Our product - the ViniSyndicate Catalog Integration System™ -- works with any e-procurement system, most notably market leaders Ariba (Buyer), Oracle (I-Procure), SAP (Enterprise Professional Buyer) and Peoplesoft (eProcure).

Product catalogs for indirect procurement (catalogs can also be used for direct procurement in some situations). Examples are Office Supplies (e.g. Staples, Office Depot), MRO Supplies (e.g. Grainger, MSC Industrial), Safety Equipment (Vallen Safety, Encon), Electrical Supplies (e.g. Newark, GE Supply), Information Technology (e.g. Dell, CDW) and so on. Depending on the industry, a company's indirect spend could be anywhere from 30% to 70% of the entire spend.

1. LIMITED USER ADOPTION, caused by
   
2. COMPLEX AND INCONSISTANT USER INTERFACES, exacerbated by
   
3. MISSING CATALOGS (OR SKUs), a problem whose resolution is inhibited by
   
4. LACK OF SUPPLER CAPABILITY AND/OR COOPERATION, which in turn
   
5. INHIBITS TRANSACTION VOLUME through the e-procurement system!

Executing a purchase order through the e-procurement system costs substantially less than via other means, and companies can save millions by executing as many orders as possible via the e-procurement system (e.g. transaction volume). That being said, less transaction volume lowers equates to less cost savings and limits system ROI.

Catalog Management solutions were supposed to provide the answer to these problems, but really haven't delivered as promised (see next question for more information).

Most companies use a combination of Catalog Management Tools (e.g. Requisite, Saqqara) for maintaining "local" supplier catalog files, and XML "punchout" (e.g. Ariba cXML Punchout, SAP OCI Roundtrip) to connect directly to their suppliers' online catalogs. Some also pay service providers (e.g. SciQuest, ePlus) to do it for them.

Why two answers to the same problem? Although today's Catalog Management Tools have excellent functionality, they can become very resource intensive, cumbersome and thus costly as the number of SKUs increases. As a result, they are often used for smaller catalogs.

Most companies then use XML "punchout" for larger catalogs, assuming the supplier can support it (not always a safe assumption). Why? Using "punchout" moves much of the costs and complexity of maintaining larger catalogs using Catalog Management Tools to the supplier. But "punchout" has it's own issues (see next question).

NO! THEY ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEM!

First, this dual approach creates user interface problems, which contributes greatly to the aforementioned user adoption problems. How? If you have 10 "punchouts" and 30 "local" catalogs, your users must learn to navigate 11 different interfaces (the 10 supplier online catalogs plus the e-procurement search interface for accessing the "local" catalogs) to find what they are looking for!

Second, it limits supply options. If a supplier can't support "punchout" (many can't), the buyer must find a supplier who can. In this case, the buyer is making a sourcing decision based on a suppliers' ability to support "punchout" versus price, delivery and service. Or the buyer can wait for the supplier to provide the support for "punchout". In this second case, they are depriving their users of the supplier catalogs they need to do their jobs, causing users to usually bypass the system.

Third, it adds cost to the supplier as well because he is, just like you are, applying resources (people, software, time) to maintaining catalog files and build "punchouts".

In most cases, this dual approach has not been successful. Most e-procurement deployments today have a few hundred users, 5 - 10 punchout catalogs and 20 - 25 small "local" catalogs covering a small percentage of their Indirect spend. Some have reached the limits of their budgets but still have a long way to go to reach full system utilization (and generate ROI).

This is because as they try to scale up the number of users, catalogs and SKU's using today's catalog management solutions, their costs increase exponentially (more files, more connections to web sites, more errors, more storage, more servers, more people, etc.), potentially to the point of diminishing returns. Often they concede that they will never meet their ROI goals and put the entire system intro maintenance mode because they just can't meet the users usability and catalog availability needs and still control costs!

