million jobs during the pandemic resulting in women’s workforce participation hitting a 33-year low.

What excited me about Stimulus?

I decided to be part of Stimulus because it is woman-led and addressing the supply chain industry — an industry that traditionally does not have a lot of women leaders. In my initial conversations with Founder/CEO Tiffanie Stanard and the rest of the team, I realized this is a strong and skilled team and this role would help with my product leadership trajectory. One year later, I am happy with my decision. The last year has far exceeded my expectations. We were able to not only launch the product, onboard customers but have great partnerships with tech brands like Microsoft and Google — which is significant for a company of our size (small but mighty).

What are we building?

The goal for the Stimulus Relationship Intelligence Platform (SRIP) is to revolutionize relationship building between buyers and suppliers/vendors in the supply chain industry. While there are a lot of products that help with procurement, supply chain management, billing, resource planning, etc. there has been a big gap in the relationship intelligence space. By relationship intelligence, we mean all the processes that need to take place to search -> evaluate ->select ->manage suppliers/vendors. Based on market research, we identified that the suppliers are using spreadsheets, email, and other manual processes to track relationships.

SRIP provides detailed profiles of all internal/external suppliers in one place, allowing users to create projects with varied selection criteria; easily discover qualified suppliers (including suppliers out of their current network); automate the evaluation process within the platform, and manage the communication and ongoing dialogue with the vendors. We help companies save money, time, and effort to improve productivity while enabling data-driven decision-making.

Who does the product help?

SRIP is designed for businesses of all sizes and across industries that utilize vendors for business growth. For small companies without a standardized purchasing process, Stimulus is your standalone solution. For medium-large companies with multiple processes and systems, Stimulus is part of your larger integrated supply chain ecosystem to streamline Supplier Search, Evaluation, Selection, and Management. Also, Stimulus is well-positioned to help companies achieve their business and impact goals with the right data. By digitizing manual processes and providing visibility into all relevant data — We can track, measure and manage initiatives focused on sustainable procurement, racial equity, and supplier diversity.

Why Microsoft Azure?

Stimulus is a Microsoft Cloud Partner — and that relationship has played a big role in accelerating our product development. SRIP is built on Microsoft Azure and we utilized a lot of built-in functionality. We were able to leverage the suite of available Microsoft products and services including authentication, security, database management, etc. This helped our team design an architecture that is secure and scalable as we grow the product. In addition to the technology resources, we completed the Women in Cloud (WiC) Microsoft Accelerator which helped us with our Go-to-Market strategy, business model direction, and launching on two separate marketplaces for co-selling and co-marketing opportunities.

At Stimulus, we are constantly innovating. Look forward to sharing more about the campaign and the product in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned for more updates.

Please check out the Stimulus listing on the Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource.

If you’re interested in partnering with us or learning more, request a demo today.