Online procurement (sometimes referred to as eProcurement or Spend Management) is the term most commonly employed to refer to the electronic purchasing of goods and services, necessary for the day-to-day operation of a business. Examples of such goods and services might be stationery, computers, temporary staff, utilities and industrial supplies. Anywhere between 30 and 80 percent of a company’s purchasing will be spent on indirect goods. And the inefficiencies that persist within large buying enterprises have prompted several market visionaries to attack this area of unaddressed operational cost with flexible and scalable Internet-based solutions, which promise rapid returns on investment.

However, a study by the Conference Board points to problems in the implementation side and concludes that “organisations are …finding (eProcurement) implementation more complex, more expensive, and more time consuming than they originally envisioned” and consultants have been “widely criticised for overstating the business case for eProcurement”. Companies have jumped onto the eProcurement bandwagon without fully understanding the inter-organisational collaboration needed and the domino effects underlying the technology models; i.e. the investment required to move the right information from suppliers to employees able to purchase, and the complexity of integrating these technologies with existing Finance and Enterprise Resource Planning systems.

In 1999, as an early innovator in eCommerce, Elcom was the first solution provider to offer the market a completely hosted offering based on what has become the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. Elcom’s legacy of innovation continues with the introduction of a new approach to eCommerce designed to address the realities of today’s dynamic and diverse global markets - Commerce Process Management. Elcom’s Commerce Process Management™ (CPM) methodology is designed to provide buyers, sellers and communities of commerce with world class managed services that leverage people, processes and technology to enable the large scale exchange of goods and services online. CPM enables trading partners to bridge the historical silos of today’s buyer- or supplier-centric solutions by providing an open transaction environment that fosters a level playing field and stimulates online commerce between all levels of organisation, from the largest public-sector or multi-national corporation, to the smallest owner-operator business.

Elcom’s offers its customers solutions that are designed to automate the entire range of B2B commerce processes including sourcing, requisitioning, order management, receiving, financial settlement and spending analysis. Our partners and customers can create solutions for a wide variety of challenges within their market segment by selecting from a portfolio of best of breed applications. Today Elcom’s solutions are used to automate procurement, create online marketplaces or to differentiate a supplier from its competition. Elcom’s suite of commerce process management solutions addresses the market needs for fully featured systems that extend beyond the current generation of on demand spend management or eProcurement solutions and provide both buyers and suppliers with a true online commerce ecosystem.