Atlanta August 15, 2002 Covendis Technologies, a provider of services e-procurement software, this week rolled out two new solutions it said can help companies automate the entire purchase-to-pay process for services procurement.
Research from the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS) shows that 54 percent of all corporate purchases are for services, and a variety of solution providers have come forward in recent years to offer applications for managing this significant and, to date, largely uncontrolled area of spend.
Covendis said its new RFX application allows companies to manage event-driven services, such as those typically linked to marketing, design, consulting or offshore development that may follow a fixed-price, phase or milestone payment format.
The new CRX application allows companies to manage contingency or retained services, such as those typically associated with full-time recruitment or legal services, according to the solution provider.
Covendis also has upgraded its existing SMI and SMX, which allow companies to manage individual and group time and materials-based services, typically associated with contractors, temporary staff and shift work.
The intent of Covendis' applications suite is to automate the sourcing, requisitioning, tracking, paying and reporting for services purchased across the enterprise, from both domestic and international suppliers. The software can be deployed across human capital management, supply chain, shared services, financial and business unit functions throughout the enterprise.
"Companies spend more than half of their purchasing dollars on services, and yet it remains the largest uncontrolled expense category," said Covendis founder and CEO Raymond Tsao. "And while contingent workforce procurement is a large, complex problem, it is just a piece of a much larger puzzle. Our latest suite of applications represents a major step forward in a company's ability to view and control services procurement activities across a wide range of services and geographies from a single interface."
Tsao added that the solution provider had scheduled a follow-on product release in October.
For more information on professional services procurement solutions, see the article, "It's All About People," the Net Best Thing column in the January 2002 issue of iSource Business http://www.isourceonline.com/article.asp?article_id=2331.
