E-sourcing from A to Z
Who's who in the industry
By Purchasing Staff -- Purchasing, 9/24/2001 2:00:00 AM
Editors note: The following descriptions were solicited from the software/service providers themselves. | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | |
| B2Emarkets: B2eMarkets software integrates planning, knowledge management, process efficiency and negotiation tools for year-over-year cost savings and performance improvement. The B2eSourcing solution allows buyers to profile a category, research industry sources and suppliers, collaborate with stakeholders, develop and refine a negotiation strategy, negotiate and award contracts, and manage buyer and supplier performance. B2eMarkets software enables all key steps in Category Lifecycle Management, establishes self-service sourcing in a private exchange model and includes managed community and supplier services for trading floor management. Software is available both hosted and/or as a behind-the-firewall application. There is a live marketplace for reverse auctions, private offers, and other forms of online events and eLearning modules for continuous organizational learning and development on strategic eSourcing methodology.
Barlex: Provides customers the bridge to the Internet by taking any and all ERP, MRP, legacy, or financial systems, and enabling them to become “Web Centric.” Barlex promotes private exchanges for e-sourcing because they provide more control and privacy over the data. Barlex offers either a standalone system that provides direct e-procurement technology, or an integrated set of tools that deliver reverse auctions, auctions, advanced listings, RFQs, RFIs, or RFPs. It also includes automated workflow with built in approvals, procurement group creation with approval levels, front-end requisitions, wireless requisitions, built-in catalog engines, built-in search engines, and e-mail notification. Bom.com: bom.com provides a single environment for sharing, managing, organizing and accessing all of a company’s product data including part numbers, part names, manufacturers, suppliers, prices, leadtimes, CAD drawings, Gerber data, document attachments and other product-related data. With bom.com, the bill of materials is a framework for collaboration among internal teams, their design partners and the supply chain throughout the entire development process. Benefits include enhanced design chain collaboration, smooth hand-off from design to manufacturing, early visibility into product costs and instant access to past design data. Specific features include cost tracking and analysis, CAD tool integration, data import and export, document and file management, and management of supplier quote and contact information. Clarus Auctions 3.1: Capabilities of the Clarus Auctions software include auctioning, sourcing, collaboration, wireless activities and direct procurement into their e-commerce platform. Clarus Auctions automates the manual and labor-intensive practice, allowing for the uploading of pictures and documents, assuring that the exact specifications or parameters are met. The two-way collaboration enables trading partners to request information, ask questions, and negotiate the deal electronically. The Score Card scores bidder responses and selects the winner, or the auction owner can select. Buy-side and supply-side organizations can find new trading partners and leverage existing ones and reduce the time to search, source and procure goods and services. Trading partners can improve the quality, type, and price of items purchased, and the supplier can highlight product attributes instead of only price. Clarus Auctions can also be used as a tool for liquidating obsolete and excess inventory or undesirable merchandise. CommerceOne: Commerce One Auction Services product provides control over business rules, user notifications, win parameters, price, payment terms, sales volume, as well as access privileges and outcomes. Auction Services offers a customizable, fully hosted, Web-based auction application with an easy reporting function. A data import/export tool eliminates double entry of inventory and purchase/sales information from an existing catalog, database, and purchasing systems. Auction originators can set up items for auction, define win parameters, and customize the rules to meet the organization’s specific needs. Bidders use a browser-based user interface, which includes multi-variable bidding, multi-level bidding, quick-bidding, and proxy bidding for a dynamic bidding environment. This solution is available as a part of Commerce One’s Global Trading Web or it can be deployed as a privately branded, stand-alone solution. eBreviate: eBreviate offers a suite of eSourcing technologies including online negotiations, asset liquidation, electronic RFPs/RFQs, and various sourcing management technologies and eSourcing services. eBreviate also offers Internet asset liquidation or excess inventory upward auctions in invitation-only format. Internet enabled electronic surveys include RFPs, RFQs, RFIs, usage surveys and supplier profile surveys. Sourcing management technologies available include a spend management technology to understand, aggregate and leverage global spend, and track leakage across the entire organization; a contract communication tool for communicating negotiated deals throughout the company; and sourcing team tools that warehouse strategic sourcing methodologies. The Internet Negotiation tool includes total cost downward auctions, recurring auctions, price-only auctions, and multi-parameter, multi-lingual and multi-currency auctions. Value-added eSourcing services include a supplier search engine, eSourcing