MarketMile LLC, the e-procurement service provider founded by American Express, is making a few changes.
The company tomorrow will announce a new name, a new platform and new technology.
MarketMile is nixing the name that connotes both an e-marketplace and a miles program, in favor of the new name Ketera Technologies.
Along with the name change, MarketMile will announce three new modules—bolstered by a Spend Management platform—that shift the companys current focus on e-procurement technology toward enterprise spend management.
Ketera Spend Analysis, Ketera Sourcing and Ketera Network Connect will be added to the existing Procurement, Payment & Reconciliation and Supplier Enablement modules to make up the full spend management offering.
Ketera Spend Analysis provides a starting point for controlling costs by offering detailed analysis of a companys spending.
It utilizes MarketMiles technology that automatically cleanses and categorizes data, breaks down spending by supplier and category, analyzes spending behavior across the organization and identifies opportunities for savings, officials said, in Mountain View, Calif.
Ketera Sourcing enables companies to negotiate best pricing and contract terms on goods and services. The module will provide a hosted tool set for reverse auction and request for quote processes. Through a Ketera partnership with IBM, users can access sourcing expertise and services.
Ketera Network Connect is a suite of services designed to help users enable and maintain their suppliers as part of a behind the firewall e-procurement system by linking users existing e-procurement systems to a network hosted catalog of the companys suppliers.
Using Network Connect, Ketera rapidly connects suppliers—even with little to no experience interacting with an e-procurement system, officials said.
Ketera will deliver its spend management software as a hosted service—using a Web service model. What that means is that the company will provide “functionality on demand,” according to Ruby Sahiwal, COO at MarketMile, in Mountain View, Calif.
“We provide heavy lifting services for supplier enablement…that neither software providers or ASP [application service providers] do,” said Sahiwal. “ASP hosts software. We do that as well, but we dont have separate technology for every company; everyone is sharing the same network infrastructure [at Ketera] and that means our cost or product is lower.”
Despite coming to market with an offering that may be lower in price than installing enterprise software, Ketera is likely to face some stiff competition in the spend management arena.
In April Ariba Inc. announced its spend management strategy, which helps companies manage their spend across departments and divisions as well as collaborate on processes outside the firewall.
At the same time, formidable ERP [enterprise resource planning] software makers Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft Inc. and SAP AG are also edging in the spend management game.
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- IBM, MarketMile Team Up, Extend LPS