ViniSyndicate™ addresses the five (5) specific, related problems listed above as follows:

ViniSyndicate™ INCREASES USER ADOPTION (Problem #1) by providing a SINGLE CONSISTANT USER INTERFACE (Problem #2) to all catalogs whether locally stored in the e-procurement system database or online at a supplier's web site. Common user complaints like "I've been clicking for 10 minutes and I still can't find what I need", or " I can't compare products across suppliers", or "it's too hard to use, I get lost in the system" will become a thing of the past.

Also, ViniSyndicate™ has greatly simplified the supplier's requirements. They don't have to support XML "punchout"! They don't have to provide catalog files, graphics, MSDS sheets! All they need is an online catalog; most suppliers can meet this requirement today! Waiting for MISSING CATALOGS OR SKUs (Problem #3) and LACK OF SUPPLER CAPABILITY AND/OR COOPERATION (Problem #4) are no longer issues because ViniSyndicate™ can get everything right from the supplier's online catalog without him having to do anything!

There are other benefits as well…

Increased Sourcing Reach - Simplified supplier requirements will drastically increase the pool of available suppliers! For example, companies using Ariba Buyer are limited to suppliers who support .CIF and cXML "punchout". If you're using SAP, they must support OCI and "roundtrip". Ditto Oracle, Peoplesoft and so on. With ViniSyndicate™, you can source from any supplier, irrelevant their e-procurement systems support capabilities!

Increased Sourcing Flexibility - In most cases ViniSyndicate™ can have a new supplier catalog available to users in a DAY, regardless of the number of SKUs! This ability coupled with lower costs makes it easy to implement new sources or move product lines across existing sources fast, easy and inexpensively, further satisfies users and increases the attractiveness of the e-procurement system.

Lower, Fixed Costs - Because ViniSyndicate™ automates the building and management of the catalog (formerly done by people, tools, etc.), your catalog management costs will be LOWERED. Because there is no labor or incremental IT work using ViniSyndicate, no matter how big the catalog, you know your FIXED costs upfront. Thus, if you know how many supplier catalogs you plan to deploy, you can accurately predict you costs for years going forward!

Better pricing? - The fact that you are NOT asking the supplier to make an IT investment (e.g. XML Punchout, etc.) on your behalf or you are not dependent on his ability to support Ariba, SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft and others may help in your price negotiations. Also, ViniSyndicate's™ Item Compare Functionality allows a commodity manager or purchasing agent to compare similar items from multiple suppliers real-time.

All of the above contribute to the overall goal of INCREASING TRANSACTION VOLUME thru the e-procurement system (Problem #5)!

The ViniSyndicate Catalog Integration System™ is the result of 3+ years of R&D. Developed in Java and XML, it utilizes Vinimaya's patent-pending Intelligent Agent Technology Platform™ to integrate multiple suppliers' online and locally installed product catalogs to a buyer's e-procurement system fast, easy and inexpensively providing the buyer with a complete, easy to use, customizable, aggregated, supplier-maintained procurement catalog accessible thru a single user interface that's connected directly to the e-procurement system.

ViniSyndicate's™ "Intelligent Agents" interact with Suppliers' online catalogs at the HTML level, automating the searching, translating, enhancing and organizing product information real-time. The "agents" replace invasive XML or web services interfaces and remove the need to maintain catalog files. This approach is significantly easier and faster to deploy and easier to maintain, (you can enhance the data without changing the source). This translates into lower costs, less problems and better performance of your e-procurement system.

ViniSyndicate™ integrates seamlessly with leading e-procurement systems from Ariba, SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft among others via published XML interfaces and provides users with full e-catalog functionality (search, saved lists, compare, shopping cart, etc.).

Not a problem. If a supplier cannot provide access to an online catalog, ViniSyndicate™ has it's own local catalog interface for loading and maintaining catalog files. It can also access the catalog from the existing catalog management system or directly from the e-procurement system. But this is the "exception" with ViniSyndicate™ versus the "rule"!

Fortunately, most national or regional suppliers have at a minimum an online catalog, so you can usually get a large majority of your SKU's deployed quickly and start generating ROI.

