KPMG Consulting and Oracle provide aircraft manufacturer Embraer with e-business solution - Focus on Special Advertising Feature

Latin Trade, May, 2002

KPMG Consulting and Oracle teamed up last year to build and implement AEROChain, a digital marketplace (DMP) that allows Embraer to offer after-sales services to their customers and suppliers online.

"The project team, consisting of Embraer, Oracle and KPMG Consulting staff, managed to develop the eMarketplace--from concept to launch--in an outstanding time of only 90 days," says Michael Judd, managing director, KPMG Consulting. "AEROChain integrates all the capabilities of Oracle Exchange, and provides the airline industry with direct procurement capability that allows companies to research and order parts, check the status of their orders online, as well as collaborate with suppliers on efficient and effective inventory levels."

Embraer is the world's fourth-largest aircraft manufacturer. It is a leading manufacturer of regional 30-to 50-seat commercial airliners and is currently expanding its offerings in the 70- to 100-passenger and corporate jet markets. In addition, Embraer provides transport, light attack, and surveillance aircraft for the Brazilian government and other airforces.

"AEROChain is a great asset to our organization," says Artur Coutinho, Embraer Services vice president. "The procurement solution will tighten the existing relationship with our customers, suppliers, and buyers."

AEROChain offers after-sales services for customers and suppliers including trading, supply chain collaboration, forecasting and advanced planning, technical information (publications), maintenance repair management, technical services, and community capabilities.

Embraer can now sell spare parts, hold auctions, and conduct reverse auctions, resulting in significant savings via the DMP. In addition, the vendor management inventory feature of Oracle's Supply Chain Exchange application gives Embraer the ability to collaboratively manage inventory with its regional aircraft customers. Embraer estimates that the AEROChain DMP will process $1.5 billion in purchasing annually.

The project came about because Embraer strives to provide world-class service provisioning and spare parts distribution. To that end, Embraer started to offer basic online service to customers in mid-2000. While customers were pleased with the new channel, Embraer had neither the infrastructure nor the on-line business capabilities to develop advanced online services to support collaborative supply chain management. Embraer selected KPMG Consulting and Oracle to help design and implement AEROChain, its digital marketplace, to meet the following goals:

* Build and strengthen customer relationships by working seamlessly with customer systems.

* Offer ease of transaction to suppliers.

* Decrease costs for both Embraer and suppliers by automating work processes and integrating suppliers into an extended, collaborative trading community.

* Create new revenue opportunities for Embraer's replacement parts and aftermarket services.

"Customer data quality is one of the first issues companies need to address in order to ensure a successful applications deployment," says Luiz Meisler, regional vice president, Oracle Latin America. "Oracle Customers such as Embraer provide a natural first step in building out global e-business."

Based on KPMG Consulting's extensive aviation industry experience and pioneering DMP work, Embraer asked KPMG Consulting to develop detailed DMP designs and plans, manage the overall project, and perform the integration based on Oracle's technology.

KMPG Consulting helped Embraer refine its strategy and define the functionality needed to create AEROChain. The team set up the project, determined the required functionality of the DMP, designed tracks, and developed the resource planning. Based on Oracle's results in the airline industry around the world, KPMG Consulting partnered with Oracle to implement Oracle Exchange as the foundation for the DMP. In addition, KPMG Consulting and Oracle implemented the core marketplace application architecture, completed the integration of back-end systems with the DMP, and created the infrastructure needed to support AEROChain.

For more information, please visit www.kpmgconsulting.com and www.oracle.com