ePages™ Procurement Solutions

ePages™ now offers six new functional modules (procurement cartridges) for the standard ePages™ Hosting and Merchant Edition products. They can be used to optimize procurement, catalog management and logistics processes between suppliers and customers.

Support for industry standards such as OCI and BMEcat as well as the recently developed Web Services modules for easy integration into your ERP, logistics or other systems make this solution quick and inexpensive to implement.

The solutions are appropriate for the following customer categories:

1. Administrative organizations with a branch network and independent agents such as hospitals and insurance companies, who focus on procurement of specific office and computer products, marketing and campaign materials, print media such as brochures and pre-printed forms.

2. Manufacturers or suppliers, who provide their customers with an online catalogue as a procurement platform and want to (have to) upgrade by adding special procurement features, e.g. cost center entry, approval processes, budget postings, support for the OCI standard, etc.

3. Smaller purchasing cooperatives and local supplier cooperatives adding suppliers or dealers to their product portfolios who join forces on a regional level in order to provide their customers or members a procurement solution to reduce process costs.

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Administrative Organizations

Target Group

Administrative organizations such as hospitals and insurance companies with branch and office networks, sales partners such as agencies, etc.

With ePages™' integrated e-procurement and logistics solutions you can reduce the complexity of consumer goods procurement and distribution as well as make ordering and delivery processes substantially easier, more efficient and thus less expensive. The immediate result is substantial cost savings with a direct and positive effect on company earnings.

Note

The solution described above was developed jointly with TVA Langenscheidt KG.TVA Langenscheidt KG is a one-stop-shop offering the storage and delivery of printed matter, forms, contact and marketing items, specific office supplies, etc. It also makes the ePages™ procurement platform available, including hosting and initial setup.



Reduction of Complexity

• Faster and more efficient – through the integration of a pre-configured online procurement system for central office procurement and branch offices with a fully-automated, central logistics process.
• Full, "real time" control and transparency of budgets, costs and inventory.
• Cost savings through outsourced, fully-automated delivery and bundling of product ranges by centralized logistics.
• Better buying terms by collecting all orders for consumer goods from all local offices.
• Reducing the load on existing systems, because c-goods master data is administered in the online system.
• Through ePages™' flexible hosting and rental scheme the merchant can attain a return on investment in the first month.

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Manufacturers or suppliers

Small to Mid-sized Manufacturers and Suppliers of c-goods, Wanting to Upgrade their Electronic Catalogue with Procurement Features

Target group

Manufacturers and suppliers of c-goods, who place their goods in an online catalogue and want to (have to) upgrade it by adding special procurement features, e.g. cost center entry, approval processes, budget postings, support for the OCI standard, etc.

Organizations for which it makes no economic sense for them to buy and own a procurement module: they can use these features as a service from their supplier. Suppliers can make the solution available to their customers, once they have upgraded their catalogues.
Experience shows that customers use these kinds of solutions from their suppliers particularly for c-goods, e.g. tools and office supplies.

Benefits

Suppliers can quickly and inexpensively upgrade their existing ePages™ catalogue systems at any time with ePages™' procurement cartridges.

For example, Web Services cartridges can be configured to show inventory availability or logistics connections. The eBay cartridge allows the merchant to sell off excess inventory.

The following diagram shows an example of how the OCI cartridges work.

Large organizations with in-house procurement solutions tend not to want to administer their own catalogues for terciary goods. The OCI standard allows the merchant to be able to switch to supplier catalogues and to log in automatically.

S/he can then fill a basket using pre-established prices or pricing structures. Finally s/he proceeds through the standard workflow of his/her corporation. This can easily take place through the centralized procurement module like SAP's EBP. Maintenance of the catalogue is left up to the supplier.


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Smaller purchasing cooperatives

Local Supplier Cooperatives or Smaller Purchasing Cooperatives

Now even local supplier cooperatives and small purchasing groups can use ePages™ to set up professional, web-based local purchasing and ordering platforms. This was hardly possible in the past because existing systems for this target group were too large and too expensive. Together with its partners ePages™ offers a professional solution at transparent and manageable prices.

ePages™' solution offers the following benefits

• Based on a mature and sound standard catalogue system and includes easy maintenance
• Inexpensive operation through hosting and multiple client capabilities
• Economical rental models reduce the total cost of ownership
• Gradual addition of features using standard cartridges minimizes upfront investment
• 100 per cent web-based solution only requires a web browser
• Many other cartridges are available from ePages™ partners
• Inexpensive on-site deployment and support by ePages™ partners
• Using Web Service cartridges for easy integration with third party systems makes sense for even small trading volumes.

Customers enter the ordering platform via a centralized login and can purchase from different supplier catalogs with optimized process costs. The goal of supplier cooperatives is to provide the largest customers with a system offering them an inexpensive way to automate their own internal procurement workflows. Suppliers profit from improved customer relationships that are built this way. Bundling logistics is another potential area of customer/supplier optimization.

The architecture of the system permits suppliers and members of the purchasing group to do system administration centrally at any time.

Interested?

If you would like to learn more about the possibilities for using ePages™ procurement cartridges, please ePages™ Procurement Product Manager, Hans-Jürgen Collatz.


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