management to deliver strategic sourcing guidance, quality control, and expertise. Emptoris: Emptoris’ ePASS is a collaborative strategic sourcing platform that supports spend analysis, supplier strategy, sourcing event management, negotiation, supply base allocation, contract management and supplier performance monitoring of multi-tier buyer/supplier networks. Using ePASS’ collaborative sourcing capabilities, primary suppliers can interact with other suppliers to quickly respond to the buyers’ overall demand. Through ePASS’ optimization-based decision support technology, buyers can quickly analyze all purchasing scenarios through scientific algorithms to come to the optimal supply base allocation. ePASS combines advanced collaboration, sourcing event management and decision support capabilities to streamline the strategic sourcing process, determine the optimal supply base allocation, and forge tighter buyer/supplier networks. This allows buyers to lower the total cost of ownership while enabling suppliers to differentiate themselves through product criteria, historical performance and flexible pricing structures. FreeMarkets: FreeMarkets offers its ESourcing Suite, which combines technology, market information and services to help buyers more effectively source goods and services online. The suite includes FreeMarkets’ FullSource solution, which allows buyers to leverage FreeMarkets experience and expertise to create online markets; and the FreeMarkets QuickSource solution, an ASP-based application to let buyers create online markets. The tools let buyers reduce costs and improve quality while maintaining productive supplier relationships, identify qualified global suppliers to increase market competition and standardize item data and supplier information. Frictionless: Frictionless Sourcing is designed to automate the entire strategic sourcing process from expenditure analysis to supplier selection through supplier management. Frictionless’ Sourcing software includes seven modules. The Sourcing Workbench delivers a fully customized set of sourcing tools and purchasing information. Frictionless Sourcing Project Management’s capabilities allow collaboration, task management, knowledge sharing and knowledge capture to be built into each sourcing project. Frictionless Analytics enable project, category and organizational analysis for improved benchmarking and increased visibility into expenditures, processes and suppliers. Frictionless’ eRFP/eRFQs feature both sophisticated total-cost based and best-value based scoring calculations for more effective and efficient supplier negotiations. The Auctions module is a complete portfolio of desktop auction formats and features while Frictionless Contracts is a system for centralizing and sharing supplier contract information to more effectively manage the supply base. Frictionless Vendor Management enables organizations to monitor supplier performance and better develop their supply base. GSX: Provides an online marketplace for steel buyers and sellers to directly negotiate for over 50 products online. GSX is also the only online exchange that provides an integrated platform for service providers to find new business. Buyers and sellers can explore service provider options while they negotiate for products. Founded by four leading steel trading companies, with investments by 12 large producers throughout the world, GSX brings the international steel industry USD 2.5 billion each year in committed transaction volume. For buyers and sellers, that means new markets of suppliers and customers, faster transactions, new efficiencies and lower costs. On September 17, 2001, GSX traded its millionth metric ton of steel when an Indonesian rolling mill purchased 5,000 tons of billet from a Russian producer. GSX Members can find 800,000 to 1.1 million tons of steel products available at any time. Healy Hudson: Healy Hudson’s Impact Sourcing offers qualitative demand definition and supplier evaluation capabilities to let purchasing departments collaborate online to specify and weight demand according to a wide range of factors beyond price including delivery time, quality, and customer service. Following a disciplined Internet-based RFQ process, standardized supplier quotes are ranked automatically according to these quality and price metrics, enabling users to objectively identify the suppliers that provide the best overall value, not just the lowest price, for goods and services. Healy Hudson’s sourcing and ordering applications create comprehensive supplier and spend knowledge used in buy-side processes including collaborative product design and sourcing, supply chain mapping and multi-tier supplier management. i2: i2’s Strategic Sourcing software helps determine the optimal sourcing strategy for each commodity and to reduce both supply risks and costs with sustainable results. i2 Strategic Sourcing Key Solution Capabilities include commodity management, supplier management, bid optimization, contract analysis, and outsourced risk management. The Commodity Management tool provides global spend aggregation, future demand analysis, manufacturer spend analysis, A/P spend analysis, cost savings measurement, and purchase price variance analysis. Supplier Management offerings provide supplier allocation analysis, supplier performance scorecard, supplier risk analysis, and new/alternate supplier search. Bid Optimization Source offers multi-attribute decision optimization based on the bid responses. Contract Analysis provides the ability to monitor and analyze historical and projected spend against contractual commitments across disparate ERP systems or multiple