At its Connect EMEA conference in Barcelona this week, PeopleSoft Inc. announced a partnership with IBM to provide risk management software to financial services, as well as an upgrade to its Supplier Relationship Management software.
PeopleSoft, of Pleasanton, Calif., will combine its Enterprise Financial Management applications with IBMs Risk and Compliance initiative to help financial institutions meet Basel II mandates. The second goal of the partnership, which PeopleSoft and IBM will jointly market, is to help financial services firms develop integrated risk management strategies that relate to the mandate.
Basel II establishes a basic framework that ensures banks will have a risk management strategy in place by 2006 to ensure against direct or indirect loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems, or from external events. The Basel Committee—made up of 10 countries including the U.S.—intends to finalize its standard by the end of this year, with implementation of the framework required by the end of 2006.
PeopleSofts Profitability Management software brings analytic capabilities while IBMs Risk and Compliance initiative gives financial institutions a well-rounded view of how their data is gathered, enhanced, stored, calculated and reported. The Initiative includes consulting, middleware, hardware and integration services from IBM.
What the combined solution will provide is integrated, real-time financial information with analytic capabilities—and a joint infrastructure for gathering, analyzing and monitoring information.
In a separate announcement, PeopleSoft introduced Version 8.8 of its Supplier Relationship Management software that helps companies manage their corporate spending—including direct and indirect goods, assets and services.
PeopleSofts SRM suite is part of its larger supply chain management offering. The new functionality in SRM 8.8 includes services procurement, rate comparison, collaborative sourcing, multi-round sourcing and multiple catalog views.
The upgraded services procurement feature tracks and validates performance and deliverables for services that are measured by project milestones, rather than by timesheets.
The rate comparison feature automatically compares previously negotiated rates to the service purchase agreement for contract compliance. The collaborative sourcing functionality captures the requirements of key participants—buyers, engineers and supply chain managers—throughout the sourcing process.
Another feature decreases sourcing cycle time through staged sourcing events.
Falling under the eProcurement category at PeopleSoft, multi catalog views enable users to view catalogued items in a number of formats while maintaining a common reporting structure.
Additional upgrades include enhanced usability with a navigational redesign and regional sourcing capabilities.
The company said this next version of PeopleSoft SRM will be available in December.
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