A powerful new alliance in SA`s fledgling e-procurement services industry has been forged between Miraculum and catalogue specialist, LOG-TEK.
The deal is geared to provide users of the new Miraculum Xchange, an MRO (Maintenance, Repair, Operations) electronic marketplace with unprecedented flexibility and added value, including the ability to track purchasing spend with `designated group` entrepreneurs to comply with government tender requirements.
Miraculum is a joint-venture between Dimension Data, Nedcor, Old Mutual and J&J - a telecommunications and e-commerce company founded by Jay and Jayendra Naidoo. The company facilitates the flow of procurement orders electronically, enabling subscribers to maximise supplier leverage and minimise processing costs.
LOG-TEK has over 30 years experience in cataloguing and is an acknowledged leader in this highly specialised discipline both locally and internationally, providing services to some of the largest US-based cataloguing companies.
According to Miraculum MD Brandon Spear, effective and efficient cataloguing is key to the success of any electronic procurement marketplace.
"One supplier may call its writing implements `pens`; another may call them `biros`. The catalogue must ensure that all similar products are categorised as such and that information about each product is structured in the same way. This is essential if users are to find what they are looking for quickly and easily."
"In addition, there must be sufficient information about each product - without information overload - to enable buyers to make accurate comparisons between different suppliers` products," he explains.
Complicating the scenario is that there is no single international standard for cataloguing the types of products found on electronic exchanges like Miraculum.
Amongst other cataloguing standards supported by LOG-TEK, LOG-TEK uses the `Standard Modifier Dictionary`. This is emerging as a common cataloguing standard for MRO and other business-to-business exchanges. LOG-TEK provides as a service, conversion between the various cataloguing standards such as UNSPSC and the Standard Modifier Dictionary.
The Standard Modifier Dictionary truly structures data in an easy to retrieve and utilise format, allowing for quick access to the required items. This not only provides a common product code for each item, but also a standardised supply language across all MRO items, regardless of the supplier and purchaser industry type.
"This means any potential supplier to the Miraculum marketplace exchange can be accommodated, regardless of whether they already have an electronic catalogue of their products or not. If they don`t have a catalogue, LOG-TEK will provide one that won`t tie them to one particular standard.
"And if they have already invested in an electronic catalogue, they won`t be excluded from the Miraculum exchange because their catalogue is in the `wrong` format.
"No other e-procurement exchange offers this level of flexibility," Spear adds.
LOG-TEK marketing director Max Batinti says despite the hype about international digital exchanges entering the SA market, he believes local companies - both suppliers and purchasers - will be served best by a local business supplies marketplace which better understands their business practises.
"For example, the cataloguing process provided to the Miraculum exchange will make it easier for local companies to track their procurement spend both nationally and internationally.
"International digital marketplaces are not able to accommodate this. Similarly, local suppliers won`t find themselves dwarfed within a huge global exchange.
"This, coupled with Miraculum`s pedigree which assures it of technological and procurement expertise as well as the economies of scale which will be provided by its `anchor tenants` and shareholders from the outset, is a key motivation for LOG-TEK forming a strategic alliance with Miraculum," Batinti concludes.
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