EMPTORIS 8: NOT JUST A SOLUTION, A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Emptoris 8 Delivers Platform with Unmatched Risk Analysis, Actionable Intelligence, and Global Program Agility

Emptoris Launches New Supplier Risk Analysis and Services Procurement Solutions

Burlington, MA – (October 1, 2009) – Emptoris, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise supply and contract management software, today announced the launch of the Emptoris 8 Supply and Contract Management Solution Suite, which includes more than 250 new capability, usability and adoption enhancements designed to deliver unmatched capabilities for companies in risk analysis, actionable intelligence and global program agility.

"Companies that consider spend and contract management as strategic functions are not just gaining savings and efficiencies, but actually gaining a competitive advantage. Companies that have accelerated their adoption of these technologies over the course of the recession are creating a gap between themselves and their competition," said Patrick Quirk, Chief Executive Officer of Emptoris, Inc. "Emptoris has recognized and helped drive this trend, and our latest solution enhancements are designed to further empower companies with greater actionable intelligence, risk analysis and global program management."

"The economic climate presents a number of challenges, but also presents opportunities. This is a time when companies often reshape their processes and focus on areas within their control. As we adapt to become more efficient, it's important that the strategies we implement be sustainable and lead to a stronger and more competitive company tomorrow," said Vincent Donargo, Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller with Brightpoint, Inc., an Emptoris customer.

Emptoris 8: Not Just A Solution, A Competitive Advantage
The Emptoris 8 Supply and Contract Management Solution Suite includes more than 250 innovations and enhancements across the entire portfolio of solutions including to Emptoris Spend Analysis, Emptoris Sourcingand Emptoris Contract Management. The portfolio of solutions is also expanded with the addition of Emptoris Supplier Risk Analysis, helping companies move from performance monitoring to pro-active risk management, and Emptoris Services Procurement, addressing one of the most challenging areas of supply and contract management. The new solution additions make Emptoris the only suite provider to provide a focused supplier risk management solution and the only to offer a global services management solution that can be deployed on premise or in a software-as-a-service mode. The new capabilities are designed to address several major, but common, challenges that Global 2000 companies face:

Plenty of risk, but lack of risk analysis and risk mitigation capabilities
Technologies delivering data-overload, but without actionable intelligence
Disconnected processes and solutions that diminish organizational agility, particularly globally

Not Just Reactive – Proactive Risk Analysis and Mitigation
A survey by Emptoris and Supply Chain Management Review found that 1 in 5 executives at Global 2000 companies self-described their supplier risk management programs as "behind the curve" and more than half ( 52%) said their companies were just "keeping apace" with competitors. Only 1 in 10 (12%) reported being "ahead of the curve" in proactively and aggressively managing risks.

Emptoris 8 delivers significant new functionality to manage supplier risk, helping companies move from performance monitoring and development to pro-active risk management. This includes a new Emptoris Supplier Risk Analysis solution that enables companies to monitor and proactively reduce a broad spectrum of risks that can impact a company, its operations and its bottom line including supplier financial, legal, regulatory, performance and outsourcing risks.

This new risk analysis capability further allows supply management professionals to capture and standardize extended supplier master data including audit records, corporate social responsibility qualification files, codes of conduct, and insurance records; and link this information with credit scores, legal status, diversity certifications, and historical performance scorecards to develop a comprehensive view of risks associated with a supplier. The new risk analysis solution includes:

Extended Supplier Intelligence: A new offering which integrates global financial, credit, risk and diversity information from trusted third-party business databases to provide deeper insight into supplier information such as financial health. A partnership with Equifax provides external data on over 45 million supplier\vendor companies.
Enhanced Performance Monitoring Capabilities: An expanded capability for performance scores and balanced scorecards which captures key performance indicators (KPIs) for all locations served by a vendor, and overall scorecard roll-up across all KPIs and all lines of business served by the vendor. The supplier KPIs are captured at the plant level and rolled up to an overall performance score.
Supplier On-Boarding: A new capability which allows companies to capture extended information provided by the supplier and standardizes the registration, credentialing and certification processes, providing visibility into critical information which supports corporate goals and objectives. Key features include self-service registration, automated notifications prompting vendors to update information, intelligent surveys, flexible workflow, configurable alerts, and automated scoring.
Supplier Performance Analytics: The new solution delivers significant advances in the area of performance visibility. The supplier's performance, related to a particular scorecard, is now easier to assess using interactive trend analysis and spider charts which visually depict the vendor’s situation, so buyers can quickly identify flagging vendor performance and issues before it’s too late.

