Two beta users of Microsoft's Solution for Supplier Enablement have
backed the B2B e-commerce package.
Jeff Odom, president of printing products at US-based services
vendor TCS Corporate Services, said any concerns he had about the
costs of deploying the Microsoft package are being offset by his
access to new markets.
Odom said a growing number of his major customers had asked his
firm to interface to the Ariba and Commerce One e-procurement
products they had been installing. But he was unable to find a
vendor to help for less than $1m (£0.7m).
"That's just absolutely out of our budget," Odom said, noting that
his firm has $15m (£10m) in annual revenue and a two-person IT
staff.
TCS spent about $50,000 (£35,000) on the Microsoft software
licences and consulting services, which came from a Microsoft
partner. One of the benefits is that TCS can now publish its
catalogue, or a customised subset of it, in formats such as Ariba's
CXML, Commerce One's CBL.
Odom said his company had already seen a pay-off. One large
computer maker recently noticed that TCS had deployed an Ariba
catalogue and thus included the company in a reverse-auction bid.
TCS ended up winning the bid for toner cartridges.
"Usually, you have to scratch and claw for business opportunities
in this case, this one came to us specifically as a result of our
capability to publish [Ariba's] CXML," Odom said.
Once the back office has been connected to the output of the
sell-side system, TCS expects to see a reduction in transaction
costs from $27 per transaction to $6. That should save the company
$42,000 per month, based on its average of 2,000 transactions per
month.
Kevin Govin, chief operating officer at MarkMaster, a Florida-based
manufacturer of custom rubber stamps, said he had been able to
reduce his customer service staff from eight to six employees since
deploying Microsoft's software package. Govin's company processes
4,000 to 6,000 orders per day. One hundred of these, he said, now
came through the new system.
The Microsoft package was worth implementing because he could use
it to connect to multiple sites and multiple market engines,
explained Govin, adding: "If you were doing it for one customer,
[the cost] would be prohibitive."
MarkMaster had eight Fortune 500 customers before installing the
Microsoft system. By summer, Govin said, it expected to have set up
50.