SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., June 27, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- BuyEfficient, an e-marketplace for operators and owners of independent hotels, today reported significant back-end integration savings, rapid member adoption and increased supply chain efficiencies, using solutions by PurchasePro (Nasdaq:PPRO). BuyEfficient, www.buyefficient.com, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sunstone Hotels, which manages, owns and operates Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott and Best Western hotels, among many other chains across the country.
Created to provide independent hotels with aggregate buying power and a complete procurement process, BuyEfficient's e-marketplace provides hotels and other companies with the electronic tools to enhance operating processes and increase cost efficiencies throughout the supply chain, receiving discounts on office supplies, food expense, MRO products and guest amenities.
After the first six months of operation, BuyEfficient's marketplace membership has doubled, with hotels in the BuyEfficient marketplace driving 50 percent of their entire procurement through the marketplace within the first 90 days of joining the network.
John Noller, chief executive officer of BuyEfficient, said, "The BuyEfficient marketplace powered by PurchasePro is so easy to use that new members immediately adapt to the system. Part of this is due to the immediate cost savings that come through the great pricing. But the savings go much deeper than just lower prices. In fact, sourcing savings pale in comparison to the benefits our hotels experience through PurchasePro's back-end integration technology."
PurchasePro's e-Procurement technology provides BuyEfficient's hotels with a direct feed into their accounting software, enabling customers to pre-code the actual cost of products and enhance "back of the house" efficiency. PurchasePro's e-Procurement solution helps marketplace members monitor actual product purchases vs. an allocated budget in a real-time environment. Hotels are provided with running totals of inventory expenses and product levels, vs. procurement expenses.
Allen Winder, executive vice president and chief operating officer for PurchasePro, said, "PurchasePro's e-Procurement system creates effective work-flow procedures and empowers employees across multiple departments to submit requests for products providing purchasing departments with the tools needed to be more efficient."
"PurchasePro's e-commerce solutions have enabled us to provide any hotel with the power to participate in a centralized and paper-less supply chain, enabling us to deliver on our promise of saving hotels money, increasing efficiencies and powering business success in a relatively short period of time," said Noller. "PurchasePro was the only viable option for our company."
About BuyEfficient
BuyEfficient, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sunstone Hotels, provides independent hotels and management groups with the technology to compete with larger hotels chains in the industry. For more information, visit www.sunstonehotels.com.
About PurchasePro
PurchasePro(r), www.purchasepro.com, a leader in business-to-business e-commerce, operates the PurchasePro global marketplace, encompassing more than 155,000 businesses and powering hundreds of private-label marketplaces. PurchasePro provides the following business-to-business e-commerce solutions: e-Procurement for corporate procurement, v-Distributor for online distributors, e-MarketMaker for Internet market makers and e-Source for strategic sourcing.
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 SEC filings of PurchasePro Inc., including the section titled "Factors That May Affect Results" in its 10-K filing for the period ended Dec. 31, 2000, and its 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2001, which are available from the company on request and on the Internet at the SEC's Website, www.sec.gov.
Note: PurchasePro is a servicemark of PurchasePro.com Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.