Procuri Survey: Improving Spend Visibility and Compliance, as Supply Risk Intensifies, Top Supply Management Initiatives for 2007

Business Wire, Oct 16, 2006

Procuri Empower 2006 Conference Attendees Define Best-Practices

ATLANTA -- A new survey finds that managing compliance and exposure to risk are rising in importance for supply management executives, even while reducing supply costs remains the perennial top priority.

Based on the response of nearly 300 supply management executives surveyed at Procuri Empower 2006, one of the industry's leading forums for best-practices exchange and networking, the study also reveals that securing executive support for supply and contract management initiatives is among their top challenges.

Supply Execs Focus on Spend Visibility and Compliance

As supply chains become increasingly global - and influential to overall operational success -- Empower attendees cite "improving visibility into timely and accurate spend data" and "adopting technologies and policy changes to ensure compliance" as the top strategies they plan to implement within the next two years.

These survey findings are echoed by industry research, that shows that automated spend data cleansing and analysis helps enterprises identify hidden savings, better leverage corporate spend, and roll out informed sourcing strategies. Spend visibility is also a critical cog in companies' ability to ensure regulation compliance. Industry research also reveals that contract lifecycle management solutions can streamline contracting cycles, reduce contractual risks, and dramatically improve compliance.

Rounding out the top-five strategies that supply management executives plan to employ are:

* Adopt technologies to strategic sourcing performance

* Adopt technologies to improve supplier performance management

* Transition to a centralized or center-led contract management organizational structure

On Demand is the Preferred Software Deployment Method

The majority of survey participants report that accessing supply management solutions in an On Demand or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) mode provides faster time-to-deployment, lower up-front costs, and lower total lifecycle costs than installed software. Other SaaS benefits noted by respondents include more frequent functional upgrades, better support services, and lower risks.

"The Annual Empower Conference is a truly unique forum for supply management and business executives to address today's most pressing strategy and technology issues," said Tim Minahan, senior vice president of marketing for Procuri. "In addition to offering thought-leading keynotes, practitioner-led best-practice sessions, and hands-on best-practice workshops, the event is where leading enterprises define the top initiatives that constitute supply excellence for the coming year."

Procuri Announces Acquisitions, Partnerships, and New Solutions

From the conference, Procuri made several noteworthy announcements:

* Acquisition of TrueSource - to add advanced spend analysis and spend management capabilities to Procuri's market-leading supply management suite. TrueSource solutions are currently used by some of the world's largest organizations, including Alliant Techsystems, the State of Minnesota, and a Global 100 Healthcare Company.

* Partnership with SEEBURGER - to provide a unique Integration-as-a-Service offering that simplifies, streamlines, and lowers cost of integration with pre-defined adapters between Procuri's solutions and all leading ERP and business applications. The fully hosted, Web-based service facilitates real-time data integration to optimize contract management, supplier performance management, spend analysis and other supply management functions.

* Availability of Procuri TotalView - for a new dynamic, Web-based dashboard and portal that provides role-based views into all supply information, performance data, projects, and tasks.

* On Demand Supplier Compliance Service - gives customers an automated On Demand service to quickly and continuously ensure that new and existing suppliers and other partners are not debarred from doing business by the U.S. Government under the Patriot Act or the Sarbanes Oxley Act.

* Winners of Supply Management Excellence Award - include Sun Microsystems, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, Inc., Bank of America and The Boots Company Plc. Winners are recognized for demonstrating best-practices and achieving measurable results in strategic sourcing, contract management, supplier management, and overall supply management performance.

* SciQuest Partnership - provides a complete On Demand Procure-to-Pay platform with supplier network and enablement services. The partnership enables Procuri customers to extend their supply management initiatives to incorporate operational procurement processes. Likewise, SciQuest customers will have the opportunity to augment their Procure-to-Pay programs with broad spending analysis, strategic sourcing, contract management, and supplier performance management capabilities - all available On Demand.

Positive Reviews of Procuri and Empower 2006

Nearly 100 percent of Empower 2006 attendees rated the conference "very good to excellent" for both content and networking. In addition, leading industry analysts gave the event high marks: