Emptoris lines up new releases

PUNE, INDIA: Emptoris, a leading eSourcing suite vendor, has outlined fresh areas for its next versions that will follow its latest release Emptoris 7.

The company, which has a forte in solutions for procurement, spend analysis, strategic sourcing, contract management, compliance, supplier performance and program management, has lapped up two deals, one of which is from India where it would be focusing heavily in 2008 from a market angle.

Extended analytics, better sourcing capabilities, elements of different models in contract management like managing contracts, sub-contracts and amendments contract would be the next areas of focus for the company.

“We would add edges hitherto untouched like providing management for contracts written by the customer and not the vendor, or linking contract to proposal creation etc. This would be beefed up with significant analytics supported by a lot of visualization, where people can fine-tune their contracts to ‘what-if’ scenarios,” said CEO and president Avner Schneur, who was in the city for a visit to the company’s 250 people strong development center that makes up 65 per cent of its total workforce and is churning out major contributions for the upcoming products.

The aforementioned new areas would be added piece by piece in 2008 that has two to three point releases (in form of 7.2, 7.3 and so forth) lined up already.

“Altogether new version release happens on a yearly basis but we will roll out more smaller releases this year,” he added.

Emptoris had in October 2007 expanded its procurement software portfolio with the release of Emptoris 7, a contract management suite that added functions like supplier performance measurements, trend analysis, best-value negotiation, and global program management.

The company has just closed a big PSU deal in UK with Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and has also signed a pharmaceutical major as its first Indian foray in a span of three months.

While the European PSU landscape where it earlier signed a deal with National Health Care Systems in England, appears upbeat to Schneur but that’s not the case with the US and Indian market. Though in the US Emptoris is serving the Department of Defense and the Postal Department, he attributes low PSU appetite to the longer sales cycles and conservative adoption rate in both the geographies.

The company would be increasing its focus on Indian markets where it sees demand for sourcing solutions followed by market for contract management. Spend management, would be complementary and would drive business in India on a parallel mode.

“We are getting lot of queries from retail, manufacturing, financial services and outsourcing fronts and while India would not be at par with the US from a pricing perspective, but we expect a lot of growth in 2008,” said Jagdish Jha, managing director for Indian operations.

India would be approached from both direct sales and partner-based approach, he added. The company’s other major customers include American Express, Boeing, Cigna, ConocoPhillips, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, Motorola, Owens Corning, Syngenta, Toro, UnitedHealthcare and Vodafone.

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