"A core value proposition of Emptoris is its ability to help Global 1000 companies address high-value, but challenging spend categories in a manner that delivers meaningful bottom-line impact," said Patrick D. Quirk, president and CEO of Emptoris. "A regular complaint heard from CFOs and CPOs is that their ERP systems are not fundamentally designed to manage these critical spend categories such as transportation, contingent labor and services. The acquisition of Rivermine strengthens and extends Emptoris' value proposition and competitive positioning by providing proven expense management technology in a significant services spend category."
Rivermine is a provider of TEM solutions designed to help organizations gain visibility into, and control over, their telecom spend and lifecycle management, including ordering, inventory, invoice processing and auditing, as well as wireless expense management, mobile device management, reporting and analytics. Customers — including Chubb Insurance, Ford Motor Company, Fannie Mae, IKON Office Solutions and Sodexo — manage more than $6 billion in communications spending annually using Rivermine solutions.
Companies spend more than $1 trillion annually on enterprise telecom technologies and services. With the ever increasing use of mobile devices and the Internet, telecom spending has become one of the most significant areas of spending for Global 1000 companies, registering as one of the top five corporate spend categories for most businesses.
It is also one of the most poorly managed areas of spend, in part due to the complex billing systems used by some telecom providers, vendor management challenges, and a greater need for internal governance and compliance. The Aberdeen Group estimates that the average Fortune 500 company spends more than $115 million per year on telecom expenses — and Gartner reports that these costs can be predictably reduced by 10 percent to 35 percent with telecom expense management solutions.
As such, telecom expense management has become a key target for improvement by CFOs, CIOs and CPOs at global companies. According to leading analyst firms, companies will spend an estimated $5.6 billion in 2011 on software and services to solve e-procurement and telecommunications management challenges.
Emptoris asserts that ERP and e-procurement systems fail to address the sourcing, contract management and compliance for high-value but challenging spend categories such as telecommunications, transportation, travel, contingent labor and services. However, a significant percentage of a Global 1000 company's procurement spending is typically dedicated to services spending in these categories.
With the acquisition of Rivermine, Emptoris said it now has an expanded suite with six strategic solutions, more than 300 Global 1000 customers, over 650 employees globally and combined projected annual growth in excess of 20 percent. Both Emptoris and Rivermine also have partner relationships with the leading management consulting firms including Accenture, Deloitte and IBM.
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