e-procurement comes to industrial products magnate

e-procurement is fast becoming mainstream: last month Key Industrial Equipment, the UK’s largest industrial equipment catalogue company, launched not only a web shop, but also e-procurement technology and services aimed at several manufacturing business levels and preferences. It follows on last year’s launch of SKF’s endorsia.com industrial components and equipment e-procurement site, powered by MRO software. And there are others, like Arco’s site. www.keyind.co.uk will provide everything from straight web shopping and tailored online catalogues for intranet-based Key webshop users, right out to full Punchout transactional procurement – working seamlessly with major ERP systems, including SAP and Oracle, as well as the Ariba and Commerce One e-procurement platforms and communities. Punchout takes users to the Key site, allowing them to select products, and then return the ‘shopping cart’ to the home e-procurement application. It allows SMEs and larger organisations to run their own MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) purchasing from their own systems, augmented with informative content, continually maintained and updated at the Key site. But Key says that for companies running an ERP system and not wanting this level of interaction, the system can also be configured as a customised catalogue available on their own intranet. Then for smaller companies or individuals, Key’s webshop looks after all functions, handling catalogue management, authorisations, budgets and orders. Ultimately, Key’s customers can get a seamless flow of information, providing access to a very big product range. And like other e-procurement systems, it brings control over ‘maverick’ expenditure, where authorisations are often clumsy, time-consuming and, if at all possible, avoided. Key’s marketing director Simon Dear says that Punchout “can be implemented in six weeks at virtually nil cost.” He says users will have access to all of purchasing, invoicing and so forth with full workflow control. www.keyind.com is the result of three years of development and a £6 million e-commerce investment by the giant Manutan Group which operates 20 companies in 17 countries across Europe – interfacing with 600,000 customers and over 2 million purchasing contacts, with 380,000 items stocked and 3,000 manufacturers. It will give Key customers access to 30,000 online products – everything from safety equipment to tools and maintenance kit – expanding to more than 200,000 in two years as Key draws on Manutan’s supply base and purchasing muscle. “This represents a quantum leap from what until now has been paper-based ‘mail-order’ purchasing in the B2B industrial and office equipment supply business in the UK,” says Tony Bailey, Key’s managing director. “The depth of Manutan’s investment and the success of their ebusiness model in Europe means that Key can now offer far more than just a website. The technology behind the solution (Intershop enfinity, etc) effectively sets www.keyind.co.uk apart in our marketplace as a powerful engine for e-procurement, interfacing in any number of ways with the purchasing systems of our customers.”