Flexible "start anywhere" solutions to simplify, automate procurement processes
The Woodlands, TX and Cambridge, MA — December 10, 2003 — Pantellos, an electronic marketplace and supply chain services company for the utility industry, today announced it has selected Frictionless Commerce to deliver e-sourcing solutions to the utility industry.
The agreement entails integrating Frictionless Sourcing software with Pantellos' existing supply chain services to create the first set of packaged, enterprise license-based and hosted e-sourcing solutions tailored specifically to the needs of the utility industry.
Pantellos said the new suite of solutions would provide a sourcing platform, a sourcing strategy and industry-specific supply chain services. In addition it will allow supply chain professionals to automate traditional manual processes and paper-based transactions, as well as aggregate and manage all sourcing activities from a single desktop application.
"In order to fulfill our mission of delivering a paperless source-to-pay process to the utility industry, we work in-step with our customers to understand their challenges and, ultimately, deliver solutions that reduce costs and supply chain inefficiencies for improved profitability," said Jim Neikirk, president and CEO of Pantellos. "To that end, we conducted an exhaustive review of technology providers and concluded that Frictionless Commerce has the most comprehensive sourcing platform to meet our customers' needs and demands."
With tailored e-sourcing solutions, Pantellos customers will be offered utility-specific category templates and best-practice processes; a supplier portal to manage all suppliers across multiple solutions from a single control point; Pantellos Services, such as spend analysis and auctions management; and integration into existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and other enterprise applications.
In addition to auction and request-for-services functionality, Pantellos said it would also offer other modules to enable all aspects of the sourcing process, including: Spend Analysis, Workflow, Project Management, Demand Aggregation, Contract Management, Bill of Materials, Vendor Management, Optimization (response analysis) and Reporting.
Existing Pantellos auctions and request-for-services customers will be offered a migration path to the Frictionless platform and, due to the flexible e-sourcing solution, new utility customers can start anywhere in the sourcing process from which to implement an e-sourcing strategy and platform.
According to estimates published by AMR Research in the July 29, 2002, report entitled "E-Sourcing: ROI Tastes Great, Applications Less Filling," the e-sourcing market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent and will reach approximately $1.6 billion by 2006. Of the overall market, the utility industry continues to require tailored products and services, such as e-sourcing solutions, that reduce costs, eliminate supply chain inefficiencies and improve bottom-line profitability.
Jacki Lowe, vice president of Supply Chain Management, Southern Company, said, "We believe this new e-sourcing suite from Pantellos will help us continue to transform our supply chain operations by providing better visibility into our spending, improving our ability to execute negotiated savings and increasing our spend under management."
