LAS VEGAS, June 19, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- PurchasePro (Nasdaq:PPRO), a leading procurement and sourcing software company, today announced the launch of OneConnect(tm), PurchasePro's next generation of buyer and supplier integration tools. OneConnect is a highly intuitive, web-based platform that speeds the integration of PurchasePro applications into both buyer and supplier legacy systems, including ERP, order management, fulfillment and financial packages as well as into any competing procurement or back-end application.
"Legacy system integration to web-based applications has always been time-consuming and inordinately expensive," said Chris Benyo, PurchasePro's senior vice president. "Based on our experience of designing and implementing more than 100 custom built integrations and interfaces, we created OneConnect, a system that enables enterprises to connect to all of their suppliers, making integration affordable to any size vendor and any size buyer, regardless of technical sophistication."
Through its integration mapping, OneConnect can virtually eliminate order entry errors, costly missed shipments, delayed product distribution and over payment. OneConnect facilitates document-to-document data exchange, enabling organizations to seamlessly monitor and access real time enterprise-wide transaction data, while virtually eliminating the need to send and receive purchase orders and bids over the fax machine or through the mail.
By providing low-cost system-to-system integration, OneConnect provides increased process efficiencies for all trading partners, delivers an alluring value proposition to suppliers and removes key integration barriers that have hindered trading partner enablement for more than 30 years.
"Most implementations of procurement systems today reach only the largest suppliers and the biggest buyers," Benyo said. "OneConnect can do this work, but it's also a tool of mass adoption. PurchasePro continues to distinguish itself by driving even the smallest suppliers onto its commerce network -- including one customer that maintains more than 1,300 active suppliers in its trading network. An easy and pain-free integration tool for buyers and suppliers, OneConnect provides any company with access to the efficiency and speed that integration brings to the purchasing process."
OneConnect facilitates the exchange of electronic "documents" across a worldwide trading network. Based on standards including EDI and XML, OneConnect can take a purchase order created in an ERP system, pass it through the network to a supplier's legacy order management system, pass the advance shipping notice back to a legacy receiving system then pass an electronic invoice into a legacy financial system. The PurchasePro network facilitates the document travel; OneConnect facilitates the connections.
On the buy-side, OneConnect assists buyers in fully integrating into its base of suppliers, enhances the integration of suppliers currently trading through traditional standards such as EDI and XML, reduces the need for purchasing and accounting professionals to enter paper-based purchase orders into a company's back-end applications and ensures that managing small and midsized supplier accounts becomes a seamless process by reducing the inefficiencies associated with mail and fax transactions.
On the supply-side, OneConnect enables suppliers to decrease bid and order response times, rapidly update product pricing, significantly reduce their dependence on receiving orders via fax and provides suppliers with real-time order confirmation without the costs and complexity typically associated with traditional EDI systems.
Greg Ducharue, director of information technology at Desert Gold, a Las Vegas supplier of specialty meats, poultry and seafood and a OneConnect customer, said, "OneConnect continues to make our business more efficient, effective and profitable. By integrating bids and purchase orders from our customers directly into our existing systems, OneConnect has made our operations four times faster, enabling our employees to reduce their purchase order and bid response time by 90 percent while simultaneously eliminating more than 100 hours of weekly data entry."
John Noller, chief operating officer of BuyEfficient and a OneConnect customer, said, "Our hotels continue to experience front-end savings through PurchasePro's procurement technology, however, such results pale in comparison to the savings they experience through PurchasePro's integration tools. OneConnect enables us to deliver on our promise of saving hotels money, increasing efficiencies and powering business success in a relatively short period of time."
About PurchasePro
PurchasePro(r), www.purchasepro.com, is a B2B e-commerce leader with the objective of providing software to enable enterprises of all sizes to gain universal access to the world's largest commerce network. Founded in 1996, PurchasePro provides electronic procurement, materials management and strategic sourcing solutions to businesses worldwide.
This news release may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the "Safe Harbor'' created by Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent only the views of certain members of management and are based on limited information available to us now, which is subject to change. We have no current plan to update these statements. Actual results may differ substantially from what we say today and no one should assume at a later date that the forward-looking statements provided herein are still valid. They speak only as of today. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, see the "Risks and Uncertainties" discussions included in the SEC filings of PurchasePro.com, Inc., that are available from the company on request and on the Internet at the SEC's website, www.sec.gov including our Form 10-K filing for the period ended December 31, 2001. Note: PurchasePro is a service mark of PurchasePro.com Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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