Blyth Takes on Spend Management

Candle and fragrance company seeks visibility within sourcing group with tools from Procuri, SAS

Candle and fragrance company seeks visibility within sourcing group with tools from Procuri, SAS

Cary, NC — December 15, 2004 — Candle and fragrance company Blyth Inc. has tapped solution providers Procuri and SAS to provide a new spend management system with the goal of gaining critical visibility into trends within the company's global sourcing group.

Based in Greenwich, Conn., Blyth designs, manufactures and distributes a line of candles and home fragrance products, as well as a range of home decor and decorative seasonal products. The company racked up sales of $1.5 billion in its most recent fiscal year.

Blyth's system will be created using Procuri's TotalSource Suite along with Supplier Relationship Management 3.0 from SAS. Blyth anticipates rolling out the new system to the global sourcing groups as well as some finance resources in early 2005.

Procuri's strategic sourcing solution will provide the ability to conduct RFx's (such as request for information, request for quotes) as well as reverse auctions. SAS said its Supplier Relationship Management 3.0 will deliver insight into Blyth's supply chain and procurement spending.

"We understand the real value comes for Blyth from actually acting on the knowledge you gain from having better insight into spend information," said Linda Peyton, Blyth's senior manager for procurement technology. "To increase efficiency and reduce costs, Blyth needed to streamline and standardize its sourcing processes. SAS and Procuri allow us to do that as well as leverage our own internal information to identify savings opportunities and achieve measurable results.

Peyton said that Blyth had outgrown its previous spend analysis tool and that the company elected to work with Procuri and SAS to receive a better solution and greater customer support. "We've been with Procuri for more than a year, and we felt we should take advantage of their partnership with SAS," Peyton said.

According to Jeff Wilson, Procuri vice president of strategic alliances and business development, Blyth will be able to leverage supplier relationships, optimize spend, aggregate and report on operational data and make smarter business decisions across the supply chain and other areas of the organization because of its relationship with SAS and Procuri.

Added Brian O'Rourke, SAS global strategist for SRM, "The SRM 3.0 solution complements Procuri's sourcing solution by addressing supplier data cleansing and commodity classification issues, as well as reporting and analyzing purchases of direct and indirect materials and services."

For more information on best practices for spend analysis, see the following SDCExec.com articles:



For more information on the current state of the sourcing market, see the article "The Analyst Corner: Sourcing" in the June/July 2004 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
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