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Ketera Aims to Drive Greater Value from e-Procurement Systems
Supplier enablement solution intended to driver greater supplier participation, end user adoption of e-procurement platforms, increase data quality for supplier, catalog content
Santa Clara, CA — October 17, 2007 — On-demand spend management specialist Ketera has debuted a new supply base management solution aimed at providing both buyer- and supplier-facing tools to help companies drive efficiency and predictability from their investments in new or existing sourcing and procure-to-pay applications.
Ketera said that the new Supplier Connect solution pinpoints key challenges around supplier participation and end user adoption, and addresses data quality issues related to both supplier profile and catalog content.
By providing an enablement process that Ketera said is scalable and repeatable, Supplier Connect is intended to improve supplier on-boarding to help drive electronic procure-to-pay transactions through Ketera or third-party procurement applications. As a result, procurement departments can accelerate the speed at which end-users adapt to new initiatives or sources of supply, and expand spend under management, Ketera said.
e-Procurement's "Achilles' Heel"
Supplier enablement has been described as "the Achilles' Heel" of e-procurement initiatives. Suppliers may resist participating in a buying organization's e-procurement initiative because they may incur costs to get enabled, or they may face dealing with multiple systems to do business with a single buyer.
At the same time, a failure or inability to bring suppliers onboard with an e-procurement application can limit a company's ability to drive spend through the solution as users continue to work with key suppliers outside the framework of the e-procurement software or pursue other avenues of maverick spending.
This, in turn, inhibits a company's visibility and control over supplier processes. Andrew Bartolini, research director at Aberdeen Group, noted that this lack of visibility and control is one of the single largest reasons for project delay or failure in the implementation of a spend management system. "Investing in supplier enablement capabilities is one of the best ways to place more spend under management, increase user adoption and improve the return on your e-procurement investment," the analyst said.
Visibility across the Supplier Lifecycle
With Supplier Connect, Ketera is seeking to provide a bundle of applications to provide operational transparency across the entire supplier lifecycle. This includes support for data validation, supplier rating, supplier diversity and supplier certification management. Supplier Connect can also serve as a delivery platform for value-added services such as content cleansing and hosting, making it a potential conduit for syndicating accurate supplier profile information across a buying organization's enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-procurement and vendor master data management systems.
Ketera said that the new Supplier Connect solution pinpoints key challenges around supplier participation and end user adoption, and addresses data quality issues related to both supplier profile and catalog content.
By providing an enablement process that Ketera said is scalable and repeatable, Supplier Connect is intended to improve supplier on-boarding to help drive electronic procure-to-pay transactions through Ketera or third-party procurement applications. As a result, procurement departments can accelerate the speed at which end-users adapt to new initiatives or sources of supply, and expand spend under management, Ketera said.
e-Procurement's "Achilles' Heel"
Supplier enablement has been described as "the Achilles' Heel" of e-procurement initiatives. Suppliers may resist participating in a buying organization's e-procurement initiative because they may incur costs to get enabled, or they may face dealing with multiple systems to do business with a single buyer.
At the same time, a failure or inability to bring suppliers onboard with an e-procurement application can limit a company's ability to drive spend through the solution as users continue to work with key suppliers outside the framework of the e-procurement software or pursue other avenues of maverick spending.
This, in turn, inhibits a company's visibility and control over supplier processes. Andrew Bartolini, research director at Aberdeen Group, noted that this lack of visibility and control is one of the single largest reasons for project delay or failure in the implementation of a spend management system. "Investing in supplier enablement capabilities is one of the best ways to place more spend under management, increase user adoption and improve the return on your e-procurement investment," the analyst said.
Visibility across the Supplier Lifecycle
With Supplier Connect, Ketera is seeking to provide a bundle of applications to provide operational transparency across the entire supplier lifecycle. This includes support for data validation, supplier rating, supplier diversity and supplier certification management. Supplier Connect can also serve as a delivery platform for value-added services such as content cleansing and hosting, making it a potential conduit for syndicating accurate supplier profile information across a buying organization's enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-procurement and vendor master data management systems.
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