Filton, Bristol, United Kingdom — May 14, 2003 — British manufacturer BAE SYSTEMS has deployed an e-sourcing solution from aerospace industry e-marketplace Exostar to electronically connect its buying community with thousands of the company's suppliers.
BAE recently enabled access to Exostar's SourcePass eRFQ (electronic request for quote) solution for all its buyers, as well as other BAE SYSTEMS participants in the sourcing process, including engineers, contract managers and others representing several thousand potential end users.
Exostar said that SourcePass, the e-marketplace's platform for electronic sourcing, enables buying organizations to create, distribute and analyze sourcing related data in the form of requests for quote, information or proposal, or reverse auctions. SourcePass also provides access to a community of over 14,000 aerospace and defense suppliers via the integrated Trading Partner Directory feature.
Using this solution, BAE's users will be able to invite any of the 14,000 suppliers with a current Exostar membership to respond to RFQs or to participate in procurement auctions.
The SourcePass deployment applies to 13 BAE business groups and 1,400 buyers across more than 90 locations in the United Kingdom and North America. Together the company raises about 100,000 RFQs and spends approximately 6 billion pounds ($9.7 billion) with 18,000 suppliers annually.
"During the first quarter 2003, BAE SYSTEMS' suppliers on Exostar have already received hundreds of electronic requests for quotes worth more than 4 million pounds ($6.5 million)," said Russ Armitage, BAE SYSTEMS director of strategic supply management.
BAE SYSTEMS is already a major customer of Exostar's SourcePass eAuction service, having conducted over 350 reverse auctions over the last two years. BAE SYSTEMS is also evaluating additional SourcePass services, including eRFI (electronic request for information), award optimization and integration to their back-office systems for more efficient sourcing data management.
Armitage said that with the latest enterprisewide deployment of the SourcePass solution, BAE SYSTEMS' use of Exostar's SourcePass and the Trading Partner Directory is expected to increase significantly. "Our commitment to use Exostar to conduct our sourcing and trading activities over the Internet continues to grow and underlines the value we place in Exostar as our supply chain enablement solution provider," Armitage said.
Exostar's founding partners are BAE SYSTEMS, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Rolls-Royce.
