WEB EXCLUSIVE: MindFlow Technologies, Plano, TX , the pioneer in strategic sourcing applications, unveiled the MindFlow Sourcing Suite 4.0 recently at the International Supply Management conference in San Francisco, California. MindFlow Sourcing Suite 4.0 includes five tightly integrated applications that map to the planning, execution and compliance management phases of the sourcing business process. This release builds on MindFlow’s earlier versions, which are in production use at many Global 500 companies and have generated over $105 million of cost reductions in the past year.
"In a fiercely competitive economy, corporate leadership looks to Strategic Sourcing Management as a key element to drive Earnings Per Share. By clearly defining our sourcing strategies and generating optimized vendor and product allocation decisions using MindFlow Sourcing Suite, we are able to reduce our spend by 5%," said Julie Diehl, Vice President, Global Strategic Sourcing of Pennzoil-Quaker State Corporation.
“The combination of our unmatched sourcing expertise and close partnership with our world-class customer base strongly positions MindFlow to truly understand and deliver solutions that define the strategic sourcing market,” said John Keenan, President and CEO of MindFlow.
“MindFlow Sourcing Suite 4.0 provides the most powerful and easiest to use strategic sourcing solution, supported by a team that really understands the sourcing process.”
“There is intensifying interest in using technology to improve strategic sourcing processes among Global 500 companies,” said David Hope-Ross, Research Director, Gartner Research.
Despite the temptation to chase quick ROI, we are advising clients to resist the siren call of simple competitive bidding. Ultimately, sustainable business results will come from combining best practices with solutions that reflect the subtleties of advanced enterprise sourcing environments.”
The MindFlow Sourcing Suite 4.0 includes five applications that deliver an end-to-end solution to the sourcing lifecycle. The key applications and functionality are:
· Spend Analyzer provides historical spend analysis and extensive modeling capabilities to perform future spend visibility. This spend visibility and analysis for items sourced can be used for “what-if” scenario planning, contingency risk planning and leverage at different levels of negotiations with suppliers.
· Sourcing Analyzer is an easy-to-use analytical application that helps sourcing professionals produce optimal supply allocation and vendor selection decisions.
Sourcing professionals use it to:
- Recommend the most appropriate sourcing strategies and approaches to use based on category analysis
- Enable bid templates incorporation into Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) sourcing models
- Factor in qualitative sourcing criteria such as quality assurance, technology capability, etc.
- Incorporate business constraints such as supplier capacities, tariffs, product yields, etc.
· Bid Analyzer delivers RFQ/RFI capability, tightly integrated with the Sourcing Analyzer and optimization technology. Bid Analyzer, in conjunction with Sourcing Analyzer, reduces sourcing cycle times by 35% to 75%.
· Auction Analyzer provides reverse auction capability that can factor in Total Cost of Ownership, supplier differentiation and business constraints such as supplier capacities.
The results from an online auction can be seamlessly integrated with Sourcing Analyzer for constraint-based “what-if” analysis to identify the final supply allocation through private negotiations, significantly increasing the realized savings from auctions.
· Performance Analyzer offers the first sourcing performance measurement system that can closely tie purchasing savings claims to EPS. It provides:
- Spend productivity reports showing estimated savings versus realized savings by item, category and supplier
- Sourcing compliance reports through spend variance, price variance, and volume variance at item, category, supplier and ship-to levels
· Sourcing DesktopÔ brings all the applications together through a portal that can be customized by users with personal commodity tracking, cost driver trend reports, news links, etc.