instances of the same ERP system. Outsourced Risk Management aggregates the spend and projected demand of outsourced bills of materials, matches component/supplier criticality, supplier performance, and alternate supply options providing visibility for proactive risk mitigation strategies. MaterialNet: MaterialNet’s Custom Procurement Management System (CPMS) is an ASP-based strategic e-sourcing solution that streamlines key parts of the sourcing process to create significant material and process savings, better procurement methodologies and institutionalizes best practices. CPMS features five functional components: Custom Auction Toolkit, eRFI, Order Management and Award Notification, Document Management, and Analytics. Menerva: Menerva’s MarketProcess suite of Web-based applications lets buyers in supply chain and procurement organizations quickly author, publish, and manage complex RFPs online, post them to their secure Web sites and invite suppliers to review and respond to the RFPs. Suppliers respond to the terms contained in the RFP, inviting buyers to counter their responses. Once the terms are agreed upon, the buyer can export the final business terms into contracts and purchase orders. Finally, buyers are able to easily review the original contract terms and, through integration with back-end ERP systems, compare supplier performance against original contract terms to make supplier adjustments as new sourcing cycles begin. Moai: Moai’s CompleteSource e-sourcing solution is designed to emulate established best practices for strategic sourcing on the Web, bringing buyers and suppliers together in structured interaction. The CompleteSource Enterprise software solution includes an automated eRFQ/eRFP wizard and allows multi-line parameters and document management to associate file attachments, such as specification sheets or diagrams, with individual line items, and approval workflow. The software also includes a scalable negotiation and reverse auction engine that includes multi-parameter, multi-stage bidding, weighted scoring, document management, and reporting for e-sourcing analysis. Moai offers CompleteSource as licensed enterprise software, as hosted software, or through its QuickStart Pilot Program, a low-risk approach to e-sourcing with an assured ROI. Moai also offers e-sourcing consulting services including spend analysis, supplier qualification, supply-chain integration, and sourcing analytics, both through its Professional Services Group and through strategic partnerships. NexPrise: NexPrise enables manufacturers, suppliers, customers, and partners to securely collaborate on procurement and strategic sourcing, collaborative product development, and program management and execution in a global virtual workspace. NexPrise’s Complex Procurement and Strategic Sourcing application manages the procurement and sourcing of design-to-spec or build-to-spec direct materials. NexPrise ipTeam’s easy-to-use wizard guides users through the complex procurement and strategic sourcing process, cutting the procurement cycle time, while ensuring users take all the necessary steps. It features a supplier database to let buyers and suppliers manage all supplier and sub-supplier related data. There is also an RFQ/RFP/Bid/PO package creation wizard for step-by-step assembly of complex packages. OpenRatings: OpenRatings’ Buyer Insight Enterprise is a predictive supplier performance management solution for the Global 3000. The product helps customers forecast future supplier performance and increase efficiencies across supply chains, and reduce total cost of ownership. The solution contains predictive performance ratings on more than 15 million suppliers in North America. Oracle: Oracle offers sourcing solutions for both direct and indirect materials. The entire design-to-source process for engineered items can be fully automated starting with Oracle Product Development Exchange, which allows design partners to collaborate online. Design specifications can then be published as a reverse auction, RFQ, or offer to buy on Oracle Exchange Marketplace, and supplier responses captured online for award decisions. For raw materials, buyers can directly publish demand to pre-qualified suppliers. Award decisions result in contracts that can be tracked on an ongoing basis. For commonly purchased indirect goods and services, Oracle offers its Procure-to-Pay, which includes pre-negotiated supplier contracts from Oracle’s sourcing partner, WorldCrest. Oracle Purchasing Intelligence gives buyers spend analysis that helps identify new savings opportunities as well as monitor supplier performance. Ozro: Ozro’s integrated suite of applications, Ozro Agreements, is built upon a core negotiation engine, Ozro Negotiate, and includes four applications. Ozro Agreement for Procurement enables enterprise procurement organizations to negotiate and manage their supplier relationships (agreements) online. Ozro Agreement for Sales enables enterprise sales organizations to centrally manage their RFx processes, negotiate and manage their customer and partner relationships online, track active deals, and more accurately forecast revenues. Ozro Agreement for Trade Settlement links the physical supply chain with the financial supply chain by enabling online trade services processing, reconciliation and financial settlement. The Ozro Reports reporting solution allows authorized users to aggregate, view and report agreement information across their enterprise. PeopleSoft: PeopleSoft’s Purchasing software is the baseline for e-procurement customers and can be used to automate sourcing of requisitions and purchase orders online. The PeopleSoft