ProcureTrade, the recently announced joint venture between information technology forces McCarthy-On-Line and JSE-listed AST Group, has hosted the first live e-Procurement trading hub in Southern Africa. This innovative customised online market place is powered by Infobank`s Intrade e-hub software.
Dennis McCarthy, MD of ProcureTrade, says that their infrastructure and Infobank`s software and support services enable the hub to handle billions of rands worth of trade. "The majority of the hub`s target customers each have annual procurement spend in excess of R1 billion. If we aggregate these budgets the revenue potential is enormous."
ProcureTrade itself has already begun trading through the hub, and several other pilot sites including McCarthy Motor Holdings are currently being rolled out.
McCarthy points out that to implement the system took only 3 weeks. "Infobank Africa`s capability to dramatically shorten the time to get a system up and running instills even greater confidence in its offering. And together with our supporting infrastructure, we believe that this capability ensures our strategic advantage on the eb2b market."
Infobank Africa`s CEO, Dr Douglas Boateng, says, "The e-hub is a key step in Infobank International`s global expansion strategy. We are pioneering this eb2b initiative in Africa, and have in only two short months since entering this African market in May, become a vanguard of business-to-business e-commerce. We look forward to working with our partners like ProcureTrade to deliver to our customers the financial and operational benefits of electronic trading on a global basis."
McCarthy says that ProcureTrade will initially focus on assisting organisations to reduce procurement costs by integrating Intrade e-Hub into existing ERP systems. "Research has shown us that organisations are wary of large generic hubs which they see as a new world middleman. So as a first step we intend to automate and host the existing procurement process between buyers and their suppliers for the benefit of both parties. Right now, our hub will serve as a model for this."
McCarthy says that ProcureTrade has a longer term strategy for the development of procurement solutions and trading hubs. "At the moment, we will concentrate on driving out the value in each of our clients` e-commerce investments by streamlining processes, improving response time and leveraging corporate spend."
AST Enterprise Hosting, a business unit within the AST Group, provides the vast ICT infrastructure necessary to support the technology driver, Intrade e-Hub. This web-based application provides full purchaser and supplier capability to enable organisations to form online trading communities similar to the that of the generic hub, and will facilitate ultimate integration into these organisations` existing backend procurement systems.
McCarthy says that launching Southern Africa`s first live trading e-hub is a revolutionary move which clearly shows ProcureTrade`s ability to add real value to its clients` businesses. Infobank Africa`s role confirms its prominence on the emerging African eb2b market.
Infobank Africa is the wholly-owned subsidiary of FTSE 250 Infobank International, Europe`s e-procurement and electronic community specialist.
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FYI
Infobank International Holdings plc ("Infobank") is a leading international provider of business-to-business e-Commerce software. Founded in 1993 and quoted on The London Stock Exchange in April 2000, Infobank specialises in providing electronic procurement and delivery systems to the corporate market using Internet technologies. The group is well placed to exploit the rapid growth forecast worldwide for electronic commerce.
Research by Warwick Business School in the UK reveals that e-Commerce systems such as InTrade can reduce procurement and supply costs by up to two thirds. Gartner Group, a leading market research firm, has recently forecast that the worldwide market for business to business electronic commerce will expand to $7.3 trillion by 2004, more than 50 times larger than in 1999.
InTrade e-Hub - Focusing on inter-business transactions, InTrade e-Hub enables organisations to create specific communities of buyers and suppliers to form customised online trading communities. InTrade e-Hub(tm) enables participating organisations on both sides of the trading relationship to reduce significantly the costs of purchasing and supply. As InTrade e-Hub is a hosted Web-based application, both buyers and suppliers are able to avoid developing and managing their internal electronic purchasing or electronic supply solutions.
InTrade Purchaser:
- Enterprise Edition - An enterprise-level, internal system providing automated procurement, whilst leveraging and extending investment in Enterprise Resource Planning systems. Scalable across all departments throughout the enterprise, this is targeted at organisations processing over 20,000 purchase orders per annum.
- Business Edition - A SME solution, providing smaller or fragmented organisations with internal, automated procurement. Maximum of 25 users. Targeted at organisations processing between 2,500 to 20,000 purchase orders per annum.
InTrade Supplier - Aimed at suppliers of all sizes, InTrade Supplier allows a supplier to automate and control its sales process on a customer specific basis and publish its electronic catalogue on the Web, enabling registered users to access it and buy goods, while maintaining supplier branding.
Website: www.infobank.co.za OR www.intradeonline.com