Pittsburgh — March 31, 2003 — e-Sourcing solution provider FreeMarkets today rolled out the latest version of its Spend Visibility Solution, beefing up the application's tools for data collection and analysis.
FreeMarkets said that Spend Visibility 2.0 features improved tools for cleansing, analyzing and viewing data, and that companies can use these tools to better design, execute and measure the effectiveness of spend management strategies as part of their global supply management initiatives.
"Thorough and accurate data collection is critical to gaining insight into, and effectively managing, spend," said Jay Odell, FreeMarkets' director of product management. "FreeMarkets Spend Visibility 2.0 features enhanced tools and language capabilities which companies can use to access more information, analyze it in greater depth and ultimately capitalize on opportunities for savings and efficiencies."
The Aberdeen Group, a leading IT market analysis firm, recently underscored the importance of spend analysis capabilities in a recently published research report titled "The Spending Analysis Benchmark Report." Aberdeen noted that "inadequate spending analysis capabilities are costing businesses $260 billion in missed opportunities annually. In short, spending analysis is a corporate epidemic that is keeping enterprises from controlling costs and maximizing performance."
Version 2.0 of FreeMarkets' spend analysis tool includes upgraded decision-based analytical tools that users can access to monitor contract compliance, track standard cost and purchase price variance, and manage progress towards low-cost country initiatives.
Upgrades to the solution's user interface will allow companies to cleanse data in multiple languages, including English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Users also can customize data displays according to role to obtain a managerial or tactical view of spend, and they can view data in greater detail at the item level to obtain invoice, purchase order, attribute and supplier information.
In addition, version 2.0 allows users to navigate data more easily from summary categories down to specific views and to filter and sort spend data by additional criteria, including organizational unit, commodity, buyer, supplier, business geography, supplier geography and other factors.
FreeMarkets' Spend Visibility Solution, a hosted application, is generally available and in use by the provider's customers today.
