Emptoris enhances supply and contract management solution suite
Demonstrates new release Emptoris 8 at user conference
Susan Avery -- Purchasing, 10/1/2009 10:39:23 AM
Emptoris this week released a new version of its supply and contract management solution suite and is demonstrating its new capabilities at its user conference today in Boston.
In an interview with Purchasing.com, Kevin Potts, vice president of Emptoris, provided insight into the Emptoris 8 release including a new offering called "true potential." "The true potential program helps customers overcome challenges of adopting technology and realize its true potential, which is especially important as the economy begins its recovery," said Potts.
Some of those adoption challenges include a lack of training, a nirvana complex (the company won't use the technology until it works perfectly), change management and a lack of standard processes. The true potential program consists of an assessment workshop conducted onsite by Emptoris followed up by enabler workshops, training and software upgrades. The program is customizable.
Earlier Emptoris gathered a panel of industry experts and customers to determine what companies need to know to prepare for the economic recovery, as well as provide input on the new spend analysis offerings, Potts told Purchasing.com
"The panel told us that the key to success is securing a cash position and continuing to drive down costs to do that, and reduce risks in a very risky environment," he said. The panel also said compliance to contracts negotiated by purchasing is key in the recovery.
The Emptoris 8 supply and contract management solution suite includes more than 250 innovations and enhancements to the company's spend analysis, sourcing and contract management tools. It also added Emptoris supplier risk analysis and Emptoris services procurement tools to the suite.
Emptoris supplier risk analysis enables companies to monitor and reduce risks that can impact a company, its operations and its bottom line including supplier financial, legal, regulatory, performance and outsourcing risks.
The capability also allows supply management professionals to capture and standardize extended supplier master data including audit records, corporate social responsibility qualification files, codes of conduct, and insurance records; and link this information with credit scores, legal status, diversity certifications, and historical performance scorecards to develop a comprehensive view of risks associated with a supplier. The new risk analysis tool includes:
- Extended supplier intelligence offering that integrates global financial, credit, risk and diversity information from trusted third-party business databases to provide deeper insight into supplier information such as financial health. A partnership with Equifax provides external data on more than 45 million supplier companies.
- Enhanced performance monitoring capabilities for performance scores and balanced scorecards that captures key performance indicators (KPIs) for all locations served by a supplier, and overall scorecard roll-up across all KPIs and all lines of business served by the supplier. The supplier KPIs are captured at the plant level and rolled up to an overall performance score.
- Supplier on-boarding capability that allows companies to capture extended information provided by the supplier and standardizes the registration, credentialing and certification processes, providing visibility into critical information which supports corporate goals and objectives. Features include self-service registration, automated notifications prompting suppliers to update information, intelligent surveys, flexible workflow, configurable alerts and automated scoring.
- Supplier performance analytics: Emptoris has enhanced the new tool's visibility into supplier performance. Users may assess supplier performance, related to a particular scorecard, using interactive trend analysis and spider charts which visually depict the supplier's situation.
Emptoris 8 also adds features across the suite that help companies manage other risks. These features consist of:
- Contractor performance history: New features in the Emptoris services procurement tool automate the contractor performance evaluation process and make information accessible to all hiring managers. Insight into contractor performance helps reduce future risks in workforce and contractor selection.
- Multi-party contracting: A new capability in the Emptoris contract management solution supports complex, multi-party contract management allowing companies to manage complex business relationships such as joint-ventures, VARS (value-added resellers), distributors and OEMS (original equipment manufacturers).
Emptoris also announced new capabilities to address business needs for a move from visibility to a level of intelligence that guides users to smarter business decisions. Features include:
- New dashboard intelligence for the Emptoris sourcing and services procurement tools, including realtime drill down capabilities that provide actionable intelligence to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the organization. Unlike static reporting tools, when charts and graphs are clicked on these dashboards, the information shown zooms in and provides further detail on items of interest.
- Online feedback enhancement that accelerates the process in spend analysis and helps reduce cycle time in republishing spend data. With process automation, the spend analysis solution helps deliver improved accuracy in data classification. End user feedback typically drives classification accuracy up further.
- Trend analytics and multi-dimensional reporting features provide deeper, more dynamic analytics and enable more intelligent search and queries.
- Auto-sensitivity analysis allows buyers to set ranges of constraints and the system automatically identifies all available options. Advanced scenario modeling allows users to run large-scale sourcing events on their own instance of the application, which can be useful for transportation, packaging, print and temporary labor.
Emptoris 8 also introduces capabilities to support global deployments and global program management including global approvals control, global workflow management and global invoicing:
- Global approval control capability allows users to configure in the user interface approval controls globally, so companies can design complex approvals for contracts to adjust to workloads, market changes, business changes, new regulations, and other factors.
- Global workflow management: Emptoris 8 also allows companies to configure and monitor workflows globally, so that managers in one region can have visibility and ability to manage staff in other departments as well as other regions.
- Global invoicing for contingent labor and services procurement: New features in the Emptoris services procurement tool provides global invoicing with "out of the box" configuration.
See also: Four tips on spend analysis for small companies
Purchasing's guide to spend analysis
07/16/2009
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