The recent explosion of strategic sourcing and e-procurement software has generated increased competition and compounded margin pressure, ‘forcing’ suppliers to make less profitable decisions - or simply overlook better opportunities – when responding quickly to new incoming sales requests.
And too often, manufacturers rely on out-of-date product, price and availability information to make crucial business decisions. This means they’re in danger of accepting orders from customers that can have a negative impact on the business’ bottom line
But US software vendor, Metreo, reckons it has the answer. According to ceo, Daphne Carmeli: “Our Supplier Response platform evens the B2B [business to business] playing field for sellers and buyers in the marketplace. Our software provides enterprise visibility into every incoming sales request, then enables the supplier to evaluate and recommend a profitable response - faster.”
Initially aimed at Global2000 companies, the software has four main functions: Qualify, Evaluate, Recommend, and Negotiate.
The ‘Qualify’ process takes each incoming sales request and routes it to the most qualified person for handling. ‘Evaluate’ then analyses each request in the context of all relevant corporate criteria (including data from other systems such as product costing, historical value of the client, and stock availability).
Next is the ‘Recommend’ function. This effectively decides whether the sales request should be accepted, modified then accepted, or rejected completely. Finally, the software ‘negotiate’ module recommends counter-offers by evaluating profitability on a line item basis or suggests opportunities to up-sell, cross-sell, or replace the requested product with a substitute one.
Kevin O’Marah, supply chain director for analyst, AMR Research, sums up the benefits of the Supplier Response platform: “Metreo’s solution attacks a problem that happens day in and day out … Suppliers have difficulty accessing critical business information in order to respond to multiple sales requests.”
Metreo, established in the States last year, already has one Global2000 customer, Cutler-Hammer (a $2 billion annual revenue business unit of the Eaton Corporation). The company manufactures electrical control products, competing with the likes of Rockwell and Siemens. Although the software implementation is still in its infancy, the company expects the software will have a “considerable impact on the bottom line.” The company receives more than 500,000 sales requests per year from customers, distributors and sales force.
Ray Huber, Cutler-Hammer’s director of e-business, adds: “Today, our sales force [60 employees] only get limited information when their orders are evaluated. Metreo’s software will allow us to see and understand how their decisions reflect our company’s business goals and how profitable each deal is. With this information, we’ll be able to make better decisions as we evaluate the potential impact of each request.”
But the software doesn’t come cheap – hence the Global2000 focus. Carmeli explains: “Typical implementations start from around a quarter of a million dollars with one or two integration points, up to half a million for more complex projects ... but the potential savings are huge.”
But supply chain software vendor, Manugistics, may claim that their software offering, EPO, will also do a similar job. Carmeli objects: “Our software works in real-time, whereas the EPO software looks at price and supply history to arrive at a published price for a product.”

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