Pleasanton, CA May 29, 2002 e-Business software provider PeopleSoft is having a pretty good week so far.
First, the company launched a solution for electronic invoice presentation and payment, followed by the announcement that PeopleSoft is teaming with fellow software provider Vigilance to offer a supply chain event management solution intended to give customers extended visibility and expanded control over the supply chain.
And then, to top it off, business journal Fortune named PeopleSoft to its e-50 Index of leading Internet-economy companies.
Can sainthood be far behind for the Pleasanton, Calif.-based software company, which recently reported revenue of $483 million for the quarter ended March 31?
PeopleSoft said its eSettlements solution optimizes the source-to-settle process by providing a common platform for buyers and sellers to exchange and match transactions, such as purchase orders, receipts and invoices.
"Typical billion-dollar companies today spend approximately $27 million each year unnecessarily on inefficient processing because they lack visibility into their financial supply chain and receivables," said Michael Killen, founder and chairman of Killen & Associates, a research firm focused on electronic settlements and the financial supply chain. "PeopleSoft has embarked on a mission to enable [chief financial officers] and treasurers of global corporations to significantly reduce that cost quickly."
For many companies, the settlements process is primarily manual, paper driven and essentially one way, which can result in expensive, inefficient and error prone business processes. PeopleSoft said that with eSettlements companies could receive invoices electronically, send alerts and notifications, and resolve disputes online.
In addition, buyers are able to extend their procurement and payment rules, such as matching and payment selection criteria. Sellers have to opportunity to improve customer relationships and reduce days-sales outstanding through online tracking and resolution of payment issues. The result, PeopleSoft asserts, is lower costs, shorter cycle times, fewer errors and higher productivity.
Meanwhile, through its new alliance with Vigilance, PeopleSoft will offer a supply chain event management (SCEM) solution that it says will enable companies to immediately alert employees and suppliers to unexpected events and to take corrective action throughout the supply chain.
The new solution combines cross-enterprise event detection, closed-loop analytics, role-based portals and collaborative business rules to enable companies to identify and prioritize emerging issues, alert escalation paths and facilitate immediate corrective action, the solution provider says. For example, procurement managers can be alerted immediately to an unexpected production stoppage with a key supplier and apply real-time analytics and alternative business rules to rapidly deploy a new sourcing strategy. As a result, companies can minimize costs and short-term disruption.
PeopleSoft said it believes its supply chain management (SCM) solution, combined with Vigilance's SCEM offering, gives companies the opportunity to capture time-critical information from complete cross-enterprise business processes, a key to building a competitive supply chain these days, according to Karen Peterson, vice president and research director of Gartner Research. "Looking into the rear-view mirror is no longer enough for today's supply chain," Peterson said. "The real advantage comes from recognizing events as they occur across an entire business process and making sure that resulting information gets into the hands of the people who can make the best use of it."
Finally, Fortune this week added PeopleSoft to its e-50 Index, replacing CNET, whose share price had remained below $5 for 25 consecutive days, triggering its removal from the list.
The e-50 Index is intended to provide a benchmark of the Internet economy, with its 50 component companies representing a cross-section of the Internet economy.
