Denver — April 24, 2003 — Services e-procurement specialist IQNavigator this week rolled out the latest version of its flagship suite, adding new project procurement, business analytics and configurable business process capabilities to its solution.
The provider said that IQNavigator5.1 could increase cost savings and process efficiency for outsourced projects thanks to improvements in the IQProjects module, which automates procurement and spend management of outsourced projects over a project's lifecycle.
Using the solution, companies can create, approve and distribute project requisitions to appropriate suppliers for bids, which are then evaluated and the best-fit vendor selected based on the customer's cost, time and risk factors.
IQIntelligence's business analytics has also been bolstered with additional performance metric and spend analysis reports, according to the provider.
"Now all types of services spend can be sourced and managed with IQNavigator5.1, including control and risk management for outsourced projects, such as offshore development and ongoing maintenance projects," said Marcy Weliver, executive vice president of operations for IQNavigator.
Christa Degnan, research director at technology consultancy Aberdeen Group, noted that Aberdeen research has shown that contract labor optimization has been the low-hanging fruit for services spend management savings to date, but that companies next are looking to address complex service projects for more savings and thus need better sourcing and more flexible payment functionality to support these engagements moving forward.
"By addressing broader services spend categories, IQNavigator is furthering the market momentum of online services procurement, and its hosted delivery model can help customers realize better spending control within a few months and with very little hard dollar investment," Degnan suggested.
In other product areas, IQNavigator said that IQContingent Workforce's scheduling capabilities were improved to allow configurable shifts with availability-based matching for open requisitions to augment the provider's skill-based matching capabilities.
In addition, IQFoundation's integration capabilities were upgraded with tighter integrations with e-procurement approval systems, single sign-on capabilities and additional cost allocation flexibility for financial system integrations.
The new features are available immediately to customers of IQNavigator's Web-based solution.
For a look at how Shell Oil is using IQNavigator's solution for service e-procurement, see the April 2, 2003, iSourceonline article "Greasing the Contingent Labor Procurement Process."