Emptoris 8 also adds features across the solutions suite that help companies manage a broad spectrum of risks beyond supplier risk including:

Contractor Performance History: New features in the Emptoris Services Procurement solution automate the contractor performance evaluation process and make information readily accessible to all hiring managers. Insight into contractor performance helps reduce future risks in workforce and contractor selection.
Multi-Party Contracting: A significant new capability in the Emptoris Contract Management solution supports complex, multi-party contract management allowing companies to manage complex business relationships such as joint-ventures, VARS, distributors and OEMS. Such capabilities help companies identify otherwise unknown and unmonitored risks brought by other parties in outsourced or other contractual relationships.

Not Just Data – Actionable Intelligence
"Most Global 2000 companies have a serious lack of visibility into strategic aspects of their business from spending to risks. Yet, that lack of visibility is not due to a lack of data. Companies are, more often than not, awash in a sea of data. Today the challenge is often managing that data to gain true visibility. Such visibility is essential to survival in today’s competitive global environment. Emptoris 8 not only provides that visibility, but goes a step further, a step beyond the competition to provide actionable intelligence," said Sean Correll, Director of Consulting Services with Emptoris, Inc.

Emptoris announced several new capabilities to address business needs for move from visibility to a level of intelligence that guides users to smarter business decisions. Specific features include:

Real-time Drillable Dashboards for Sourcing and Services Procurement: Entirely new dashboard intelligence for the Emptoris Sourcing and Services Procurement solutions (leveraging infrastructure already incorporated into the Emptoris Spend Analysis solution.) This includes real-time drill down capabilities which provide actionable intelligence to "anyone, anytime, anywhere" in the organization. Unlike static reporting tools, when charts and graphs are 'clicked' on these dashboards the information shown "zooms in" and provides further detail on the items of interest.
Online Feedback: An enhancement which accelerates the online user feedback process in Spend Analysis and significantly reduces cycle time in republishing spend data. With process automation, the Spend Analysis solution can deliver over 90% accuracy in data classification. End user feedback typically drives classification accuracy up further to 95%+.
Trend Analytics and Multi-dimensional Reporting: These new features provide deeper, more dynamic analytics and enable more intelligent search and queries. Key features include nested cross-tabulations showing, in real time, spend across three dimensions simultaneously.
Advanced Sourcing Scenario Modeling: Emptoris continues to extend its leadership in self-service sourcing of high value, high risk categories. Auto-Sensitivity Analysis allows buyers to set ranges of constraints and the system automatically identifies all the options available. Advanced Scenario Modeling allows users to run large scale sourcing events on their own instance of the application – particularly useful for transportation, packaging, print and temporary labor.

Not Just Departmental – Truly Global
Finally, Emptoris 8 introduces a new set of capabilities to further support global deployments and global program management including global approvals control, global workflow management and global invoicing:

Global Approval Control: A new capability that allows users to configure in the user interface approval controls globally, so companies can design complex approvals for contracts to adjust to workloads, market changes, business changes, new regulations, and other factors on a global scale.
Global Workflow Management: Emptoris 8 also allows companies to configure and monitor workflows on a global basis, so that managers in one region can have visibility and ability to manage staff in other departments as well as other regions.
Global Invoicing for Contingent Labor and Services Procurement: As services procurement increasingly goes global, more companies struggle to manage complex regulatory regimes that lead to a patchwork of employment and tax requirements that vary by state, province and country. New features in the Emptoris Services Procurement solution provide global invoicing with "out of the box" configuration.

Each Emptoris solution is also available in multiple global languages, and Emptoris solutions are global commerce-capable with multi-currency bidding; real-time currency conversion; and historically accurate reporting in multiple currencies. Companies can even run scenario analysis to determine how various currency fluctuations might impact future costs and supplier allocations.

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