"We started our electronic procurement process in June 2000, and, thanks to Poet, are now in a position to efficiently test the supplier catalogs before they are integrated into our system," said Gaspar Mondejar, e-procurement operations manager at Philips. "Using Poet's supplier-centered catalog management solution, Philips can expand the system further and increase the efficiency of the online buying process."
Philips plans to connect approximately 100 suppliers, including American firms such as Dell and Staples and German firms such as SSI Schafershop, M+S Elektronik AG and Pfalzmobel GmbH, to the Ariba system by the end of the year. Suppliers send their catalog data by e-mail to Philips, and Poet eSupplierPort verifies whether individual agreements on product selection and pricing are reflected in the catalogs. The data is then released into the Ariba procurement system, where employees can make purchases electronically from their desktops. Philips manages up to 500,000 items in their Ariba-based system, which is centrally managed from the Dutch headquarters in Eindhoven.
"Poet provides unique solutions to establish purchasing and distribution channels in the electronic procurement process, and we believe that efficient supplier management will become the major criteria for success in e-business," said Dirk Bartels, president and CEO of Poet Software. "Along with Dresdner Bank and Deutsche Telekom, Philips is another leading Fortune 500 organization that selected our solution. eSupplierPort is the first supplier enablement solution worldwide for organizations using electronic procurement systems, and the adoption of our products on the buy side accelerates the ROI [return on investment] of those systems."