There are four (4) different ways to get your specific pricing:

First, most suppliers can or are willing to provide you with logon credentials that will make their catalog show your prices. ViniSyndicate™ simply leverages this existing capability.

Second, if a supplier only provides list pricing, ViniSyndicate™ can be configured with "business rules" that can properly discount list pricing real-time to reflect the contractual agreement between the buyer and the supplier.

Third, if neither of the first two options will work, the supplier catalog has no pricing or the buyer prefers to maintain pricing himself for governance reasons, ViniSyndicate™ comes with a Supplemental Data Interface which allows you to maintain a pricing table internally.

Lastly, ViniSyndicate™ can retrieve pricing information from any item or contract master application non-invasively using the "Intelligent Agents" or direct database or API access.

Yes! Your users will have ONE interface that gives them access to ALL catalogs. They'll be able to build packages, order lists, save carts and compare products across multiple suppliers (can't do that with "punchout"!). It WILL be easier, faster and better than dialing the phone, sending an email or fax, or going directly to the supplier's site. They'll find what they want when they want it. They'll WANT to order from the e-procurement system!

Absolutely! No longer do they have to provide you with catalog files and updates. Nor do they have to build and maintain a "punchout" site just for you (remember, they have many, many clients making similar requests). You'll be saving them money because you will be using their online catalog for all your orders (their lowest cost selling channel).

Yes! ViniSyndicate is designed to be easy to install, deploy and maintain. It's based on widely used, standard Internet technologies like J2EE Java and XML. It has an open, web services ready architecture. It can operate on Unix or Intel platforms. It has dashboard-type administration interfaces. It's certified to work with Application Servers from Apache, BEA, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle and all leading JDBC compliant databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2.

Vinimaya's patent-pending, Java and XML-based Intelligent Agent Server Platform™ is the result of over 4 years of R&D. This unique application of "intelligent agent" technology allows ViniSyndicate™ to integrate with non-structured data interfaces, specifically HTML as well as XML, EDI and other structured interfaces.

ViniSyndicate™ is a software product, so you can buy it (Perpetual License) or your can lease it annually (Term License). We also offer full hosting and administration thru our strategic partner, US Internetworking (www.usi.net). Together, Vinimaya and USi can offer clients a turnkey, fully managed ViniSyndicate implementation.

Our Client Services organization can usually have ViniSyndicate™ up and running for a client in two weeks. Unlike most software vendors, who sell you the software then charge you five times that much in consulting fees to implement it, we include the initial implementation and ongoing support in the price of the software. Because of this, our product needs to be easy to install, maintain and be very, very reliable (it is!).

As an example of this, we use the e-procurement systems existing published XML interfaces (Ariba - cXML, SAP - OCI, etc.), so although ViniSyndicate™ is tightly integrated with your e-procurement system, it requires NO MODIFICATIONS to the e-procurement system!

In addition to the initial installation, also included in your license fees is full technical support and our Mon-Fri, 8-8 EST Help Desk. Additionally, our Client Services Organization is ready, willing and able to provide you with additional support including software customization and even offshore technical services (we have an R&D center in Bangalore India)

The Vinimaya management team has a long-standing reputation in the e-procurement and catalog management market. Our CEO was co-founder of TPN Register, one of the first companies dedicated to supplier catalog enablement. Many of today's solutions are based on the same technology and processes developed at TPN Register (TPN Register was sold to GXS in 2001).

In other words, we've designed, built and implemented most kinds of catalog management tools and punchout-type solutions at one time or another. We've listened to tons of customer feedback, prototyped new technologies and applied all this knowledge and "lessons learned" regarding the issues and limitations of catalog management tools and punchout solutions into the development of the ViniSyndicate™ product.

We've seen the good, the bad and the ugly of catalog management and are doing something about it!

It does. ViniSyndicate™ is a brand new product that uses a brand new approach to a long-standing problem, but behind it is years of expertise, hard work and lessons learned!

Also, we'd be glad to let some of our current clients (Sunoco, Sylvan Learning) confirm this.