PeopleSoft — a provider of collaborative enterprise software — is promoting its PeopleSoft 8.4 Strategic Sourcing, a new suite of Internet applications providing end-to-end support for Web-based procurement of services, and direct and indirect materials, at this week’s EDUCAUSE education conference in Indianapolis, IN.
PeopleSoft’s educational focus involves campus management, accounting, human resource and financial aid solutions. With the company’s PeopleTools Internet architecture, the PeopleSoft applications and solutions are deployed from a server-centric development platform over the Internet and accessed by client systems through a Web browser. The server-centric development platform is non-Mac, but our favorite computing platform is fully supported on the client side. In fact, PeopleSoft had a Titanium PowerBook up and running in their EDUCAUSE booth.
PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing is a collaborative solution that will help organizations manage the complex bidding and negotiation process associated with the procurement of direct goods, services and large capital expenditures, according to Mike Frandsen, vice president and general manager of PeopleSoft’s Supply Chain Management Division. He added that it provides business management and workflow support for every step of the source-to-settlement business process including commodity spend and purchase contract compliance; Request for Quote (RFQ); reverse auctioning with user-defined rules and auction types; analysis of multi-line quote response; and contract award and fulfillment.
PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing is designed to enable organizations to streamline the workflow of critical procurement processes such as RFQs through real-time collaboration with their suppliers. Traditionally, procurement workflow processes have been labor-intensive and paper-based. PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing allows organizations to work directly with their suppliers online, significantly reducing sourcing cycle times related to RFQs and other procurement processes, Frandsen said. This reduction in cycle time can result in substantial gains in productivity and lower procurement costs, he added
Strategic Sourcing is currently scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2002. The new solution will include global language translation for Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Canadian French, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.