Austin-Tetra, SAS Ally on Supplier Intelligence

Joint offering aims to cleanse mutual clients' supplier master files, improve strategic sourcing efforts

Joint offering aims to cleanse mutual clients' supplier master files, improve strategic sourcing efforts

Irving, TX — December 8, 2004 — Austin-Tetra, a provider of supplier information for the global supplier and sourcing market, has formed an alliance with business intelligence player SAS to jointly offer a solution for cleansing their shared clients' supplier master files and improving strategic sourcing activities for their customers.

Under the alliance, SAS will leverage Austin-Tetra's business information management methodologies and supplier intelligence services with the goal of helping joint clients gain knowledge of their trading partners to reduce supply risk and, ostensibly, improve their bottom lines.

Austin-Tetra said that the new partners would combine expertise to extend their service offerings by utilizing Austin-Tetra's global supplier repository. SAS will help its clients in cleansing and enriching supplier master files, classifying their direct and indirect purchases, identifying diverse businesses, mitigating supply base risk exposure and standardizing supplier records with up-to-date information.

"Through the combination of Austin-Tetra's proprietary data enrichment methodologies and our best practices in data cleansing, classification and spend analysis, together we can provide a powerful source that enables spend visibility into our customers' supplier base," said Dennie Norman, director of supply chain intelligence solutions for SAS.

"Corporations realize that accurate information is a necessary part of an effective spend management system in order to achieve real supply cost reductions," said Phil Berkebile, Jr., president and CEO of Austin-Tetra.

According to Tim Minahan, senior vice president for supply chain research at technology consultancy Aberdeen Group, his research indicates that the most successful spend data management initiatives rely on several factors, including establishing efficient and repeatable data cleansing and classification capabilities through the use of software or services.

"When coupled with accurate and timely supplier intelligence, this insight empowers companies to make sourcing decisions based on fact rather than gut instinct," Minahan wrote in a report entitled "Spending Analysis: Cure for a Corporate Epidemic."
Latest