E-Procurement module reduces procurement costs with spending controls and best-price information and improves supplier relationships by reducing returns and customer support costs. Users can also create sophisticated workflow rules and integrate purchasing card technology as well as consolidate procurement data from multiple purchasing systems into one database for more convenient review. The Supply Chain Insight application allows purchasing professionals to analyze both internal performance metrics and supplier performance metrics from a common browser and lets customers expose those performance metrics to their suppliers directly via the supplier portal. Perfect Sourcing: The Perfect Sourcing Product Suite is comprised of Perfect Buyer and Perfect Supplier and is available as either a Perfect-hosted service or as an enterprise application license. Perfect Sourcing allows buyers to conduct complex requirement specification, negotiation and selection processes through a Web-based extended enterprise workflow and decision support system. The Perfect Decision Engine provides buyer-side decision support by evaluating and scoring supplier offers and counter offers. Perfect Insight, a companion product to Perfect Sourcing, provides strategic sourcing analytics that allow senior management to reduce sourcing cycle time and direct materials costs. Perfect Process Designer allows non-technical personnel to configure Perfect Sourcing with the particulars of their sourcing process to shorten implementation time, minimize risk, and keep the e-sourcing system up to date. PROCURI: Procuri’s Internet-based tools include an interactive RFI tool, an automated RFQ process, and a feature-rich dynamic pricing platform. With the automated RFI tool, buyers and suppliers exchange information and coordinate product specifications in real-time. The RFI tool also allows buyers to create an online document library that integrates with RFQs. Procuri simplifies the process of creating the RFQ by prompting the buyer to submit information, including the type of material or goods sought and auction parameters. The pricing platform features Procuri’s hierarchical bid structure, which can run complex bundled auctions with multi-tiered sub-items. The latest version of Procuri2 also includes access control, an online discussion group capability, and a comprehensive shipping quote function. PurchasePro: PurchasePro’s e-Source solution hosts auctions for direct and indirect products featuring multiple bidding formats, reverse auction tools, closed bidding, sealed bids and absentee bidding. With e-Source, buyers can establish subjective, hidden weights on customized bid criteria for each participating supplier. Complex mathematical transformation bidding allows buyers to customize equations that transform bid-intensive supplier information into an adjusted evaluation price. You can address calculations such as supplier value matrices, net present value, quantity discount analysis, dollar cost averaging, currency conversion and algorithmic processing. Tradeffect: Tradeffect’s IMPACT solution is designed to improve the collaboration among purchasing, design engineering, and manufacturing, and external parties such as contract manufacturers and suppliers. At the core of the IMPACT system is a sophisticated commodity and supplier management system, which stores critical information about suppliers, commodities, sourcing strategies, and company policies in a secure, central knowledge base. A powerful rules engine uses this knowledge to recommend the best suppliers and commodities, ensure that the right people are involved in a sourcing process, suggest the best sourcing strategies, and help evaluate quotations from suppliers. The IMPACT software suite supports RFQ creation, project management, workflow control, supplier quotation creation, and quotation evaluation. The suite also supports all common sourcing events such as RFQs, multi-round RFQs, and reverse auctions. Webango: Webango’s enterprise sourcing applications are brought together with all sourcing information in the Webango system by the Webango Sourcing Information Manager (SIM), a dashboard for the access, collaboration, management, and analysis of enterprise and personal projects, documents, and sourcing activities. Source Select is Webango’s supplier selection platform. It integrates an RFx framework, a reverse auction, and a closed negotiation process, and can reflect the buyer’s total cost model. The Webango Contracting Application is a platform for contract generation, negotiation and approval, contract events management, compliance, and exposure analysis. Zeborg: Zeborg provides integrated software that gives permanent savings in high-impact indirect spending areas. Its software suite includes Zeborg ExpenseMap, Zeborg Advanced Sourcing and Zeborg MarketPort, which can be used independently by customers or along with Zeborg’s supporting services. ExpenseMap is analytic software that offers a means to profile corporate-wide indirect spending and uncover significant savings opportunities. By cleansing, aggregating and categorizing all corporate-wide spend data from disparate systems, Zeborg ExpenseMap makes savings opportunities more transparent and enables broader and faster access to actionable analyses. Zeborg Advanced Sourcing combines technology, industry insight and analytics to automate conventional strategic sourcing processes. Tools include eRFPs and bid analyses, which let customers quickly achieve savings and negotiate best-in-class contracts with quality suppliers in more than 50 indirect spending areas. |
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