Overview

The Veridion API now offers a powerful new way to find companies providing SaaS, software, and data solutions.
This guide defines what we consider a software provider, explains how we build our Trusted Universe of technology suppliers, and outlines the core methodology behind this classification.

The Challenge

Sourcing software suppliers is not straightforward. Modern companies rarely present themselves in a simple, single-category way, which creates feature and industry overlap.

This manifests in two main ways:

How Vendors Position Themselves

Unclear positioning – marketed as a “platform” rather than a software vendor.
Mixed activities – firms provide both consulting and software under the same brand.
Hybrid offerings – tools span multiple categories (e.g., HR platforms with project management, procurement tools with CLM, marketing platforms with CRM).

How Procurement Teams Experience It

Vendor Discovery for New Needs – exploring solutions in unfamiliar categories.
Cost Optimization – identifying overlapping tools and consolidating features.
Local Vendor Sourcing – finding suppliers in specific regions.
Implementation Support – locating consultants for rollout and optimization.
Compliance Vetting – ensuring certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, etc.).

This complexity makes it nearly impossible to define a clean list of software providers using only keywords or surface-level classifications.

How We Define the Software Supplier Universe

Veridion builds a high-accuracy universe of software suppliers by combining structured signals from millions of companies.

Within this dataset, a Software Supplier is defined as:

SaaS Vendors across industries (e.g., legal, finance, agriculture, education, HR)
Consulting/SaaS Hybrid Companies – Firms that offer both software platforms and professional services (implementation, customization, strategy, etc.)
Cloud Platform & Infrastructure Providers – Offering hosting, data warehousing, IaaS, or PaaS (e.g., AWS, Azure, Snowflake)

Veridion aggregates signals from millions of companies and applying structured, multi-source datapoints to cut through the ambiguity, such as:

Business Classifications – e.g., NAICS codes like 511210 – Software Publishers.
Business Activities – extracted mentions from websites, press releases, and filings.
Software Signals – keywords like “SaaS”, “subscription-based”, “cloud platform”, “analytics”.
Contextual Data – revenue, markets served, industry tags.

Example: Workday, Inc.

Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY) illustrates this process:

Presents itself as “an enterprise cloud application for finance and human resources”.
Widely described across filings and websites with terms like “SaaS”, “subscription-based”, and “cloud platform”.
Combines software delivery with consulting and implementation through partners.

Because these signals align across multiple datapoints, Workday is consistently recognized in Veridion’s Trusted Universe of software providers, ensuring it surfaces in relevant discovery queries.

Why This Matters

By aggregating digital signals and company attributes across multiple sources, Veridion resolves ambiguity and delivers a Trusted Universe of verified software suppliers.

This allows procurement teams to:

Spend less time questioning if a vendor really fits.
Rely on a structured and transparent methodology.
Focus on engaging with the most relevant, qualified suppliers for their needs.