The Woodlands, TX and Cambridge, MA - December 10, 2003 -- Pantellos, the leading electronic marketplace and supply chain services company for the utility industry, today announced it has selected Frictionless Commerce, a leading provider of enterprise-wide sourcing software, to deliver e-sourcing solutions to the utility industry. The agreement entails integrating Frictionless Sourcing software with Pantellos’ existing supply chain services to create the first set of packaged, enterprise license-based and hosted e-sourcing solutions tailored specifically to the needs of the utility industry.
The new Pantellos suite of solutions will enable utilities to transform their supply chain activities and reduce costs by providing a comprehensive sourcing platform, a consistent sourcing strategy and industry-specific supply chain services. Supply chain professionals can easily automate traditional manual processes and paper-based transactions as well as aggregate and manage all sourcing activities from a single desktop application. Because the e-sourcing solutions are flexible and modular, utilities can “start anywhere” to implement them, depending upon their needs and stage in the sourcing process.
“In order to fulfill our mission of delivering a paperless source-to-pay process to the utility industry, we work in-step with our customers to understand their challenges and, ultimately, deliver solutions that reduce costs and supply chain inefficiencies for improved profitability,” said Jim Neikirk, president and CEO of Pantellos. “To that end, we conducted an exhaustive review of technology providers and concluded that Frictionless Commerce has the most comprehensive, modular and robust sourcing platform to meet our customers’ needs and demands.”
With tailored e-sourcing solutions, customers will be offered:
· Utility-specific category templates and best practice processes built into the Frictionless Sourcing platform;
· A supplier portal to manage all suppliers across multiple solutions from a single control point;
· Pantellos Services, such as spend analysis, auctions management and other tailored supply chain services; and
· Seamless integration into existing Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Asset Management and other enterprise applications to achieve greater process efficiencies throughout the entire sourcing cycle.
In addition to Frictionless-powered auction and RFx functionality, Pantellos will also offer other modules to enable all aspects of the sourcing process, including: Spend Analysis, Workflow, Project Management, Demand Aggregation, Contract Management, Bill of Materials, Vendor Management, Optimization (response analysis), and Reporting. Existing Pantellos auctions and RFx customers will be offered an easy migration path to the Frictionless platform and, due to the flexible e-sourcing solution, new utility customers can start anywhere in the sourcing process from which to implement an e-sourcing strategy and platform.
“We are thrilled to partner with Pantellos, a leader in utility-specific supply chain transformation, in order to deliver solutions that will take sourcing to a much more strategic level within the industry,” said Stephen Sharp, president and CEO, Frictionless Commerce. “We look forward to a mutually beneficially relationship that will leverage our combined expertise as well as yield greater cost savings for Pantellos’ customers across their supply chains.”
According to estimates published by AMR Research in the July 29, 2002 report entitled "E-Sourcing: ROI Tastes Great, Applications Less Filling," the e-sourcing market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent and will reach approximately $1.6 billion by 2006. Of the overall market, the utility industry continues to require tailored products and services, such as e-sourcing solutions, that reduce costs, eliminate supply chain inefficiencies and improve bottom-line profitability.
Pantellos Customer Reaction
"Pantellos is a trusted partner that delivers tailored supply chain solutions that easily integrate into our business, support our current technology investments and help us consistently create value for Southern Company and its shareholders," said Jacki Lowe, Vice President of Supply Chain Management, Southern Company. "We believe this new e-sourcing suite from Pantellos will help us continue to transform our supply chain operations by providing better visibility into our spending, improving our ability to execute negotiated savings and increasing our spend under management.”
Availability
Customers can purchase an enterprise license from Pantellos in conjunction with Pantellos managed sourcing services today. ASP-based and license-hosted solutions will be available mid-to-late Q1 2004.
