Renee Boucher Ferguson

Wireless-equipped traders and brokers step aside— e-procurement managers may be joining you on the airwaves. Elcom International Inc. last week announced that its e-procurement software has gone wireless. Running on Windows CE and Palm OS—and soon on Internet-enabled cell phones—Elcoms eMobileLink application, based on PECOS, or Personal Electronic Catalog Ordering System, Internet Procurement Manager, lets […]

New planning, measurement and analysis software is giving the electric utilities industry a beacon of hope for dealing with energy deregulation. New products from Lodestar Corp., Enermetrix and Henwood Energy Services Inc. are providing IT managers at utilities and corporations with tools to deal with shifts in energy markets. While promising to bring more efficiency […]

Small manufacturers looking to serve customers that want to do business via the Internet will soon have a Web-based suite of e-commerce tools from Apps4biz.com Inc. and Intacct Corp., which plan to marry their respective manufacturing and accounting technologies. The unnamed bundle, to be sold as a hosted service to companies with less than $50 […]

Global manufacturers will get more exposure to Parametric Technology Corp.s Web-based project life cycle collaboration tools thanks to partnerships with two big names in technology. The Needham, Mass., developer has signed separate business development and technology agreements with professional services giant Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and storage bellwether EMC Corp. Through these relationships, which […]

Electronic bill presentment and payment is heating up. Want proof? eTime Capital Inc., InteliData Technologies Corp. and Avolent Inc. are acquiring companies to jump-start their respective EBPP offerings, while iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions and MetraTech Corp. have announced EBPP additions to their applications. EBPP lets companies send bills over the Internet to business and consumer customers […]

0racle Corp. last week introduced several tools and services for its Oracle Exchange Marketplace that company officials said will enable Internet e-marketplaces to offer full collaboration between buyers and sellers. The additions to the platform, which were discussed at a press event at Oracle headquarters here, redefine the companys business-to-business offerings around the trading hub […]

Elcom Inc. and GE Capital Financial Inc. have developed a credit card-like e-procurement product that enables companies to integrate the processing of large purchases made both online and offline. The Elcom e-Payment Solution, which the two companies showed at the iSource Summit here last week, is a combination of GE Capitals existing purchasing card and […]

As big companies and financial institutions rush to set up online billing systems, some are finding that their EBPP platforms could be hobbled by the same lack of industrywide standards that has slowed intercompany integration of other e-business software. The problem is that many of the existing electronic bill presentment and payment solutions are built […]

Electronic billing is back—and this time, it means business. Although its taken a lot longer than some financial industry experts expected, many companies and banking institutions are finally rolling out electronic bill presentment and payment, or EBPP, platforms this quarter. Their goal: to develop software that lets businesses and consumers see current and past bills […]

Financial accounts aggregator Yodlee Inc. and National InterBank, which provides private-label banking software and services for online businesses, are trying to muscle in on one of banking institutions core functions: moving assets. The companies last month announced plans to create the Web-based Internet Funds Transfer Service, or IFTS, which will integrate NIBs connection to the […]

Credit cards account for 90 percent of online payments. CheckSpace Inc. and Achex Inc. are taking aim at the other 10 percent with new tools that make it easier for consumers to pay online without using a credit card. Some 100 million consumers dont have access to a credit card, according to a recent Nilson […]

A number of software developers are jockeying to become the preferred source for wireless applications to the financial services industry. And while the institutions themselves are responding by rushing out wireless services, theyre doing so without a clear strategy or clear demand. Sun Microsystems Inc., Financial Fusion Inc., IBM and other developers announced wireless initiatives […]