GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 2002--
GXS-hosted supply chain services help companies reduce overpayments, capture rebates and lower contract processing costs
GE Global eXchange Services (NYSE: GE), a leader in business-to-business Internet commerce, today announced that it is offering a new suite of B2B electronic commerce services designed to automate the contract compliance process between buyers and suppliers.
GE Global eXchange Services (GXS) will host and operate the new services, intended to help companies eliminate invoice overpayments, capture supplier rebates and reduce contract processing costs.
GXS's Contract Compliance Services suite addresses challenges faced by companies such as foodservice franchises, hotels and consumer goods chains that lack visibility into supplier-to-distributor invoices, which are based upon negotiated contract prices. The services are accessible over the Internet and provide the following capabilities:
-- Invoice Compliance - a buyer automatically matching 100% of submitted supplier-to-distributor invoices to the appropriate supplier contracts, thus eliminating overpayment of invoices and identifying off-contract purchases for appropriate action -- Contract Maintenance - a buyer managing supplier contracts electronically, ensuring one-to-one comparison of line items across suppliers, and identifying overlapping, duplicate or expired contracts for appropriate action; suppliers enabled to send invoices electronically through various means, reducing cycle times and costs associated with manual invoicing -- Rebate Capture - a buyer electronically tracking applicable supplier rebates associated with contracts, enabling the buyer to capture the maximum rebate associated with product purchases
In addition to these supply chain efficiency applications, GXS offers the following supporting services to optimize implementation success:
-- Six Sigma Engagement - a formal quality method for understanding customer business processes and economics to quantify e-commerce opportunities and ROI projections -- Digital Cockpit - concise visual presentation of critical supply chain data to help ensure sustainable results -- Community Enablement - tools and services to interconnect buyers and suppliers so they may transact business electronically, and integrate their information exchange with their back-office systems. GXS currently enables more than 100,000 trading partners around the world to exchange documents such as purchase orders and invoices reliably and securely over the Internet or private networks -- Custom Portal - a custom Web site designed by GXS and sponsored by a buyer for the use of its supplier community to access the GXS Contract Compliance Services suite, as well as other GXS supply chain applications such as Supplier Selection, Buyer Requirements, Catalog Purchasing, Invoice Inquiry and Payments Settlement.
According to George Labelle, director of information services for SUBWAY(R) restaurants' Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC), "GXS has provided us with a Contract Compliance solution that is based on open standards and can handle supplier invoices in any format. Having successfully implemented our supplier community, GXS now operates our contract management network at the highest level of security and reliability."
IPC oversees annual purchases for more than 15,000 SUBWAY(R) franchises. GXS's customized Contract Compliance solution for IPC, called IPCnet, increased pricing compliance from supplier to distributor by 98 percent during the first year of operation, and currently generates savings of approximately 2 percent on $1.5 billion spent annually by SUBWAY(R) franchises across the supply chain.
"We specialize in helping customers eliminate areas of waste and inefficiency in their supply chain through digitization," said Steven Scala GXS's vice president of marketing. "Our Contract Compliance Services will enable buying organizations to remove significant costs from their supply chain by streamlining and automating their supplier invoice compliance and contract management process on a global basis."
About GE Global eXchange Services
GE Global eXchange Services (GXS) operates one of the largest B2B e-commerce networks in the world, with more than 100,000 trading partners. The network's 1 billion annual transactions account for $1 trillion in goods and services. With a presence in 58 countries, GXS applies Six Sigma quality processes to provide e-commerce solutions that help businesses around the globe remove costs from their supply chains. GE Global eXchange Services is a part of the General Electric Company, U.S.A., and is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md. Call (800) 560-4347 or visit our Web site at www.gxs.com.
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CONTACT:
GE Global eXchange Services
Matt DeCamara, 301/340-5591